Do you live in Berlin, Frankfurt or Buxtehude? It doesn’t matter where you live: there is now an interactive map online that shows which people are particularly popular in your region, city or community. The Finnish geographer Topi Tjukanov came up with the idea for the map project and put the map online. We took a look at them.
While other maps on the Internet show well-known buildings, sights or the boring streetscape, the interactive map of famous people structured differently. When first called up, it shows a globe with a view of Europe and Africa. Here, users can search their region and find out who is actually particularly well-known in the region.
Map lists famous, but also notorious people
If you search around on the interactive map of remarkable people, a few expected names immediately appear:
- Nelson Mandela,
- Kofi Annan,
- Pablo Picasso,
- Leonardo da Vinci or
- Winston Churchill
Unfortunately, in the border area of Germany and Austria, the name “Adolf Hitler” also catches the eye. However, this is due to the underlying database. All of the map’s data comes from a “cross-verified database of notable people.” This database is from Science magazine Nature groomed. It collects all information about people who lived or are still living in the period from 3500 BC to 2018. These data are in turn based on the entries in Wikipedia and Wikidata.
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Explore the world with the mouse
Users can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the interactive map. It only takes a moment and the map will rebuild itself. The further you zoom in, the more names appear on the screen. This quickly becomes a little confusing, but is still a lot of fun. The only disadvantage: Users have to be a geography ace themselves. Because apart from the names of the most notable people in a region, the map only shows rivers, lakes and border lines, no other names for regions or cities.
However, the country or city names can be displayed by clicking on “Show real place names”. Then, however, the names of the personalities disappear. However, users know in which area they are currently located. Possibly Topi Tjukanov, the Finnish map maker, will send an update afterwards so that both are possible at the same time in the future.
It’s already fun to explore the interactive map with the mouse and learn more about your own environment or other parts of the world. The map has a filter function so that it does not become too confusing. On the left, users can filter the list of notable people into:
- Culture,
- discovery & science,
- government or
- Sports & Games
By the way: If you click on the name, based on the values in the Nature database, the level of awareness of a person appears.
And: Have you found out who the most remarkable person in Buxtehude is? A little tip: These are football coaches.