The United States Football League, which is apparently still a thing, has unveiled the eight teams it will have for the April 2022 season. National Football League fans may be much more informed about the 32 teams in the NFL (including my favorite team, the Minnesota Vikings) but there are eight new teams that are…
Map 353 is actually two maps (how lucky you are)! It comes from a Facebook post I found when my mother-in-law shared it. The top map shows the most common spoken language other than English in each of the fifty states. The bottom map shows the most common spoken language other than English and Spanish.…
Map 351 comes from the movie Fly Away Home (1996) starring Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin and directed by Carroll Ballard. It is a dramatized version of the true story of Bill Lishman who trained Canadian Geese to follow his ultralight aircraft in order to help them migrate south. In the film version some land…
My family went to the Minnesota Zoo yesterday. It was 100 degrees and sunny but there was a slight breeze so it was fine. Hot, but fine. Next time you find yourself in a zoo pay attention to the maps (I always do, of course). Map 349 is actually a series of small maps from…
Map 347 comes from the Economic Policy Institute and shows how teachers are paid across the United States compared to comparable college-educated workers. Spoiler alert before you look at it… teachers are underpaid in all fifty states versus comparable college-educated workers. At best, teachers were paid 2.0% less in the state of Colorado and that’s…
The new Census results are out and that means changes are coming to the Electoral College Map. Map 345 is the 2020 Apportionment Data Map, which shows how seats are moving from state to state. The census tells us where populations are increasing faster than others which results in gains and losses of seats/votes in…
Map 343 is a fictional map from the Hulu original series The Handmaid’s Tale. The show’s Twitter account posted it in advance of the show’s highly anticipated fourth season. If you’ve seen the show you’ll know that a religious-based government took over what we know as the United States and renamed itself ‘Gilead’. These right-wing…
Map 339 is the Texas COVID-19 Vaccine Availability Map (there are some close-ups available too). The blue dots connote where a vaccine can be found. The yellow dots are hubs, meaning a larger volume of shots are available. Visitors to the availability website can click on the various dots for the exact address, facility name,…
Map 331 shows the Percentage of Small Businesses Receiving PPP Loans in the first batch from 2020, which I found in a Slate article from 5/7/20. The map uses dark red to show the states where the highest percentage of small businesses received the special PPP loans. These loans were limited because Congress approved a…
I normally prefer not to give you two United States maps in the same post but Independence Day is tomorrow so I’m going to roll with it. Happy Fourth of July everyone! Map 321 features the U.S cities with the most and least student debt. Student loan debt is a big topic right now because…
Map 319 displays the minimum wage in each of the United States. The federal minimum wage was first established in 1938. Since then, Congress has occasionally raised the dollar amount based on inflation. May of 2007 was the last time that happened when it was raised to $7.25 (a change that went into effect in…
Sometimes I’m browsing Facebook and come across a link. The link is about travel or other countries so I click on it hoping to find a really cool map. On many occasions I find an article, some nicely written, but no map. Then, every once and awhile, when the planets are in the perfect position,…
Map 311 shows the back half of a concert tour. The band on this tour is 311 (see what I did there?). 311 is currently on tour, they have a show on June 8th in Dana Point, California, but then they are scheduled to have a month off before resuming the tour on July 2nd…
This is my 150th Fun with Maps post! Congratulations to me! I suppose I should say something special to mark this important moment so… thank you to everyone that subscribes and reads my posts! I write this blog for the celebration of all things maps/travel and as a hobby (and for profit, although that hasn’t…
China has the longest high-speed rail system on the planet by a wide margin. At 18,000 miles, China owns more than two-thirds of all high-speed rail here on Earth. “China’s ambition of building high-speed rails shows no sign of slowing down. With another 6,000 miles under construction, China aims to cover 80% of metro areas…
Map 289 comes from an awesome movie, 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow. If anyone out there doesn’t agree that this film is awesome, amazing, fantastic, and simply the best; you are clearly incorrect. I love everything about it and highly recommend you go watch it if you haven’t already had the pleasure. The basic premise of…
I recently found a blog post titled, “10 Rare Landmarks on the Map of Nigeria” and clicked on it expecting to see a big, beautiful map. I was, however, disappointed to find no map at all, just a list of places. The headline contains the word ‘map’ and everything so I’m not the crazy one…
Map 283 features the minimum wage in each state of the United States. The current Federal minimum wage is just $7.25 in the US but several states have passed laws to increase that figure. Five states have done the opposite by not mandating a minimum wage but of the 45 states with one the average…
Map 279 doesn’t exactly put my home state of Minnesota in a good light. This map shows the ten least and ten most tax-friendly states in the country. Of those, Minnesota is the least tax-friendly of all fifty states (yikes). The data used to create the rankings averages all types of taxes individuals might pay…
Map 277 features each of the fifty states and how many Supreme Court Justices have been from each. This map is no longer up to date as Judge Brett ‘Rhode Island Boat Fight’ Kavanaugh was just sworn in from the state of Maryland. The Eastern part of the country has spawned the most justices and…
Map 275 concerns Hurricane Florence and comes in four parts. This series of maps can be found on the New York Times. Each one shows sites of different types that are in the path of Hurricane Florence that might cause additional problems for locals as the strong storm causes flooding throughout the region. Chemical Sites…
Map 273 is about commercial fishing in Canada (because why not?). I’m not a fisherman, myself, but I do like to eat fish and lobster (although I don’t eat lobster often). Commercial fishing is big business on the East Coast of the United States and Canada and apparently there is a structure of sorts regulating…
It’s Labor Day Weekend so Fun with Maps is back from a long hiatus to bring you more of the world’s best most interesting most recently seen by me maps. And for those wondering how my California Vacation went, don’t worry! The recap posts will be up on the site sometime in the next four…
I’ve been saving links to some great maps lately so here we are (and thanks for joining me) on another edition of Fun with Maps! Map 269 is about taxi service! Taxi data from New York City has been plotted on a series of maps by Todd W. Schneider, a creative map/data-crunching genius. There are…
Map 265 comes from another blog, the Arkansas Extreme Weather Blog. Tornado season is coming up (April, May, and June are the months with the most tornados) so I wanted to feature a map that showed the states in the U.S where they are most common. Kansas, of Wizard of Oz fame, has the most…
Map 263 shows the least-traveled highways in each state. It was created by Geotab and they included some beautiful photos of the top ten sparsely traveled roads on their website. These routes are not as traveled often because of location and physical features of the land. In many states that means mountainous areas far from…
This will be a quick post because James is sick this weekend and I don’t know how long he’ll be napping. The last couple nights have been rough with him coughing himself awake every other hour. Map 261 shows, well, I’ll let the title tell you. This map was posted by Tim Wenger on The…
The Winter Olympics ended last weekend and I had a blast watching all the events even though the United States didn’t do as well in the medal count as in previous years. I know even the US Olympic Committee is disappointed by the results but I am still very proud of all our athletes! They…
Map 247 features every country’s most popular beer. The map was created by Vinepair. They don’t share their sources but I have to assume they did exhaustive research into a subject that a lot of people care much about (and their website sells alcohol so I think they know a bit about the subject). I…
I’ve been reading my Twitter feed a lot in the past year as the political climate as devolved. Before then I would read it less frequently and mostly for entertainment news. I no longer have that luxury as Twitter and every social media platform has become obsessed with politics. It’s not always a bad thing,…
Map 239 makes me laugh. Do I need to say anything else about it? It’s a blog so I guess I’ll elaborate just a bit. This map from October 10th (sorry for the delay in featuring it) shows how much the President’s approval rating has changed since he took office in January. The map does…
I made Map 235 using information from an article by Don’t Waste Your Money about cities where one could live comfortably on a $50,000 annual salary. It was fairly inconsequential content but it caught my attention for it’s map potential. I am always disappointed when articles like this, featuring a list of cities, do NOT…
Map 233 shows the location of recent earthquakes in Mexico (and some in Southern California). Mexico has been in the news a bunch lately for several strong earthquakes that have hit the country. I found a website called Earthquake Track that pinpoints where earthquakes have hit and lists their intensity and depth. Take a glance…
Map 225 is weather related again (because climate change is a real, very serious thing). This one comes from FiveThirtyEight and shows a well-traveled stretch of sea in the Atlantic. Apparently, hurricanes and tropical storms often follow the same path from across the ocean toward the many tropical islands of the Caribbean and the Southeastern coast of the United States. Each line is a…
Map 223 is about weather, which is on my mind because of Hurricane Harvey. The category four hurricane reached land last night and is now dumping several inches of rain upon Texas and Louisiana. The map below was found on the National Weather Service’s website. Harvey has been in the news a lot this week as the people…
Map 221 is going to be very popular tomorrow. This map from CNN shows the path of Monday’s solar eclipse. The bright blue line in the middle is the path of the eclipse’s totality, meaning where the moon will perfectly align with the sun causing near-total darkness to fall upon the Earth (only the sun’s corona will…
Map 219 makes me nervous. Global warming has claimed another victim. No, it wasn’t a human, but an ice shelf. A large portion of the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica broke off. The resulting iceberg, one of the largest ever recorded, is roughly 120 miles long, almost 1000 feet thick, and weighs over a trillion metric tons. That’s…
Sometimes on Fun with Maps I feature maps I find important or topical. Other maps I share simply out of respect. Map 217 is of the latter variety. It shows the Roman Roads of Britain, what would have been a cool enough map as is, but represented in modern subway map style. Take a look at…
“Garage sale” or “yard sale”? Map 215 was sent to me by my wife, Beth. She saw it on Facebook and thought I would find it interesting (she was correct). There was a series of linguistic maps but I found this one the most worthy of sharing given that we are in garage sale season. Yes,…
It has been far too long since my last Fun with Maps post and for that I am supremely sorry. My life has been dominated by work and chores quite a bit lately. My company is renovating half the building so another office can move in. Someone, me, is in charge of cleaning up thirty…
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