Reading
Notes on maps, distance, and journeys nobody took.
Fifteen days to Marrakesh, without going
Seoul to Marrakesh, 13,509km with five stops along the way. Follow the link and the whole journey plays back on the map.
Two countries, 5.4km apart
We looked through 524 cities for the two that sit closest together. Three of the four closest pairs straddle a border.
The equator is not the halfway point
We drew a line from Seoul to all 89 southern-hemisphere cities and marked where each one crosses the equator. Seventy-one of them cross over water.
In Istanbul the ferry changes your continent
Istanbul, 7,954km from Seoul. Reading a city split by one strait through its route and its distances.
Kyoto, there is a city between the temples too
Kyoto, 837km from Seoul. Putting its scattered heritage sites and nearby cities on a map to read the sense of distance in its streets.
To see Porto you have to read the name across the river too
Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia, one on each side of the Douro. Narrowing a map that crossed 10,168km from Seoul down to the width of a single river.
Dig up a road in Rome and the past comes out
The great circle from Seoul to Rome, and the sense of time stacked up underneath the city.
Taipei, a night that one market can fill
Reading Taipei — 1,485km from Seoul — through distance, time zone, and the waypoints on the map.
Uluru is one red rock in the middle of a desert
Crossing the 7,008km from Seoul to Uluru, and reading the empty space on the map.
Keep going due east from Seoul and you arrive at Seoul
We found ten cities on Seoul's latitude, then measured what you pass through following that parallel all the way round.
The twelve farthest places are all in the southern hemisphere
Counting our 524 cities by latitude leaves only 89 in the south. We measured why the bottom of the map is empty.
When it is noon in Seoul, 89 places are still on yesterday
We lined up the time zones of all 524 cities against Seoul to measure how far the clock drifts from the distance.
There is nothing at the farthest point from Seoul
Where the exact opposite side of the Earth from Seoul lies, and which city comes closest to it. We ran the numbers.
Only three cities sit inside the Arctic Circle
We pulled the cities north of the Arctic Circle out of our 524-city dictionary and worked out how many days the sun never rises.
Every trip to Europe seems to catch Dalian
How Dalian sits on the routes heading west out of Seoul, measured with detour ratios.
Why the line from Seoul to Paris bends north
Why flight paths look like curves on a map, explained with the numbers CouchColumbus actually computes.
A hundred stopovers takes you three times around the Earth
How much the real distance grows each time you slot another city into the route. We ran each setting 300 times.
The city whose nearest neighbour is 3,854km away
We looked through 524 cities for the one with the most distant neighbour. There is a 2,000km gap between first place and third.
We tore out the maps API and drew the world map ourselves
How we drew a world map onto a canvas with Natural Earth shapes and d3-geo instead of Google Maps, and why.