Amazing Maps

The Invisible Boundaries Controlling U.S. Air Traffic

More than 220 languages are spoken in Los Angeles County, making it one of the most linguistically diverse places on Earth.

Los Angeles County is the most populous county in the United States, with roughly 9.7 million residents according to recent Census estimates. That’s more people than the populations of 40 individual states. The county includes 88 incorporated cities, including Los Angeles itself, but also places like Long Beach, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Beverly Hills and Compton. If LA County were its own state, it would rank around 11th nationally by population, between New Jersey and Virginia. LA County alone also has more people than entire countries like Austria and Switzerland, despite being just one county within California. The county’s massive growth was driven largely by 20th century industries like oil, manufacturing, aerospace, shipping, entertainment and later tech, helping turn Southern California into one of the world’s largest urban regions.

Los Angeles County has nearly 10 million residents and is more populous than 40 U.S. states.

The legal changes are largely driven by growing scientific evidence that crustaceans like lobsters, crabs and crayfish may be capable of experiencing pain or distress. Countries including Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand introduced restrictions requiring lobsters to be stunned or killed before cooking, while some regions in countries like Italy and Australia have implemented local rules or court decisions limiting the practice. Methods such as electrical stunning are increasingly used in commercial kitchens because they kill the animal almost instantly before cooking. Animal welfare researchers argue this is more humane than traditional boiling methods. The laws still vary widely worldwide, partly because scientists continue debating exactly how crustaceans experience pain and consciousness compared to vertebrate animals.

The countries that have banned boiling lobsters alive

“Holland” is only about 17% of the Netherlands by area, but the name became shorthand for the whole country internationally.

Pluto takes about 248 Earth years to orbit the Sun. Since the United States declared independence in 1776, Pluto has completed just over one full orbit. During that single Pluto year, humanity went from wooden sailing ships and horse-drawn travel to the Moon landing, smartphones and spacecraft exploring the outer Solar System. Pluto’s orbit is also unusual. It’s highly elliptical and tilted compared to the planets, and from 1979 to 1999 Pluto was actually closer to the Sun than Neptune. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the first mission to visit Pluto in 2015, arriving just before Pluto completed this orbit around the Sun.

The United States has existed for just one Pluto year

The “Blue Banana” is a nickname for the densely populated urban corridor stretching from northern England through Belgium, the Netherlands, western Germany and Switzerland into northern Italy. It includes some of Europe’s largest cities and economic hubs, including London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, Zurich and Milan. Although the corridor covers only a relatively small part of Europe’s land area, it contains around 110 million people and generates a huge share of the continent’s economic activity. The concept became influential because it showed how unevenly Europe’s wealth and population are distributed. Instead of being spread evenly across the continent, much of Europe’s industry, finance, infrastructure and trade became concentrated along this corridor over centuries. The pattern reflects geography as much as history. Major rivers like the Rhine connected inland industrial regions to North Sea ports, while dense rail and highway networks later reinforced the same economic spine. French geographer Roger Brunet identified the corridor in 1989 as Europe’s economic “backbone”. The nickname “Blue Banana” became popular shortly afterward because of the region’s curved shape on the map.

The European megaregion with over 100 million people

Kiribati is the only country in all four hemispheres because its islands cross both the Equator and the 180° meridian. Its total land area is only about 800 km², roughly the size of New York City, but the country stretches across more than 3.5 million km² of the Pacific Ocean. Some islands are over 4,000 km apart. Until 1995, different parts of Kiribati were living on different calendar days because the International Date Line split the country in two. The government eventually shifted the country’s time zones so the entire nation could share the same date. That change also made Kiribati one of the first countries on Earth to enter the year 2000.

Kiribati is the only country in all four hemispheres

The Invisible Boundaries Controlling U.S. Air Traffic

The Gulf Coast and southern Texas are among the richest bird regions in the United States, with species from North and Central America overlapping in the same habitats. Coastal wetlands, forests, deserts, and major migration routes all converge there, creating some of the highest bird diversity on the continent. California’s coast and parts of the Southeast also stand out for similar reasons. By comparison, much of the interior Great Plains and high western regions support fewer species, largely because of drier climates and less varied habitat. Data source: BiodiversityMapping.org, “Bird Species Richness of the United States.”

Bird Diversity Across the United States

The United States divides its airspace into large Air Route Traffic Control Center regions, often called ARTCCs or “Centers.” Each center manages aircraft flying at high altitude across a specific part of the country, coordinating routes, altitude changes, and handoffs between regions. The boundaries are designed around traffic flow and workload rather than state borders. There are 21 ARTCCs in the contiguous United States, plus additional facilities for Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories. Together, they handle one of the busiest and most complex air traffic systems in the world.

The Dymaxion Map Projection

China’s modern high-speed rail network expanded at an extraordinary pace between 2008 and 2020. In 2008, only a handful of high-speed routes were operating. By 2020, the network stretched across most of the country, linking major cities with trains running at speeds of 200–350 km/h. Much of the system was built from scratch during this period through massive state investment and long-term infrastructure planning. China now has by far the largest high-speed rail network in the world, accounting for more high-speed track than the rest of the world combined. The network dramatically reduced travel times between major cities and became a central part of China’s domestic transportation system.

China Built the World’s Largest High-Speed Rail Network in Just 12 Years