January 2, 2025, 9:20 am | Read time: 3 minutes
Do you live in Berlin, Frankfurt, or Buxtehude? No matter where you live: There is an interactive map online that shows which people are particularly popular in a region, city, or municipality. The Finnish geographer Topi Tjukanov came up with the idea for the map project and put the map online. We took a look at it.
While other maps on the Internet show well-known buildings, landmarks, or the humdrum streetscape, the interactive map of famous people is structured differently. When first called up, it shows a globe with a view of Europe and Africa. Here, users can search their local area and find out who is actually particularly famous in the region.
The link to the map can be found at the end of this article.
Map Lists Famous but Also Infamous People
If you search around on the interactive map of notable people, a few expected names immediately pop up:
- Nelson Mandela,
- Kofi Annan,
- Pablo Picasso,
- Cristiano Ronaldo,
- Leonardo da Vinci,
- Madonna or
- Winston Churchill.
Unfortunately, the name “Adolf Hitler” also stands out in the border region between Germany and Austria. However, this is due to the database behind it. All the data on the map comes from a “cross-checked database of notable people.” This database is maintained by the scientific journal Nature. It contains all the information on people who lived or are still alive between 3500 BC and 2018. This data is, in turn, based on entries in Wikipedia and Wikidata.
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Exploring the World with Mouse
Users can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the interactive map. It only takes a short moment, and the map rebuilds 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 is that users have to be a geography ace themselves. Apart from the names of the most notable people in a region, the map only shows rivers, lakes, and borderlines, with no other names of regions or cities.
However, the country or city names can be shown by clicking on “Show real place names.” The names of the personalities, however, then disappear. However, this means that users know which area they are currently in. Perhaps Topi Tjukanov, the Finnish map tinkerer, will send an update so that both can be used simultaneously in the future.
Even now, it’s fun to explore the interactive map with the mouse and find out more about your own surroundings or other parts of the world. The map has a filter function so that it doesn’t get too confusing. On the left-hand side, users can filter the list of notable people into the following areas:
- Culture,
- Discovery & Science
- Government or
- Sport & Play
By the way, by clicking on the name, the degree of popularity of a person appears based on the values in the Nature database.
And have you already found out who the most notable person in Buxtehude is? A little hint: it’s a soccer coach. Why don’t you try out the query yourself? Click here for the map of famous personalities.