Frank Jacobs

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Frank Jacobs

Journalist, writer, and blogger

strange maps

Frank Jacobs is Big Think's "Strange Maps" columnist.

From a young age, Frank was fascinated by maps and atlases, and the stories they contained. Finding his birthplace on the map in the endpapers of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings only increased his interest in the mystery and message of maps.

While pursuing a career in journalism, Frank started a blog called Strange Maps, as a repository for the weird and wonderful cartography he found hidden in books, posing as everyday objects and (of course) floating around the Internet.

"Each map tells a story, but the stories told by your standard atlas for school or reference are limited and literal: they show only the most practical side of the world, its geography and its political divisions. Strange Maps aims to collect and comment on maps that do everything but that - maps that show the world from a different angle".

A remit that wide allows for a steady, varied diet of maps: Frank has been writing about strange maps since 2006, published a book on the subject in 2009 and joined Big Think in 2010. Readers send in new material daily, and he keeps bumping in to cartography that is delightfully obscure, amazingly beautiful, shockingly partisan, and more.

Everything Videos Articles
Map of Europe showing various countries shaded in blue with percentages indicating approval ratings for joining the European Union. Notable figures: Ukraine 77%, UK 52%, Serbia 44%, Turkey 49%.
Strange Maps
A continental shift: EU membership grows in popularity (even in the UK)
Absence makes the heart (and public opinion) grow fonder.
Frank Jacobs
Four images of tennis matches on grass courts, showing different stages of play, each with two players. The courts show varying degrees of wear from fresh to significantly worn.
Strange Maps
Do these pictures prove tennis is dead?
How has tennis changed in recent decades? The wear and tear on Wimbledon’s Centre Court may tell the tale.
Frank Jacobs
An old building with visible sections from four eras labeled: "REPUBLIC ERA," "OTTOMAN EMPIRE," "BYZANTINE EMPIRE," and "ROMAN EMPIRE" from top to bottom. Left side shows the building; right side shows the labeled eras.
Strange Maps
This Istanbul house was built in four historical eras
19 rooms. 1,636 square feet. 1,800 years of history.
Frank Jacobs
A map of Australia showing probability of species presence with color gradients from low (blue) to high (red). Insets display detailed regions. Arrows indicate the Northern and Southern entry points.
Strange Maps
The first Australians were Lévy walkers
A new method of mapping migration factors in erratic movements and changing climate.
Frank Jacobs
A map with various yellow and brown faces showing different emotions, representing different regions.
Strange Maps
Chernoff faces: The data-rich maps that stare back at you
50 years ago, Herman Chernoff proposed using human faces to represent multidimensional datasets. It was a good idea in theory — but a disaster in practice.
Frank Jacobs
Map of the world showing tropical cyclone tracks from 1985 to 2005. Paths are marked with lines indicating storm movement over time. Dense clusters appear in the North Pacific, North Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean.
Strange Maps
Hurricanes never cross the equator. Here’s why.
Thanks to the Coriolis force, hurricanes never cross the equator.
Frank Jacobs
Line chart showing body mass index (BMI) trends for various countries. Lines are labeled by country, with silhouetted figures for normal, overweight, and obese categories on the left.
Strange Maps
How is France dodging the global obesity trend?
Waistlines are expanding in most countries, except for a skinny list of nations bucking the trend.
Frank Jacobs
A Venn diagram depicts the overlapping groups of Nordic countries, Scandinavia, Danish Realm, Baltoscandia, Finno-Ugric, Baltic countries, and Balts, with the flags of respective countries.
Strange Maps
Baltoscandia: The geopolitical ghost that may just have a future
Because of their large and unfriendly neighbor to the east, the Baltics would rather be Scandinavian.
Frank Jacobs
A fictional map of a continent named eneropa, showing various regions like tidal states, ccsr, and solaria with topographical details and a scale.
Strange Maps
Europe remapped: What the energy utopia “Eneropa” would look like in 2050
A radical proposal reimagines Europe as a carbon-neutral continent where national boundaries are replaced by regions defined by renewable energy capabilities.
Frank Jacobs
World map illustrating various countries color-coded by their happiness levels with symbols indicating the most and least happy countries in each region.
Strange Maps
Mapped: The highs and lows of the world’s happiness landscape
The Gallup World Poll reveals regional peaks and valleys of happiness across all of the continents.
Frank Jacobs
A graphical representation of network connections superimposed on a dark map, highlighting major nodes with bright orange and yellow lines.
Strange Maps
The Enlightenment had its own internet: The Republic of Letters
Digital analyses of Enlightenment-era letters are teaching us a thing or two about Locke, Voltaire, and others.
Frank Jacobs
A composite image of the milky way galaxy showing colorful interstellar dust and gas with star fields.
Strange Maps
New map reveals the Milky Way’s magnetic heart
This first-of-its-kind image offers a detailed look at the magnetic fields within the Central Molecular Zone.
Frank Jacobs
Do you live in a new desert?.
Strange Maps
America’s news deserts are growing
Most counties in the U.S. have only one local newspaper, often one that publishes weekly instead of daily.
Frank Jacobs
Map of the united states indicating earthquake epicenters and areas where people reported feeling at least weak shaking, highlighting a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in central california on september 28, 2004, and a magnitude 5.8 earthquake in central virginia on august 23, 2011.
Strange Maps
East Coast quakes are felt farther than West Coast ones. Here’s why.
Across the subterranean United States, not all rocks were created equally.
Frank Jacobs
Strange Maps
Dewey Decimal: The sorting system that revolutionized libraries
This map samples some of the digits that make up the DDC system, invented by the brilliant but flawed Melvil Dewey.
Frank Jacobs
Historical map illustration depicting a planned city layout with a circular central area and radiating streets.
Strange Maps
Ohio’s Circleville ditched the grid system. Then it got squared.
A small Ohio town tried to escape America’s addiction to rectangular grids. It didn’t last long.
Frank Jacobs
A map showing the route of a voyage from sweden to norway.
Strange Maps
Was the “Odyssey” originally set in the Baltic?
The Trojan War was fought in Finland and Ulysses sailed home to Denmark, says one controversial theory.
Frank Jacobs
A map of antarctica with the word west antarctica.
Strange Maps
Westarctica: The micronation with a real-world purpose
The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 prohibited nations from making new land claims on the continent. But it never mentioned claims from private individuals.
Frank Jacobs
A map with a circle and a circle in the middle.
Strange Maps
CERN proposes accelerator 3 times as long as Large Hadron Collider
The $21.5-billion project could involve tunneling hundreds of feet under Lake Geneva.
Frank Jacobs
A map of the united states showing the number of abortions.
Strange Maps
Why are America’s oldest and youngest states 13 years apart?
Economics and religion help to explain the gap.
Frank Jacobs
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