The map shows the birthplaces of notable personalities from the fields of culture, leadership, science and sport. Created by Finnish geographer Topi Tjukanov, the map also ranks people by how notable they are and has a wiki datalink so people can learn more about the celebrities in their hometown.
Tyukanov works as a senior map designer for Mapbox and has an unparalleled passion for geospatial data, which is evident in his latest project: the remarkable people map.
He created the map using a database containing information from Wikipedia and Wikidata, including the names, birthplaces, and dates of birth of millions of people.
The card has arguably every famous person imaginable, from Julius Caesar to Victoria Beckham.
The ranking of notoriety each person receives is based on how influential they are or have been.
Users can take a walk around the globe which, viewed from afar, reveals the most notable person born in each country.
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Zooming in, users can also see the most notable people from each city, suburb, and county.
For the UK as a whole, the map lists the most notable people such as Adam Smith and Winston Churchill.
Churchill has a notoriety rating of seven while Smith has a rank of 220, but for both people their “Is Alive?” criteria is “No.”
The most notable Scottish-born people are Ewan McGregor and Alexander Fleming, who have a notoriety score of 928.5.
McGregor’s notoriety is 852, with the card noting that he’s “probably” alive.
While Northern Ireland’s most prominent figure is CS Lewis with a ranking of 452, the Republic of Ireland has Peter O’Toole and Pierce Brosnan as prominent notable figures.
However, Ireland’s most notable person is undeniably Oscar Wilde, ranking 89th.
London itself is awash with names, with each borough spawning multiple names from Mary Shelley to David Bowie.
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England as a whole has many notable personalities, with John Lennon, William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie and Charles Darwin leading the country.
On Twitter, Tyukanov sent a “special thanks to colleagues @stepankuzmin and @willy_maps”.
He estimated that he spent about 10 hours creating the map and emphasized that it wasn’t necessarily easy that other visual designers and geospatial analysts shouldn’t have trouble doing something similar.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk, he revealed the map was made for fun after discovering “this interesting data set”.
The interactive globe has become a viral hit and users are now interested in finding the strangest or most famous names from their hometowns.
Tyukanov noted on his Twitter page that the map might hold a few surprises for even the most savvy celebrity enthusiast.
Some surprising birthplaces are Barack Obama whose birthplace is Hawaii, Freddie Mercury who was born in Zanzibar and George Orwell who was born in India.
Although Tyukanov shared that he does not intend to improve or update the map over time, he noted that he received many suggestions anyway.
He shared that a few people had pointed out “issues” that “I’d love to fix,” but alongside his full-time job, he admitted he just doesn’t have “the time” to do much more on the graphics.
Tyukanov is also the brains behind the viral sensation 30DayMapChallenge, which encourages the “space community” to create a map based on different themes every day for a month.