# The world, through its places

Choose a year and country: the map shows how many People’s Daily articles named it from 1946 to 2025. Then explore projects about countries, cities, waterways and routes.

https://mariuscomper.uk/en/atlas/

- [Fishers and farmers at the Iron Gates: who grew up elsewhere?](https://mariuscomper.uk/pescari-si-agricultori/en/): As farming began, teeth indicate more people raised in a different geological area. Nine sites on the gorge’s relief map, with sample phases, DNA, diet and precise sources.
- [The seasons: why the year turns, how many seasons the world counts and what 351 languages call them](https://mariuscomper.uk/seasons/): The sky gives the year four fixed points: two solstices and two equinoxes. People decided the rest: two seasons in Iceland’s old calendar, three in ancient Egypt, six in India, 24 solar terms in China and 72 in Japan’s old almanac. The page draws 21 calendars as rings of one year, shows why there are seasons at all, where the four words come from in 64 languages, and what the oldest text found says for eighteen stories about the turning year.
- [Șumuleu Ciuc: how many kilometres on foot to the Pentecost pilgrimage](https://mariuscomper.uk/sumuleu-csiksomlyo/en/): From the western border to the valley that fills each Pentecost run 485.3 km of marked road — 20 days of walking. Type a town name: the page shows the road that remains, section by section.
- [Yellowhammer song dialects: a map of Europe drawn from the birds’ own song endings](https://mariuscomper.uk/yellowhammer-dialects/): The yellowhammer ends its song differently from region to region. 1,178 public recordings, classified twice without knowing the place, on a map drawn from the birds’ own spectrograms. Tap a tile to hear the bird. In English and Romanian.
- [The Magi and Mithras: what 561 stones of Mithras and his torchbearers show, year by year](https://mariuscomper.uk/cei-trei-crai/en/): It is said that the Magi were added to the story of Jesus’s birth to win over people who served Mithras. On a map of the Roman world, the Latin stones of Mithras light up in the years they could have been carved: by the year 100 none can be securely dated, and they become numerous only after 150, when the story of the Magi is already written.
- [The Bronze Age collapse, place by place: 153 claimed destructions of about 1200 BCE, each with the clock that dated it](https://mariuscomper.uk/bronze-age-collapse/): 153 destructions are said to have happened at the end of the Bronze Age. Jesse Millek (2023) went back to the excavation reports and keeps 59. A relief map of the eastern Mediterranean shows all of them on a clock from 1300 to 1050 BCE and what dated each: pottery, a text, tree rings or radiocarbon. Only seven have a radiocarbon range for the destruction itself, 84 to 245 years wide; the page shows what they can and cannot say.
- [Stubble burning in Romania, 2012–2025: every field fire seen by satellite, day by day](https://mariuscomper.uk/cand-arde-miristea/en/): 151,479 fire detections on Romania's farmland, by satellite, between 2012 and 2025, day by day and commune by commune. After the harvest, on arable land, detections have fallen by 78% since 2022. In Romanian and English.
- [Constantine the Great's bridge at Sucidava: 2,437 metres across the Danube, from AD 328](https://mariuscomper.uk/sucidava-328/en/): Choose a pace and walk its whole length — 2,437 metres, a mile and a half — on a to-scale drawing, while Trajan's bridge, drawn underneath, ends at less than half.
- [Sighet, 1944: the ghetto, the trains to Auschwitz, and the town today](https://mariuscomper.uk/sighet-1944/en/): How many people the ghetto held, where it was, who was deported in May 1944, and what survives in the town today.
- [The Dăbuleni sands, 1984–2025: how a slice of Oltenia's desert turned green and what grows in sand](https://mariuscomper.uk/dabuleni-nisipuri/en/): 41 annual satellite frames, one per summer, over the Dăbuleni sands of southern Romania. The green that stays has grown by 10,540 hectares, from 2,437 to 12,977 — and what never settled into lasting green is, almost everywhere, the water of the Danube.
- [The last day of the dinosaurs: the Chicxulub asteroid, minute by minute](https://mariuscomper.uk/ultima-zi-a-dinozaurilor/en/): The impact of 66 million years ago on one clock, on the globe as it then was: the shaking, the fragments falling back from the crater, the wave, the years of dark. The rock beneath London was about 6,500 km from the impact; the first tremor reached it after 9 minutes 57 seconds. With the times for 8,771 towns and cities. In Romanian and English.
- [Doggerland map: the land under the North Sea, drowned between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago](https://mariuscomper.uk/drowned-doggerland/): Doggerland joined Britain to Denmark and the Netherlands until the sea drowned it. A relief map of today’s sea floor, with 1,873 river channels, lakes and other features mapped beneath it, and the computed shore of any moment since 16,000 years ago. For each North Sea town, it shows how far away the shore was 10,500 years ago.
- [How often it rains in London: all 24,350 days since 1960, wet or dry](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-rain/): At Heathrow it rains, 1 mm or more, on three days in ten: 109 days a year. Paris, measured at Orly, gets the same; New York gets twice the rain on fewer wet days. Every day from 1 January 1960 to 31 August 2026 is one mark on a wall of days, any date can be followed year by year, and with a year of birth the page counts the birthdays it rained on.
- [London’s pubs, counted: what they are called, how near they are, how many are left](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-pubs/): London’s commonest pub name is The Crown, ahead of the Prince of Wales and the Red Lion: 31 of the 3,155 pubs mapped by OpenStreetMap’s volunteers. Half of the city’s postcodes have a mapped pub within 286 m in a straight line, and the official count of pubs and bars fell from 4,835 in 2001 to 3,525 in 2024, with Hackney the only borough that rose. A map of London drawn only from its pubs, with a result and a picture for each of 217 postcode districts.
- [London’s blue plaques, counted: who gets one, and which districts have none](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-blue-plaques/): London’s official blue plaque scheme, run today by English Heritage, has 1,035 plaques: 166 are in W1, and 31 of the 120 London postal districts have none. 152 of the 1,010 plaques to a person honour a woman, and the median wait between death and plaque is 49 years. All 3,942 plaques on record, of every kind, on a map drawn from postcodes, with the plaque nearest any postcode and the words on it.
- [London's protected views: 13 sightlines and the rules on building heights](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-protected-views/): London's planning rules protect thirteen lines of sight to St Paul's, the Palace of Westminster and the Tower; the longest runs 15.6 km from a gap kept in a hedge in Richmond Park. All thirteen, drawn from the government's 2012 Directions, with the height limit under each, the real ground and roofs from laser survey, and a postcode look-up.
- [London below the tide: every postcode measured against the Thames at high water](https://mariuscomper.uk/thames-barrier/): At 10,528 of Greater London's 177,041 postcodes the ground is lower than an ordinary spring high tide at London Bridge (3.9 m above Ordnance Datum). Any postcode set on a tide staff beside the levels of 1928 and 1953, on the city's laser-surveyed relief, and the Thames Barrier's 221 closures counted winter by winter.
- [London postcodes: why each district has the number it has](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-postcodes/): London's postcode numbers are alphabetical: in March 1917 the Post Office gave 1 to each district's main office and numbered the other delivery offices by name, so Hackney is E8 and SE2 is 15 km from SE1. All 120 districts on a map drawn from 110,673 postcodes, each with its own sentence and picture, and the 5,655 lines of the 1917 street list to search.
- [Romanian words in the dialects of Italy: a map of Dan Ungureanu’s “Istoria limbii române”](https://mariuscomper.uk/istoria-limbii-romane-pe-harta/en/): Dan Ungureanu argues that Romanian comes from north-western Italy. For 525 Romanian words, the map shows where the dialect forms his book sets beside them are found: among the regions of Italy, Lombardy has the most, then Veneto and Sardinia. With the linguistic atlas of Italy alongside and a check of what a word list can prove. In Romanian and English.
- [A birthday on the globe: what happened in the world on each of the year’s 366 days](https://mariuscomper.uk/ziua-ta-pe-glob/en/): A 3D globe for every day of the year: the events on Wikipedia’s day list, as rays of light on their places, and the people born then. With a birth year the page opens on your own day and shows, where records exist: the number-one song, the Moon and the star sign, the weather, an animal recorded that day, a rocket that left, every birthday since. With a name it becomes a link to send. In Romanian, English, Spanish and Chinese.
- [The hottest year of grandparents’ youth would now be a cool one](https://mariuscomper.uk/clima-bunicilor/en/): NASA’s temperature record on a globe, year by year from 1880 to 2025. Around London, nine of the last ten years were warmer than 1959, the hottest year between 1951 and 1980. With the numbers for 6,552 towns and cities and a family’s birth years. In Romanian and English.
- [Iguazu Falls, day by day: the least water fell on Mondays](https://mariuscomper.uk/cascada-iguazu/en/): The flow of the Iguaçu River at the falls on 13,540 days between 1982 and 2019: floods above 28,000 m³/s, a month of drought averaging under 200, and a seven-day rhythm. With a day of the reader's choosing. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
- [Victoria Falls: how much water in April (3,007 m³/s) and in October (293)](https://mariuscomper.uk/cascada-victoria/en/): How much water goes over Victoria Falls in each month of the year: on average 3,007 m³/s in April and 293 in October. The wall drawn thread by thread, dated photographs, Devil's Pool, the lunar rainbow and the 2019 drought. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
- [Niagara Falls keeps a timetable: from 1 April to 31 October a treaty doubles its minimum flow from 8 a.m. until evening](https://mariuscomper.uk/cascada-niagara/en/): A 1950 treaty sets the minimum flow over Niagara Falls for every hour of the year. In 2025 the river below the falls stood higher by day than by night on every season day. A clock shows the schedule in force now. In Romanian and English.
- [The Amazon River: length, discharge, drought and deforestation, drawn to scale](https://mariuscomper.uk/amazonul/en/): How long the Amazon is, how much water it carries, how far the Rio Negro fell at Manaus and how much forest is cleared in a year: eight chapters with drawings to scale and a source for every number. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
- [Notre-Dame de Paris: fire, restoration and contested windows](https://mariuscomper.uk/notre-dame-din-paris-2019/en/): 15 April 2019, 18:20: three distinct alarms, the spire down around 19:50, out by 09:50. Then the oaks, the organ's 115 stops, the December 2024 reopening and the 2026 dispute over six intact 1864 windows. In Romanian, English and French.
- [Île de la Cité before Haussmann: the vanished streets](https://mariuscomper.uk/parisul-dinainte-de-haussmann/en/): Follow a vanished street through the 1827 parcels, open the photograph and return to where Marville stood. Two approximate viewpoints beside Notre-Dame, in Paris, France.
- [Penn Station: the trains stayed, the rooms vanished](https://mariuscomper.uk/penn-station/en/): The route through Penn Station in 1910, demolition in 1963–1966 and the present station: one plan coordinate, different levels, trains still running. The rooms were demolished while the trains kept running — what did the city lose above a station that never closed?
- [Romanian words in other languages: what the neighbours borrowed, according to their own dictionaries](https://mariuscomper.uk/cuvinte-romanesti-in-alte-limbi/en/): Accounts of Romanian usually list what it borrowed. This is the reverse count: 738 words in 19 languages, looked up in the dictionaries and studies of the languages that use them. 392 are counted as loans from Romanian, in 13 languages, from Hungarian palacsinta to Polish bryndza and New York pastrami; for another 162 the dictionaries hesitate or contradict each other. Each word has a card with its source and that source's verdict.
- [Which language is closest to Romanian? Three measures, three answers](https://mariuscomper.uk/limba-cea-mai-apropiata-de-romana/en/): Romanian, the Romance language of Romania and Moldova, compared with the world's languages on words, grammar and sounds, using open data. On words the nearest is Megleno-Romanian, then Italian; on grammar Italian and Albanian score the same; on sounds the list depends on how Romanian is described. Any language can be looked up. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
- [The world in China's People's Daily: how often the paper mentioned each country, 1946–2025](https://mariuscomper.uk/lumea-in-ziarul-chinei/en/): 197 Chinese country names, searched for in 1,991,747 articles of the People's Daily, the newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. Pick a country and a year: how many articles mention it, where it ranks, and its curve month by month. The United States goes from 6,235 articles in 1965 to 787 in 2024. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
- [Romanian films in China, 1950–1992: 68 films and the titles China gave them](https://mariuscomper.uk/filme-romanesti-in-china/en/): Between 1950 and 1992 at least 68 Romanian feature films were dubbed or shown in China. Each is listed with its Chinese and Romanian titles, the year it opened in Romania, the year and studio of its Chinese dubbing, and its sources. One 1955 spy film had six million admissions in China by 1958, according to the People's Daily. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
- [Blue London, Red London: Charles Booth’s poverty map of 1898–9, one colour at a time](https://mariuscomper.uk/blue-london/): In 1898–9 Charles Booth’s investigators coloured London’s streets in seven colours, from black and blue for the poorest to yellow for the wealthy. Choose a colour to see where it was printed, or look up a street. In English and Romanian.
- [Where was Stephen's Chilia? A port, two banks](https://mariuscomper.uk/chilia-lui-stefan/en/): Stephen the Great captured Chilia in January 1465; the port passed to the Ottomans in 1484. But where was the Chilia he captured — at Chilia Veche on the Romanian bank, or at Kiliia in Ukraine? Switch banks and compare the evidence: names, finds, plans, published interpretations — no prefabricated answer.
- [The life of a London eel: from the Sargasso Sea to the River Wandle, and back](https://mariuscomper.uk/the-london-eel/): There are eels in London's rivers, and every one of them hatched in the Atlantic, thousands of kilometres away, where nobody has ever seen an eel spawn. This page follows one such life, step by step: the transparent leaf adrift, the climb up the tidal Thames, the years in a London river, the body's change and the leaving. At Molesey Weir in 2025, the volunteers' traps caught, on average, one young eel for every four and a half days of trapping.
- [Văcărești Monastery, on the same map](https://mariuscomper.uk/manastirea-vacaresti/en/): A princely foundation becomes a prison, then a demolition site: the great church falls in December 1986, the last remains in January 1987. What stays is the abandoned basin and the wetland now protected as a nature park. Slide the monastery plan over the map through 1723/24, 1865, 1984, 1989 and 2016.
- [The solar system at 1:10 billion: Neptune would be 450 m from the Sun](https://mariuscomper.uk/sistemul-solar-pe-strada-ta/en/): If the Sun were 14 cm across, Earth would be a 1.3 mm bead 15 m away, Jupiter at 78 m, Neptune at 450 m. Pin the Sun on your street and walk to each planet, with Voyager 1 on the same map and a printable class sheet. No textbook picture fits to scale.
- [Bucharest noise map by address: modelled road-noise levels around every building, school and park](https://mariuscomper.uk/harta-zgomotului-bucuresti/en/): The City's official noise maps existed only as PDF images. Type a street and number to see the modelled level around the building, at night and as a 24-hour average, against the WHO limit of 45 dB. Nearly 9 in 10 homes exceed it at night.
- [What was the Great Brăila Wetland? A map of the lost waters](https://mariuscomper.uk/balta-mare-a-brailei/en/): Between Brăila and Măcin lay a wetland of 149,000 hectares, yielding 5,117,567 kilograms of carp (Brateș and the Brăila Estate) in a single year. Diked in the 1960s, it is wheat fields today; only Balta Mică, 11%, survives as a nature park. Raise the Danube over the island and search your lake.
- [Which villages lie under Lake Bicaz? Map of the drowned Bistrița valley](https://mariuscomper.uk/satele-de-sub-bicaz/en/): Under Lake Bicaz lie 16 drowned village sites, of the 23 moved from the Bistrița valley: Hangu, Cârnu, Răpciuni, Poiana Teiului. Drain the lake, ride the lost river on a raft and find your village.
- [The meandering Dâmbovița: the river that looped through Bucharest, the 1880–83 canal and the double concrete river (1985–88)](https://mariuscomper.uk/dambovita-cu-meandre/en/): A river looped through Bucharest, with 49 mills, islands and side arms. Between 1880 and 1883 it was cut straight; between 1985 and 1988 it was poured in concrete. Type your address and find out if you live on the old riverbed.
- [Argentine ants accept strangers from thousands of kilometres away and fight rivals whose nests are 27 metres apart](https://mariuscomper.uk/supercolonia-furnicilor/en/): In 2000, 33 Argentine ant nests along the coast from Italy to the Atlantic were paired two at a time in a small vial. Ants of one supercolony never fought; between the two European supercolonies a worker died in 235 of 241 trials. Pick two nests on the map and see the result, then what was and was not tested.
- [The Green Sahara: lakes, hippos and cattle herders where today there is only sand](https://mariuscomper.uk/sahara-verde/en/): On the shore of a lake in Niger, about 200 graves. Move the clock from 7700 BCE to today and watch the water, the animals and the people go, then watch the rain leave the Sahara on a map: it did not stop everywhere at once.
- [First railway in Romania: 1854 or 1869? Oravița–Baziaș, Bucharest–Giurgiu and the three meanings of “first”](https://mariuscomper.uk/prima-cale-ferata-romania/en/): The press calls two different lines “the first railway in Romania”. Choose what “first” means and watch the answer change, then ride the real 1854 track, which leaves today’s Romania and comes back.
- [London church bells: 178 towers, their practice nights, and what the bells sound like](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-bells/): A night map of London's bell towers: pick a night and the towers listing a practice in Dove's Guide light up, tap one to hear its bells, synthesised at the frequencies in the ringers' database, while the order of the ropes changes row by row. Four towers, including St Mary-le-Bow, also have real openly licensed recordings.
- [How long is the walk to A&E](https://mariuscomper.uk/urgenta-cea-mai-apropiata/en/): Type a Bucharest street and learn how many minutes on foot you are from the nearest emergency unit, on the 3D map: 4,372 streets measured, 8 units (6 adult, 2 paediatric) and 6 sectors — the city median is 33.7 minutes, and 7.6% of points are within 10 minutes of one.
- [The old cinemas of Bucharest, 1964–2026: where the halls stood and what became of each](https://mariuscomper.uk/cinematografele-bucurestilor/en/): On 22 June 1964, Scînteia listed films in 53 Bucharest halls; today 17 cinemas run a regular programme, 11 in malls. A map of every hall, what it became, and a street search for 1964, 1986 and today.
- [The factories of Bucharest](https://mariuscomper.uk/fabricile-bucurestilor/en/): In 1991, 463,366 people in Bucharest were employees in manufacturing; in 2025, 89,063. Of 63 big factories on the map, only 13 still make anything.
- [The churches of Bucharest](https://mariuscomper.uk/bisericile-bucurestilor/en/): Between 1977 and 1987 at least 19 places of worship were pulled down in Bucharest, and between 1982 and 1988 seven churches were pushed on rails, most of them to behind blocks of flats.
- [The inns of Bucharest](https://mariuscomper.uk/hanurile-bucurestilor/en/): The National Bank, the Post Palace, the CEC and the Military Circle stand on the sites of inns. Of Bucharest's great inns, three still stand: Manuc, Gabroveni and Hanul cu Tei.
- [How long do you walk to the metro](https://mariuscomper.uk/cat-mergi-pana-la-metrou/en/): Type a Bucharest street and learn how many minutes on foot you are from the nearest metro station, on the 3D map: 4,372 streets measured, 57 stations and 6 sectors — the city median is 12.4 minutes, and 40.1% of points are within 10 minutes of a station.
- [The trams of Bucharest](https://mariuscomper.uk/tramvaiele-bucurestilor/en/): Bucharest's first tram, pulled by horses, set off in December 1872 on a single line; by 1984 half of today's addresses had a tram within 350 m, closer than today.
- [The parks of Bucharest](https://mariuscomper.uk/parcurile-bucurestilor/en/): In 1855 Bucharest had two public gardens, and half of today's addresses were more than 4.3 km from them. Today it has 169 named parks; many of the old and large ones stand on drained ponds, clay pits, rubbish tips or demolished houses.
- [How far is your park](https://mariuscomper.uk/parcul-cel-mai-apropiat/en/): Type a Bucharest street and learn how many minutes on foot you are from the nearest named park, on the 3D map: 4,372 streets measured, 169 parks and 6 sectors — the city median is 5.9 minutes, and 72.2% of analysed points are within 10 minutes of a park.
- [The markets of Bucharest](https://mariuscomper.uk/pietele-bucurestilor/en/): In 1563 the only market on record stood by the Princely Court; today, for half of Bucharest's addresses, the nearest market is at most 840 m away.
- [How much green your street lost](https://mariuscomper.uk/verdele-pierdut-al-strazii-tale/en/): Type a Bucharest street and see how much green it lost in ten years, seen from space, in 3D: 3,267 streets measured from Landsat 8, 55 parks and 6 sectors — each street with its loss between August 2015 and August 2025.
- [The Great Fire of 1847](https://mariuscomper.uk/marele-foc-1847/en/): The April 1847 burn plan, fitted to 16 churches and laid over today's Bucharest: 1,850 buildings, 12 churches, 15 dead, and your street.
- [The Romanian cities where trams still run](https://mariuscomper.uk/orase-cu-tramvai-romania/en/): Eleven Romanian cities still run trams. See every network on a map, which cities gave up their trams, and why some sources wrongly say 10 remain.
- [The plank roads of Bucharest](https://mariuscomper.uk/podurile-bucurestilor/en/): Which plank road took you into Bucharest? Old Bucharest's oak-beam streets on today's map, with the way from your door to the Princely Court.
- [The river under the city](https://mariuscomper.uk/raul-de-sub-oras/en/): Type your address and see where the Dâmbovița ran in 1871 compared with your home, with the margin of error: Pappasoglu's plan laid over today's streets. Plus the 1880 canal, the 1930s slab and the double river.
- [Where Romania burned](https://mariuscomper.uk/unde-a-ars/en/): Search your commune or county and see on 3D terrain the 4,985 satellite-mapped vegetation fires from 2016 to September 2026: 600,814 hectares burned, every fire a column. In Romanian and English.
- [How many people are left in your commune](https://mariuscomper.uk/comunele-care-se-golesc/en/): Search your commune or county and see on 3D terrain how its population fell or rose across the 2002, 2011 and 2021 censuses. Every commune is a column: height is population, colour is change. In Romanian and English.
- [What happened to the forest near you since 2001](https://mariuscomper.uk/padurea-de-langa-tine/en/): Search your commune, county or mountain and see on 3D terrain where tree canopy disappeared between 2001 and 2025, year by year, from Hansen/GLAD satellite data. The map shows the place and year of loss, by commune, county and protected area. In Romanian and English.
- [Bucharest's red-dot buildings, one by one](https://mariuscomper.uk/cladiri-cu-risc-seismic/en/): Search a street and see the buildings on Bucharest's official seismic-risk list in 3D. Of the 2,796 addresses on the 19 May 2026 list, 2,623 could be placed on the map; the others remain in the table.
- [The 1977 earthquake, over today's red-dot buildings](https://mariuscomper.uk/cutremurul-peste-bulina/en/): Follow the 1977 wave across a 3D map of Bucharest, see the damage recorded for each square kilometre and search today's seismic-risk list. The historic record describes map squares, not what happened to any one building.
- [Why are Wallachia's oldest monasteries where they are?](https://mariuscomper.uk/manastirile-tarii-romanesti/en/): Drop three marks on the relief, then the charters place the monasteries attested by 1500, in documentary order. Test five explanations one by one: the passes, the Danube, the prince, Nicodim's network, the forest. In Romanian and English.
- [How many ancestors did you have in the year 1000?](https://mariuscomper.uk/cati-stramosi/en/): The places in your family tree double every generation. By the year 1000 they need billions of people, in a Europe of about 36 million. Put your grandparents' towns on the map, follow your ancestors generation by generation and compare them with a classmate's. In Romanian and English.
- [The Great Stink — the summer the Thames became a sewer (London, 1858)](https://mariuscomper.uk/marea-duhoare/en/): June 1858: the Thames sinks, the heat bakes the banks, and Parliament's curtains soak in chloride of lime. Stand at Crossness at high water and open the sluice gates: a tide's worth of London sets off downriver on the ebb. In Romanian and English.
- [Who ruled your town 100, 300 or 600 years ago? An atlas of Romania's history](https://mariuscomper.uk/atlasul-istoriei-romaniei/en/): One map of the lands of Romania and Moldova in 96 chapters, from the first traces of people to today. Pick your town and see, from 1330 on, who ruled it and from which capital; every map has its own link to send to students.
- [The strait that wasn't there: drain the sea out of Hormuz and the whole Gulf, back to the ice age](https://mariuscomper.uk/the-strait-that-wasnt-there/): A relief map of the real Gulf seabed that you drain by scrolling: 20,000 years ago the whole Gulf was a river valley bigger than Great Britain. Then, on the same map, what people made of the strait: the oldest pearl, the kingdom of Hormuz, the “Pirate Coast” and the truces, slavery, oil, the lines drawn on the sea, the 1971 islands, the wars and the 2026 closure.
- [The river under Fleet Street: four maps, one burial](https://mariuscomper.uk/fleet/en/): The Fleet from Hampstead to the Thames: eight beats of the course, a four-map dated slider (1559–1896), twelve acts of the burial, and ten traces to walk.
- [London’s lost Tube stations, and where every station name comes from](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-tube-stations/): All 272 London Underground stations and the 44 that closed or moved, on a map you can drag from 1863 to today. The ghost stations, the one between Angel and Old Street that now heats homes, and where every name comes from.
- [The Thames frost fairs, 1608–1814, and why the river no longer freezes in London](https://mariuscomper.uk/tamisa-inghetata/en/): Streets of booths, printing presses and taverns on the frozen river, from Evelyn's diary and the accounts of 1814. The cold that froze the Thames came back once, in 1963; with the old bridge gone, the river kept flowing.
- [The Broad Street pump, 1854: John Snow, cholera and the pump handle](https://mariuscomper.uk/pompa-din-broad-street/en/): Soho, 1854: 616 cholera deaths around one pump. The handle came off when new cases had fallen from 143 a day to 12; the proof came from a clergyman who expected to prove Snow wrong.
- [They set off for the North Pole by balloon in 1897. Their film was developed in 1930](https://mariuscomper.uk/balonul-lui-andree/en/): Andrée, Strindberg and Frænkel flew for 65 hours, came down on the ice 786 kilometres from the Pole and walked for almost two months while the ice carried them south-east. Their route on the map, from the diaries found in 1930, Strindberg's photographs developed 33 years later, and what is and is not known about how they died.
- [One paragraph, 21 British voices](https://mariuscomper.uk/accent-atlas/en/): 21 speakers across Britain read the same paragraph: pick a town and watch six words change shape in phonetic transcription.
- [A drop in the Danube: source to Black Sea in about 32 days](https://mariuscomper.uk/picatura-din-dunare/en/): About a month in an average year: three weeks in flood, two months in drought. Send a drop down the Danube, from the Black Forest to Sulina, on a clock built from measured current speeds.
- [From Rouen to Antioch: a map of the Norman world, 911–1185](https://mariuscomper.uk/normanzii-in-europa/en/): 36 places where the sources attest the Normans, from Hastings to Palermo and Antioch — each with its evidence grade. The farthest, Antioch, lies 3,177 km from Rouen. Type your town and see how close they came.
- [Where did the Vikings go? 120 sourced places in Europe, 793–1066](https://mariuscomper.uk/vikingii-in-europa/en/): A map of 120 places where Scandinavians are placed by the sources, from Dublin to Seville and from Kyiv to the Caspian. Each is graded by how we know. Type your town to see the nearest.
- [Ion Mincu: the Lahovari House and the Romanian Revival](https://mariuscomper.uk/ion-mincu/en/): Ion Mincu (1852–1912) and the beginnings of the Romanian Revival: the 1886 Lahovari House, five elements to spot, a six-stop walk.
- [Where was your town 100 million years ago?](https://mariuscomper.uk/unde-era-orasul-tau/en/): Pick a Romanian place and wind time back 250 million years. The ground under Bucharest lay 760 to 1,650 km further south, depending on which of three published models you use, and Romania rode on blocks that moved separately.
- [Horea 1784: revolt, wheel, patent — Mesteacăn, Deva, Alba Iulia](https://mariuscomper.uk/horea-1784/en/): The 11 November ultimatum, the winter war, the 28 February wheel and the 2 August 1785 patent: what the rising demanded, week by week.
- [Whose revolution was 1821? Tudor against the Eteria](https://mariuscomper.uk/tudor-1821/en/): Pades in January, Bucharest in March, Golesti in May. Two proclamations, one country, and five months that ended the Phanariote century.
- [Nicolae Milescu (Spathari) in Beijing, 1676: why the tsar’s envoy left without the Kangxi Emperor’s letter](https://mariuscomper.uk/milescu-in-china/en/): The tsar’s envoy to the Kangxi Emperor was a Moldavian boyar. The embassy’s report and the Qing court record, set side by side day by day along a Kangxi-period painted scroll of Beijing: who laid the letter on the table, how the envoy bowed, and why he left without a reply.
- [What was the Orient Express doing in Romania? 1883–2009](https://mariuscomper.uk/orient-express/en/): Giurgiu 1883, Bucharest sleepers, the 1977 farewell. Three lines to Istanbul and the Express's Romanian century.
- [Where is Romania's gold? The Moscow treasure, 1916–2024](https://mariuscomper.uk/tezaurul-de-la-moscova/en/): Two trains east in 1916–1917, three returns, none with gold. The treasure story with the protocols on the table.
- [How did Romania learn to fly? Vuia, Vlaicu and Coandă](https://mariuscomper.uk/trei-zburatori/en/): The Montesson hop, the Cotroceni flights and the propeller-less Salon machine. Three lives, four years – Romania on the map of flight.
- [The war carved in stone: Trajan's Column (113 AD)](https://mariuscomper.uk/columna-lui-traian/en/): 155 scenes of the Dacian Wars in a 190-metre spiral. Read the campaigns, then the frieze itself, scene by scene.
- [The first Romanian sentence was a spy alert: Neacșu's letter (1521)](https://mariuscomper.uk/scrisoarea-lui-neacsu/en/): The oldest precisely dated Romanian text is a spy warning from Câmpulung to Brașov. Read it phrase by phrase, with renderings.
- [29 questions at America's gate: Romanian emigration to America (1880–1930)](https://mariuscomper.uk/cu-vaporul-spre-america/en/): 148,249 Romanians admitted between 1899 and 1924, the Fiume sailings, the Ellis Island inspection to try yourself, and nine real passengers to search by name.
- [The Empty House — 1 in 4 Dwellings Stands Empty](https://mariuscomper.uk/casele-goale/en/): The 2021 Census counts 2.53 million unoccupied dwellings — 25.5% of the housing stock. In Mehedinți 36.3% are empty. County map, breakdown and why the rural empty stock does not solve city rents.
- [Your climate has moved — Marius Comper](https://mariuscomper.uk/clima-ta-s-a-mutat/en/): Compare your Romanian locality’s summers with Europe in 1971–1990. An interactive ERA5 atlas of temperature and rainfall.
- [Where does the rain here go? — The path of rain](https://mariuscomper.uk/drumul-ploii/en/): At Arad, the Mureș flows west: through the Tisza, then into the Danube and the Black Sea. Search for a river or pick a place to follow the water, then discover the land that feeds it.
- [The Map of Romanian Film](https://mariuscomper.uk/harta-filmului/en/): One hundred and twenty-five titles and places mapped across Romanian cinema: from the Buftea studio lot to the Danube Delta and contemporary Cluj. A real, county-level map.
- [Emptying of people, not of homes](https://mariuscomper.uk/orasul-care-se-intinde/en/): Of 1,979 Romanian localities that had fewer residents in 2020 than in 2000, 1,556 have more dwellings. Look up your own place and see on a satellite image how much ground under buildings was added.
- [Which sources of pollution are in your locality? Romania’s industrial facilities map](https://mariuscomper.uk/poluare-langa-tine/en/): Search a Romanian locality for Seveso sites, IPPC installations, major polluters, air and water releases and waste transfers in official registers.
- [Romania has 11 UNESCO sites. The map shows 323 places.](https://mariuscomper.uk/harta-unesco/en/): A map of Romania's UNESCO World Heritage brings together all 11 sites and their 323 places, with inscription year, criteria, area and conservation status.
- [Six UNESCO Dacian fortresses, one ticket office. The other five you reach on foot.](https://mariuscomper.uk/cetati-dacice/en/): A map of the six Dacian fortresses in the Orăștie Mountains shows road and walking access, elevation gain, time needed, opening hours, tickets and each site's condition.
- [Everyone goes to Viscri and Biertan. There are 160 more fortified churches, and at most of them you phone for the key.](https://mariuscomper.uk/biserici-fortificate/en/): A map of Transylvania's 162 fortified churches includes the seven UNESCO villages, heritage class, published opening hours, keyholder contact and damaged buildings.
- [The vinegar in your jar is not a modern invention](https://mariuscomper.uk/atlasul-muraturii/en/): Bucharest was already pickling cucumbers in vinegar in 1865. The atlas traces Romanian pickling through salt, vessels, agriculture, factories, communities and gaps in the record.
- [The “Old Man of the Carpathians” is 900 years old in the papers and about 560 by radiocarbon dating. The oldest dated oak in Romania stands 190 kilometres to the north.](https://mariuscomper.uk/cei-mai-batrani-arbori/en/): A map of Romania's oldest trees: 5,703 measured ancient trees with species, girth, county and indicative age, the four radiocarbon-dated oaks and three other dated trees, and the centuries-old tree nearest to you.
- [UNESCO counted 277 points along Rome's Dacian frontier. Only a few can be visited, with a ticket.](https://mariuscomper.uk/frontiera-dacica/en/): A map of Roman archaeological sites open to the public in Romania, including Porolissum, Drobeta and Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, with opening hours, tickets and sources.
- [Your village has been on four different maps](https://mariuscomper.uk/harta-judetelor-de-la-1930-la-azi/en/): Compare Romania's 1930 counties, 1938 ținuturi, 1960–1968 regions and present-day counties on one map. Search for a commune and see the four units it belonged to.
- [All the virgin forest Romania has catalogued is smaller than Bucharest](https://mariuscomper.uk/paduri-virgine/en/): A map of the 448 virgin and quasi-virgin forests in Romania's national catalogue, the eight Romanian UNESCO components, the catalogue's growth since 2016 and their legal protection.
- [A natural park's buffer zone allows clear-cutting. A national park's forbids it.](https://mariuscomper.uk/unde-se-poate-taia/en/): The law divides every Romanian national and natural park into four zones with different logging rules. The map brings together the law and the approving act for each of the 29 parks.
- [The castle stops at the Carpathians. The conac does not.](https://mariuscomper.uk/castele/en/): Three words for one landowning class: castel from the Latin castellum by way of Hungarian kastély, conac from the Turkish konak, culă from the Turkish kula and before that the Arabic kulle, a tower. The castle stops at the mountains; the conac crosses; the culă never leaves Oltenia.
- [Risk, everywhere](https://mariuscomper.uk/risk-everywhere/): None of the 99 societies with all twelve explanations coded puts misfortune down to natural causes alone; 157 of 166 shield an infant both with charms and with washing or medicine; and in 2025 worry runs above experience of harm in 137 of 140 countries.
- [Death, everywhere](https://mariuscomper.uk/death-everywhere/): The dead person's name is restricted in 21 of 40 coded societies; a widow's mourning equals a widower's in 20 of 27; on the question of the name, 146 of 186 societies have no coded answer.
- [The Atlas of Human Possibility](https://mariuscomper.uk/feluri-de-a-trai/en/): In 657 of 1,272 societies with a record, the groom or his kin made a substantial payment to the bride's family. Dowry appears in 43.
- [Romania is moving, one commune at a time](https://mariuscomper.uk/tara-care-se-muta/en/): Over 34 years, big cities have stood still or lost population through migration while the communes around them grew by tens per thousand a year. Find your locality and see how Romania has moved.
- [Where do the children go to school?](https://mariuscomper.uk/unde-merg-copiii/en/): For every 100 children born in 2015–2019, Romania has 85 primary-school pupils in 2025: 91 in towns, 79 in communes. Find your locality and see where children gather or disappear between places.
- [When did modernity reach your town?](https://mariuscomper.uk/modernitatea/en/): A year-by-year timeline of water, sewerage, gas and district-heating networks for 3,181 Romanian localities from 1990 to 2025. Modernity arrived in layers: 1,065 have piped water but no sewerage, and 56 of 382 district-heating systems remain.
- [How old is your town?](https://mariuscomper.uk/varsta-localitatii/en/): Romania has 3,181 ages. In 528 localities there are now more registered people aged 80 or over than children under 10; in 1992 there were 9. Find your locality and see its age fingerprint.
- [The Sea That Vanished](https://mariuscomper.uk/marea-care-a-disparut/en/): Seventeen million years on one slider: the Badenian sea, the giant lake, the drying that emptied it and today's Black Sea, over a faintly visible Romania, with every county cut along the maps.
- [Romania, 20,000 Years Ago](https://mariuscomper.uk/acum-20000-de-ani/en/): Drag the clock through the last 20,000 years: shoreline, glaciers, steppe and forest, a Danube without a delta, dated human sites and vanished megafauna, with your town pinned.
- [What Is Still Standing](https://mariuscomper.uk/ce-a-ramas-in-picioare/en/): A thousand years of buildings on one map, with a time slider, and the oldest thing still standing in each of the 5,672 localities on the list.
- [The Valley, the Slope, and the Mountain](https://mariuscomper.uk/valea-si-muntele/en/): A map of the Bârsa basin with 102 places, each classified by toponymic root (German, Hungarian, Romanian, uncertain). A movable waterline between 300 and 1800 m shows how the roots split by elevation; the attestation years show which villages have a real year and which microtoponyms never had a founding act.
- [Eight in Ten](https://mariuscomper.uk/opt-din-zece/en/): A map of Romania made of 18,214 settlement points and 127 rivers, on which the name strata are laid down in turn: ancient, Slavic, Turkic, Hungarian, German, Romanian. A time slider, a length ranking of rivers and a core sample for any name.
- [Ten Hours Fifty to Timișoara](https://mariuscomper.uk/noua-ore/en/): All 1,583 Romanian passenger stations coloured by how long the train takes from Bucharest, next to the 1939, 1948 and 1977 timetables and the state of the lines that explains the difference.
- [What Isn’t Done](https://mariuscomper.uk/ce-nu-se-face/en/): Four thousand folk beliefs printed by the Romanian Academy under the name of an entire people, reconstructed from OCR and scan. One in four is a prohibition, a third of the entries with a locality attribution comes from one village, and six labels are missing from the printed numbering.
- [What is known — reading Zanne by numbers](https://mariuscomper.uk/ce-se-stie/en/): 19,653 entry heads from «Proverbele românilor», the ten volumes Iuliu A. Zanne published between 1895 and 1912, counted for the first time: the bestiary, the body, God and the devil, the collectors’ map.
- [Fourteen Societies Live Like You](https://mariuscomper.uk/societatea-medie/en/): One partner, your own household after the wedding, no property crossing at the wedding, cousins called something other than brothers. The combination turns up fourteen times in Murdock's 1,291 records, among them the row marked "Romanians" at 1910 and four Pueblo villages. There is no ordinary way to be a family.
- [Everyone Is a Relative](https://mariuscomper.uk/toata-lumea-e-ruda/en/): Cuscru, fin, cumătru: relatives named in Romanian and nameless in English. The elder brother, the maternal uncle: nameless in Romanian, named in 70% of the world's languages. Ten rules of the kinship vocabulary, on a map of 1,056 languages.
- [Why We Say "Dumneavoastră"](https://mariuscomper.uk/cincisprezece-din-doua-sute-sapte/en/): "Dumneavoastră" is a noble title compressed into a word said every day. Only 15 of the world's 207 languages make more than one politeness distinction for "you" — an interactive map of all 207, plus the feudal etymology hiding inside the word.
- [Nine in Ten, Half the Power](https://mariuscomper.uk/noua-din-zece/en/): On 30 June 2026, natural persons made up 90.3% of Romania's prosumers and held 51.4% of installed capacity. A typical company had 8.8 times the capacity of a typical natural person.
- [Roots beneath the plate](https://mariuscomper.uk/radacinile-farfuriei/en/): Lift the food supply of 177 countries and trace their crops to their primary regions of diversity.
- [Three Centimeters of Border](https://mariuscomper.uk/trei-centimetri-de-granita/en/): A political border, measured in centimeters of height.
- [How Romania's tourism breathes](https://mariuscomper.uk/respiratia-turistica/en/): In Fundata, a commune of 656 people, tourists leave 146 overnight stays per resident a year, in a tourist year nearly as balanced as Bucharest's. Explore the tourist signature of all 712 localities.
- [Atlas of Medical Deserts](https://mariuscomper.uk/deserturi-medicale/en/): In Arbore, a commune of 8,173 people in Suceava, the last doctor left in 2019 and was never replaced. Look up your locality and see what medical services it has, today and twenty years ago.
- [When distance to the hospital starts to matter](https://mariuscomper.uk/aproape-de-spital/en/): In Petrila, a Hunedoara town with its own hospital, adjusted mortality is 54% above expectations — the highest in the country. Find your locality and see how close you really are to a functioning hospital.
- [Wooden churches belong to the hills](https://mariuscomper.uk/biserici-de-lemn/en/): The Carpathians are usually treated as the border between two building worlds. Wooden churches ignore it: their density rises the same way on both flanks and falls where the hills end.
- [Where the asphalt ends](https://mariuscomper.uk/unde-se-termina-asfaltul/en/): One kilometre in four of Romania's public roads never received a layer bound with bitumen or cement. What decides it is the road's rank: 0.7% on national roads, 30.2% on county and communal ones. Find your county.
- [Vatra](https://mariuscomper.uk/vatra/en/): Romania's 2021 census: 42.6% of dwellings report wood heat, and 4.97% have no heating at all. An interactive map of all 42 counties.
- [Romania's oldest monasteries are not where you would look for them](https://mariuscomper.uk/cele-mai-vechi-manastiri/en/): Seven of the eight monastic sites older than the year 1200 are in the Banat, Crișana and Transylvania. The eighth is in Dobruja. In Moldavia and Wallachia there is not one.
- [The oldest ruins in Romania](https://mariuscomper.uk/cele-mai-vechi-ruine/en/): The oldest ruins in the country are neither Dacian nor Roman: they are Neolithic and Bronze Age fortified settlements. And the most heavily re-settled place in the list is a hill in Buzău county, with five villages and five cemeteries stacked on it.
- [A Hundred Times Rarer](https://mariuscomper.uk/craterele-sterse/en/): The Moon has 5,185 confirmed impact craters wider than 20 kilometres. Earth, despite taking more hits per square kilometre, has only 52. An explorer with 70 real craters, from 200 years old to 2.229 billion years old.
- [Romania's Tallest Waterfalls](https://mariuscomper.uk/cele-mai-inalte-cascade-romania/en/): Compare total drop, tallest tier and free-fall for the waterfalls with the greatest reported heights, with the sources and uncertainties of each measurement.
- [Romania's Deepest Caves](https://mariuscomper.uk/cele-mai-adanci-pesteri-romania/en/): The Grind shaft leads the ranking by vertical range, at 815 metres. The map and cards track ten caves and shafts, their length, explorers and still-changing records.
- [Spectacular railway tunnels and viaducts – map](https://mariuscomper.uk/tuneluri-feroviare/en/): Map of Romania's railway tunnels and viaducts: Teliu, Caracău, Oravița–Anina, the Jiu Gorge and the Ormeniș and Homorod works.
- [Romania's smallest town by population, area and density, ranked](https://mariuscomper.uk/en/romania-smallest-town/): What is Romania's smallest town? All 319 towns and municipalities ranked by resident population, administrative area and density, from census and boundary data.
- [Rain after a dry month](https://mariuscomper.uk/ploaia-dupa-seceta/en/): At Constanța, after 30 days without rain above 5 mm per day, the threshold was exceeded within the next 7 days in 12 of 64 summer episodes. Explore the record and compare stations.
- [Discoveries near you — Beneath your feet](https://mariuscomper.uk/sub-picioarele-tale/en/): Choose a Romanian town or village to find archaeological discoveries recorded within 1, 5 and 10 km of its reference point. Explore their periods and open the evidence in Romania’s National Archaeological Record.
- [Dracula: Six Places, Myth vs Record](https://mariuscomper.uk/dracula-mit-sau-realitate/en/): Is Bran worth it? Stoker never visited Romania, and the novel never names Bran. Six places graded by evidence — archive (Targoviste), disputed tradition (Snagov), late materialization (Borgo) — with a visit router.
- [Beyond Dracula's Genealogy: The Strigoi Atlas — Romanian Practice outside Stoker](https://mariuscomper.uk/strigoi-atlas/en/): Explore 16 protection and expulsion practices described in historical accounts of Romanian strigoi, alongside 11 contextual records and five terms. Quotations are checked against scanned pages.
- [A Romanian, a ship, and the first Antarctic winter: Racoviță and the Belgica (1897–1899)](https://mariuscomper.uk/racovita-belgica/en/): Thirteen months frozen in Antarctic ice. Read the Belgica voyage, then the expedition's photographs.
- [Who paid for medieval Moldavia? The Genoese road (1261–1484)](https://mariuscomper.uk/drumul-genovez/en/): Two centuries of tolls from Lviv to Caffa. Read the road, then its period plates.
- [Was Romania invented in Paris? The treaty of 1856](https://mariuscomper.uk/paris-1856/en/): The articles that unmade a protectorate and started a union. Read the treaty, then the portraits.
- [The saint who lost his greatest battle: Stephen the Great 1457–1504](https://mariuscomper.uk/stefan-cel-mare/en/): Vaslui 1475, Valea Albă 1476, Putna 1504. Two battlefields at the same scale and the saint who reigned 47 years.
- [Michael the Brave and the union of 1600: how long it lasted, day by day](https://mariuscomper.uk/mihai-viteazul/en/): Michael the Brave's reign, day by day, on the map: turn the seal and find the moment he held all three lands. And your town: was it ever his?
- [Beheaded on his birthday: Constantin Brâncoveanu 1688–1714](https://mariuscomper.uk/brancoveanu-1714/en/): Hurezi 1697, Mogoșoaia 1702, the 1714 scaffold. 26 years of building and the fortune that killed him, on one map.
- [What happened to the golden hen with her chickens? 1837–1956](https://mariuscomper.uk/pietroasa/en/): Lent 1837, the 1875 ceiling robbery, Moscow 1917–1956. Twelve pieces survived of twenty-two – and a paper trail a century long.
- [Trajan’s Bridge at Drobeta, rebuilt in 3D (AD 103–105)](https://mariuscomper.uk/podul-lui-traian/en/): Cross the Danube on Apollodorus’s bridge, rebuilt on the valley’s real terrain with the river lowered below today’s reservoir, then watch Hadrian and the centuries take it down to the pier stumps. What is known is marked apart from what is rebuilt.
- [Why did a shepherd walk to Rome? 1849–1911](https://mariuscomper.uk/badea-cartan/en/): Cârțișoara 1849, Rome 1896, Sinaia 1911: the shepherd who carried a library over the mountains, then walked 43 days to Trajan's Column.
- [The Sulina arm: ten cuts and a lighthouse left far from the sea, 1856–1902](https://mariuscomper.uk/sulina-1856/en/): Sail the Sulina arm as it was before 1868, then watch the European Commission of the Danube cut ten bends and shorten it by 21.9 km, while the shore moved away from the old lighthouse.
- [The Latin Island: the Romanian language, from Dacia to Weigand](https://mariuscomper.uk/limba-romana/en/): Dacia 106, the 587 shout, Neacșu 1521, Vienna 1780. A Romance language 1,137 km from Rome.
- [The trial that convicted an empire: the 1892 Memorandum](https://mariuscomper.uk/memorandul-1892/en/): 300 delegates in Vienna, an unopened envelope, 14 convictions in Cluj: the petition that lost in court and won in Europe's press.
- [The bridge that taught a country engineering: Cernavodă 1895](https://mariuscomper.uk/cernavoda-1895/en/): Fetești–Cernavodă 1890–95: Saligny, 4,087.95 metres, the longest bridge complex in Europe. Caissons, Gerber consoles, the silver rivet and the 15-locomotive test.
- [The 1907 revolt: how many died — and who counted?](https://mariuscomper.uk/rascoala-1907/en/): Flămânzi 8 February, the March wave, the April fire. A week-by-week spread map and the weighing of the numbers: where the 11,000 dead come from.
- [The year 1848: three countries, one summer — Iași, Blaj, Islaz](https://mariuscomper.uk/anul-1848/en/): At Iași they petitioned the prince, at Blaj the nation gathered, at Islaz a new country was proclaimed: 35, 16 and 22 points face to face, on one map.
- [“Dați un leu pentru Ateneu!” The palace raised by public subscription, 1865–1888](https://mariuscomper.uk/ateneul-1888/en/): The palace raised by subscription: the 467,427.35-lei lottery, 221,858.65 lei of donations, and the 1887 accounts showing what the leu paid for.
- [The king who arrived incognito: Carol I, May 1866](https://mariuscomper.uk/carol-i-1866/en/): The Karl Hettingen passport, Salzburg customs, the 2 days stuck at Bazias. 17 checkpoints from Düsseldorf to the 22 May oath.
- [The Strousberg Affair: the railway that shook Carol I, 1868–1880](https://mariuscomper.uk/afacerea-strousberg/en/): 915 km promised, 7.5% state-guaranteed, a bankruptcy and an abdication that never came. The concession map and its audit, 1868–1880.
- [One birth and three deaths: the leu, 1867–2005](https://mariuscomper.uk/leul-1867/en/): The lion thaler, the law of 22 April 1867 and three deaths: a currency's life in 17 stops and eight loaves.
- [Who were the Greeks who lived in Romania for a thousand years? c. 630 BC – 1914](https://mariuscomper.uk/histria/en/): Miletus, the silver drachma, the AD 100 boundary. Four chapters and a map that silts as you read.
- [How Romania learned to read: Haret's school, 1899–1930](https://mariuscomper.uk/haret/en/): From 22 to 56 literates in 100, county by county, across three censuses. Haret's laws, the village school and the Abecedar exam.
- [Did Caragiale say it — or a minister? 1852–1912](https://mariuscomper.uk/caragiale/en/): The 1884 Letter, 158 days after the real revision. Mitică’s Bucharest mapped, and the quote game: Caragiale or the politician?
- [The longest locality name in Romania: the complete ranking](https://mariuscomper.uk/cel-mai-lung-nume-localitate-romania/en/): Stațiunea Zoologică Marină Agigea has 30 letters — not Sâmbăta, with 27. The ranking of all 13,755 official names, the shortest names, and a search for any village or town.
- [How many borders away is the world?](https://mariuscomper.uk/granite/en/): Choose two countries, remove states from the route and find the minimum number of land borders between them.
- [The oxygen line](https://mariuscomper.uk/linia-de-oxigen/en/): Lower a probe through 19 measured Black Sea profiles and watch oxygen disappear. At 100 m, one cast retained only 1.2% of its maximum.
- [Romanian villages left without a school, 2013–2026](https://mariuscomper.uk/trei-din-patru/en/): A map of every village that had a school in 2013–14, year by year, searchable by village name.
- [Cucuteni–Trypillia: Two Millennia Under One Name](https://cucuteni.mariuscomper.uk/en/): How settlements, houses, food, pottery and rituals changed between c. 5050 and 2950 BCE.
- [Barcelona, Neighbourhood by Neighbourhood](https://barcelonabarri.mariuscomper.uk/en/): Seventy-three neighbourhoods read through maps, memory and data.
- [Light at six](https://mariuscomper.uk/lumina-la-sase/en/): The clock stays still. Across the year, the sky moves that hour through night, twilight and daylight.
- [Tea, thé, чай, 茶: who says it like you?](https://mariuscomper.uk/harta-cuvintelor/en/): Pick a word and 107 languages of Europe and Asia light up, first the ones that say it almost like you.
- [The World Underneath](https://mariuscomper.uk/world-underneath/en/): An atlas of the hidden machinery that makes ordinary life possible.
- [100 places in Romania you won't find anywhere else in the world](https://mariuscomper.uk/o-suta-de-locuri-unice/en/): An interactive bilingual atlas of 100 singular places, natural anomalies, ice caves, archaic relics, and unique engineering in Romania with map and documented cards.
- [Soviet ships sunk by Romania in WWII: a Black Sea loss map](https://mariuscomper.uk/nave-sovietice-scufundate/en/): Interactive map of the 18 Soviet vessels lost to Romanian mines and actions, 1941–1944: 6 solid attributions, 2 disputed cases, each with evidence and caveats.
- [Italian dialects that sound like Romanian: the AIS atlas, village by village](https://mariuscomper.uk/dialectele-italiei/en/): A century ago, an atlas led by two Swiss linguists wrote down how people spoke in 407 villages of Italy and Switzerland. Pick a Romanian word and see what each village said.
- [How many airports does Romania have? Map of all 17 (2025)](https://mariuscomper.uk/aeroporturi-romania/en/): Romania has 17 airports in its passenger traffic statistics. See them on a map, ranked by 2025 passengers, and find the airport nearest to your town.
- [Moral Atlas — where in the world thinks like you?](https://mariuscomper.uk/moral-atlas/en/): Six life-and-death dilemmas, 60 seconds, then the map tells you which corner of the world judges exactly like you. Built on the Moral Machine data (MIT, Nature 2018): ~40 million decisions, 3 moral clusters.
- [What you breathe on your street](https://mariuscomper.uk/aerul-strazii-tale/en/): A snapshot of PM2.5 on Bucharest streets on 30 September 2026 at 16:30. Distinguishes station readings from model estimates; it does not show current air quality.
- [How much sun does your commune catch](https://mariuscomper.uk/cat-soare-prinde-comuna-ta/en/): Search your commune or county and see on 3D terrain how much energy the sun yields there, month by month: the 2005–2020 climate mean for a 1 kWp reference system across all 3,181 communes. Every commune is a column: height is the month, colour is the year. In Romanian and English.
- [How green is your street](https://mariuscomper.uk/verdele-strazii-tale/en/): Type a Bucharest street and see how much green the satellite saw around it, in 3D: 3,830 streets measured from Sentinel-2, 53 parks and 6 sectors, each street with its own share.
- [13 or 14? Peaks over 2,500 m in Romania](https://mariuscomper.uk/varfuri-peste-2500-romania/en/): Some lists say 13, others 14: both are right, but they apply different rules. A 3D map of the 14 candidates shows where the count breaks — Capul Morarului, next to Omu, and Dara, right on the line; flip the rule and the map, ranking and collection rewrite themselves.
- [How hot is your street](https://mariuscomper.uk/canicula-strazii-tale/en/): Type a Bucharest street and see how hot the satellite saw it at midday, in 3D: 3,532 streets measured from Landsat 9, 60 parks and 6 sectors, each street with its own mean.
- [Where autumn has arrived](https://mariuscomper.uk/toamna-strazii-tale/en/): Type a Bucharest street and see how cold the satellite saw it on an October midday, in 3D: 3,530 streets measured from Landsat 9, 60 parks and 6 sectors — each street with its difference from June.
- [Common swifts: how long they stay airborne, where Romania's swifts winter, when they return](https://mariuscomper.uk/drepnele-din-oras/en/): Thirteen swifts tracked with sensors in Sweden were airborne more than 99% of the ten months away from the nest. Follow a swift's year on a globe, see when swifts are seen in Romania and how to help them on your block; no Romanian swift is known to have been tracked with sensors, so the wintering place comes from birds tracked in Czechia and Italy.
- [How Bucharest spread into Ilfov since 1975: a satellite map of buildings, locality by locality](https://mariuscomper.uk/bucurestiul-se-revarsa/en/): Ilfov now has more ground under buildings than Bucharest itself: since 1990, buildings have covered 42.1 km² of new ground in Ilfov and 11.1 km² in the city. The 1975–2020 satellite map for every street, neighbourhood and commune, with census population.
- [Krakatoa 1883 and Tonga 2022: the air wave, town by town](https://mariuscomper.uk/air-wave-around-the-earth/): A globe of the Krakatoa (1883) and Hunga Tonga (2022) air waves around the Earth, with the hour each passed any town, checked against barograph records.
- [Autumn in Cluj, seen from a satellite: when the trees turn in each forest, park and district](https://mariuscomper.uk/toamna-in-cluj/en/): The forests around Cluj, in Transylvania, lose half of their summer green around 22 October; the Botanical Garden almost a week later. A map of that day for 60 forests, parks and districts, from 263 Sentinel-2 images. In Romanian and English.
- [Călărași, the town that bought its own ground](https://mariuscomper.uk/calarasi-orasul-si-pamantul/en/): Residents deposited 250,000 lei in 1852, and Călărași was declared a free town. A 1875 settlement recognised the town’s ownership up to the channels of the Borcea and Gâtul Ezerului.
- [The Carpathians: vanished seas, ice and mountain citadels](https://mariuscomper.uk/arcul-carpatilor/en/): 18 documented places on Carpathian relief, from Hațeg fossils and Miocene salt to the Oase human and Dacian fortresses. Choose two points or towns to see the terrain between them and featured evidence within 30 km of the line.
- [Did Wallachia’s prince have a single capital? The places named in his charters](https://mariuscomper.uk/domnul-avea-o-capitala/en/): Argeș, Târgoviște and Bucharest were used in overlapping periods. Princely acts through 1550 also name market towns, monasteries and places still unlocated. The map follows documented issues, keeping proposed dates and gaps in the record distinct.
- [Why were Wallachia’s medieval market towns where they are?](https://mariuscomper.uk/targurile-tarii-romanesti/en/): 20 places connected with medieval Wallachian towns in southern Romania, with 18 mapped. Place three guesses, follow selected documentary records and test mountain crossings, the Danube, customs and princely power against the evidence.
- [Money under the ground: Roman coin finds in Romania](https://mariuscomper.uk/monede-romane/en/): 583 Oxford records on one map: hoards, possible hoards and individual coins. The chronology dates the latest coin; each point keeps its ratings and bibliography, while conflicting dates remain visible.

## Sources

- [People’s Daily corpus · Papersnake / people_daily_news](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Papersnake/people_daily_news)
- [Natural Earth · date geografice la scara 1:50m](https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/50m-cultural-vectors/50m-admin-0-countries/)
- [Cum numără proiectul numele de țări](https://mariuscomper.uk/lumea-in-ziarul-chinei/)