Laconic History of the World

I was alerted to this amazing map via Twitter.  You must click on the full version on HugePic  to explore. But it is basically a one word 'wordle' (word cloud) on each country based on their wikipaedia History.  The  designer writes the following description on his Tumblr

maphugger:

Laconic History of The World (2012)
My first attempt at a typographic map. Don’t be content with the shrunken version up there: this thing is pretty dang sprawling: I’ve prepped a mind-boggling 12,500 pixel wide version you can enjoy exploring:
http://hugepic.io/d2012641f/3.00/57.89/9.67
This map was produced by running all the various countries’ “History of _____” Wikipedia article through a word cloud, then writing out the most common word to fit into the country’s boundary. The result is thousands of years of human history oversimplified into 100-some words.
I’ve also prepared a reader’s companion to highlight a few of the more interesting findings. Read it here.

EVERYWHERE IS WAR

A friend  Philip Mounstephen commented:

How depressing! Reminds me of Bob Marley's setting of Haile Selassie's speech to the League of Nations: 'Until the philosophy which hold one race superior / And another / Inferior / Is finally / And permanently / Discredited / And abandoned / -Everywhere is war.'

PLAYING FOR CHANGE









Which in mind mind sent me straight to the Playing for Change version of 'No More Trouble':  if you've not heard it before you really should .......