Maps of the Week

The Riga Ghetto and Holocaust in Latvia Museum has created a harrowing virtual tour of the Riga Ghetto using Google Maps Street View. This guided narrated tour allows you to explore the modern day streets of Riga while learning about life in the Riga ghetto under Nazi rule.

The Walk Among Memories tour is narrated by Holocaust survivor Yakob Basner and includes survivor testimonies provided by the USC Shoah Foundation. You can navigate through the tour by using the arrows on the Street View images, alternatively you can use the inset map, the 'next' button or the links in the map side-panel to jump to locations in the tour.


Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang has mapped the 11,724 Norwegians killed during the Second World War. Her Døde Nordmennene Under Andre Verdenskrig uses the Mapbox platform to show the locations where Norwegians were killed during World War II.

Once you press the play button on the map the locations of Norwegians killed during the war are added to the map in chronological order. As the war dead are added to the map the map side-bar updates with important events that occurred during the current time-line.

You can select any of the markers on the map to learn more about the individual Norwegians who died, including their name and photograph. The time-line above the map shows the frequency of deaths over time. Note the huge spike in the frequency of deaths in November 1942 after 767 Norwegian Jews were shipped to Auschwitz.


A couple of year's ago Adrian Frith created a racial dot density map of South Africa. He has now created a dot density map of the 2014 South African general election. The Election Dot Density Map 2014 contains one dot for every South African voter. The dots on the map are colored by the political party voted for and placed randomly within the voting district.

It is really interesting comparing Adrian Frith's two dot density maps to observe how closely voting for the different South African political parties correlates with racial distribution. Adrian's Mapping South Africa with Dot Distribution map shows racial distribution across South Africa and also the first languages spoken, based on data from the 2011 South African census.


Leafarctica is an interactive map which allows you to view NASA MODIS satellite imagery of the Antarctic.

The map includes a polar view which would be impossible with the usual Web Mercator projection used by most interactive mapping platforms. Leafarctica therefore uses the Proj4js JavaScript library to enable Leaflet to display an Antarctic Polar Stereographic projection.

The map includes a date input field which allows you to change the Antarctic satellite image displayed on the map by date.