Time-Lapse Trip Through Panama Canal
The Panama Canal is a man-made waterway that bisects Central America and joins the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The 51-mile long canal can accommodate small private yachts to large commercial vessels. A ship sailing from New York to San Francisco via the Panama Canal travels 6,000 miles, less than half the 14,000 mile route around Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America. The United States built the canal, which opened in 1914. An estimated 27,500 workers died during construction, mostly from malaria and yellow fever.
A new time-lapse video compresses the 9-hour journey through the Panama Canal down to just two minutes:
All U.S. Streets
At left is an image of 26 million individual road segments in the United States. No other features (such as boundaries or mountains) are included, however you can plainly see the mountains and sparsely populated areas from the lack of streets. The data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau and is mapped by computers using data visualization techniques.
Interstate System Simplified
The U.S. Interstate System has been called the greatest public works project in history. From the day President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Interstate System has been an integral part of the American way of life. As of 2004, the Interstate System had 46,837 miles of highway.
East–west highways are assigned even numbers, and north–south highways are assigned odd numbers. Even-numbered routes increase from south to north, and odd route numbers increase from west to east, though there are exceptions to both principles in several locations. Interstate numbers divisible by 5 are intended to be major arteries among the primary routes, carrying traffic long distances. This can get a bit complicated, so now there is a terrific new map that simplifies the tangle of interstate highways in an easy-to-understand grid.
