Skip to content

Frank Jacobs

Journalist, writer, and blogger

Frank Jacobs is Big Think's "Strange Maps" columnist.

From a young age, Frank was fascinated by maps and atlases, and the stories they contained. Finding his birthplace on the map in the endpapers of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings only increased his interest in the mystery and message of maps.

While pursuing a career in journalism, Frank started a blog called Strange Maps, as a repository for the weird and wonderful cartography he found hidden in books, posing as everyday objects and (of course) floating around the Internet.

"Each map tells a story, but the stories told by your standard atlas for school or reference are limited and literal: they show only the most practical side of the world, its geography and its political divisions. Strange Maps aims to collect and comment on maps that do everything but that - maps that show the world from a different angle".

A remit that wide allows for a steady, varied diet of maps: Frank has been writing about strange maps since 2006, published a book on the subject in 2009 and joined Big Think in 2010. Readers send in new material daily, and he keeps bumping in to cartography that is delightfully obscure, amazingly beautiful, shockingly partisan, and more.

strange maps

How East German Maps Made West Berlin (Almost) Disappear

On East German transit maps of Berlin, the city’s western enclave was an unmentionable obstacle

A Hand Map of ‘Swantacruz’ and Environs

Michigan does not have a monopoly on hand-based cartography.

National Porcineographic: a Portrait of America as a Young Hog

A limited-edition map celebrated the coincidence of a patriotic occation with a pig-centric one.

510 – “War is the National Industry of Prussia”

This map, distributed in France in the last year of the First World War, uses a trope common to a lot of cartographic propaganda: the enemy as an octopus, a […]

Magical Siberia: A Russian Take on Middle-earth

But did the map make the Soviet Hobbits more communist than their western counterparts?

Waitin’ for the Map: Manhattan Rock Cartography

Ever heard or Manhattan Syndrome?

Darkness and Cherry Pie: David Lynch’s Map of Twin Peaks

Where is Twin Peaks? The fictional town at the centre of the eponymous TV series isn’t too hard to pinpoint. But things aren’t so clear cut as they seem.

Is it a Sea Monster? No – It’s a Map of Science Fiction

And not just a map: also a timeline, a literary checklist and a historiography

505 – United Diagrams of Europe

This diagram—not technically a map, but strange all the same—shows the relationship between European countries and the supranational institutions like the EU that govern their interactions.

504 – Bordering on Bizarre: Google Maps Fail in Dollart Bay

In a mere decade and a half, Google has gone from cuddly online startup to scary virtual colossus. The internet search engine offers a range of services that now also […]

503 – Chinese Provinces Compared to Countries with Similar GDPs

An excellent way to visualise China’s place as the second largest economy is to match its individual provinces with entire nations that have a comparable Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Hung Out to Dry: A Taxonomy of City Blocks

Rank the blocks of some of the world’s most famous cities by size instead of location, and this is what they look like.

Mississippi Metro Map

What if the Big Muddy was

500 – It’s 10:15 in Germany. Do You Know Where Your Isoglosses Are?

Germans have a reputation for punctuality. Is that why they have so many ways of telling the same time? If it’s 10:15 in the germanosphere (1), you’ll have at least […]

499 – Clapham Common, Ground Zero of the Saints

Long gone are the days when Clapham was a small, rustic village well beyond the gates of medieval London. Also gone, but less long, is the era of Clapham as […]

498 – Monumental Drift: Europe’s Many Midpoints

Where is the geographical midpoint of Europe? The question is straightforward enough, but the answer isn’t.

Six Scenarios for an Axis Invasion of America

As presented by Life Magazine to its anxious readership in 1942.

Football Fanlands of London

Football – yes, we mean soccer – divides the British capital into a medieval-looking map of invisible territories, frontlines and enclaves.

Capricornia, a Non-existent State of Australia

Did a cheeky Ozzy intern change this map as a nod to his separatist mates back home?

494 – It’s a Dog-nosed World: Accidental Cartography Revisited

Do you have to be religious to see a face in burnt toast? Probably not, but believers are more likely to attribute such a face to Jesus (1). Believer in […]

493 – The United States of Autocomplete

Google any word, and the search engine will suggest a longer phrase, based on the popularity of current searches starting with the same word. This so-called autocomplete function (1) is, […]

‘Western DC’: a New U.S. Capital on the Ohio River

Metropolis, Illinois, a tiny town with a grand name, is a distant echo of this area’s planned greatness

The Map of 20th-century Europe, as Predicted in 1863

The continent would be ruled by ten neat little empires.

Map of the World’s Countries Rearranged by Population

China moves to Russia and India takes over Canada. The Swiss get Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi India. And the U.S.? It stays where it is.

What if these Drainage Districts had become the essential units of government?

Powell’s water-based states, or How the West wasn’t won

Bodyworld: the Artography of Fernando Vicente

An atlas becomes an artist canvas

A Map of State Movies

Each state has its own state bird; why not a state movie?

The Failed Plan to Build a “Really Greater New York”

Large-scale drainage projects were popular in the early 20th century – but most came to nothing.

Berlin Gets a Planet All of Its Own

A peculiar reversal of cartography’s ‘original sin’

484 – “Useless” Australia

“Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over [Australia] in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path — birds, animals, […]