Five Hawks Down: watch the tragic migration of six Californian raptors

Tracking project establishes northern Argentina is wintering ground of Swainson's hawks

  • Watch these six dots move across the map and be moved yourself: this is a story about coming of age, discovery, hardship, death and survival.
  • Each dot is a tag attached to the talon of a Swainson's Hawk. We follow them on their very first migration, from northern California all the way down to Argentina.
  • After one year, only one is still alive.
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Why this Austrian village has its own metro system — it's less than one-mile long

Less than a mile long, the Dorfbahn in Serfaus is also the world's highest metro system.

  • The world's shortest (0.8 mi) and highest (4,680 ft) metro runs beneath an Austrian ski resort.
  • Constructed in 1985, the Dorfbahn keeps Serfaus traffic-free.
  • Capacity will increase from 1,600 to 3,000 passengers per hour this spring.
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A map of Kim Jong-un’s slow train trip to Vietnam

North Korea's Great Leader would rather not fly for his second summit with Trump – but the trip is also a political message to China.

  • Kim Jong-un is already traveling for his summit with Trump on Wednesday.
  • Rather than flying, he's taking a 60-hour train trip through China.
  • The trip is a closely guarded secret, but this map shows the most likely itinerary.
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Countries with more butter have happier citizens

Butter supply and life satisfaction are linked — but by causation or correlation?

Image: Carey Tilden/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Strange Maps
  • Haiti and other countries with low butter supply report low life satisfaction.
  • The reverse is true for countries such as Germany, which score high in both categories.
  • As the graph below shows, a curious pattern emerges across the globe. But is it causation or correlation?
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Did ancient cave artists share a global language?

The same 32 symbols show up in prehistoric European cave art.

Photo credit: PIERRE ANDRIEU / AFP / Getty Images
Strange Maps
  • Many of these symbols are found in caves in Africa, Asia, Australia and America as well.
  • At least 40,000 years old, the set of symbols may have been a universal communications tool.
  • Among these symbols is the iconic hashtag.
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A century of alien landings, in two maps

First contact movies had their Golden Age in 1980s America – now they're going global.

Credit: Dylan_Mq. Find his maps on Reddit, Twitter and Etsy.
Strange Maps
  • The first extra-terrestrial to make contact (in a movie) appeared in 1920s Germany.
  • ET set off a wave of 'first contact' movies in the 1980s.
  • Many recent alien-landing movies are set in China and India – the future of the genre may well be Asian.
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