Maps: Where would we be without them? This was banner year for beautiful, information-dense cartography, which provided a moment of self-reflection like a giant, geographic mirror. Here are our favorite maps from 2013 that helped us find our place in the world.
A Map of Who's Got the Best (And Worst) Internet Connections in America
Why's your internet so slow? We mapped relative download speeds by congressional district across the contiguous U.S. in 5,600 cities and towns. Sadly, most of the country is far below the country's average of 18.2 megabits per second.
A Map of the Closest Pizza Place to Anywhere in the United States
I love maps that tackle the great unanswered questions in our lives. Like what is the closest pizza chain within a 10-mile radius?
You Can Compare 16 Cities 35 Different Ways With This One Mapping Tool
One of the coolest mapping tools we saw this year was Richard Saul Wurman's Urban Observatory, a site that lets you compare maps of cities using various datasets.
Mapping the Rise of Craft Beer
The New Yorker (who we've never really thought of as Budweiser people anyway) provide interactive proof that independent craft beers are marching across the country.
How Two Guys Figured Out The Number of Pools in Los Angeles
This incredibly ambitious project used satellite maps, real estate data, clipping farms, and Amazon's Mechanical Turk to count all the pools in L.A. The resulting "map" is a 2,700-page book.
170 Years of Hurricanes Mapped In One Stunning Image
Gorgeous and deadly, this map by the Visualization Lab at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration charts the 11,967 tropical cyclones that have occurred on Earth since they began keeping a record in 1842.
Here's a Map of the World Adjusted for the Population Size of Countries
This simple map shows countries with their landmass size adjusted according to their population: One grid square represents one million people.
A Map of Where Americans Are Moving (Hellooooo, Vegas!)
This interactive map lets you not only see what counties Americans moving to and from, you can also make charts using census data for the past five decades.
These Interactive Maps Compare 19th Century American Cities to Today
Be prepared to spend the rest of your day here: Smithsonian takes 150,000 historic maps overlaid with current-day satellite maps to give us a real then-and-now perspective of changing American cities.
Six Decades of the Most Popular Names for Girls, State-by-State
Mary, Lisa, Ashley, Emily, Emma, Isabella, Sophia: This seemingly infinite GIF from Jezebel was one of the most mesmerizing maps of all time. Who could forget the Great Jennifer-Jessica Era, or the Lost Amanda Years?
The Exact Age of Almost Every Building in NYC, in One Map
Besides being a real beauty, this map can tell you the age of any of New York City's 1,053,713 buildings, using the city's tax data.
A Map of How Educated the United States Is by County
Which states are book smart? The Atlantic examined educational achievement by county. The darker the region, the higher the graduation rate. Colorado, we salute you.
A Map of What Every Single Country Leads the World In
Be honest, where would you rather live? With a bunch of apricots or where you're mostly likely to get killed by lawnmowers? The answer, provided by The Doghouse Diaries, is clear.