The year 1919 occurred exactly 100 years ago. As we look back, we can acknowledge the events that took place in 1919 which had lasting effects, even on our lives today. For example, in 1919 the predecessor of the Nazi party was formed. Moreover, the Treaty of Versailles also brought an end to World War I. Additionally, the oldest existing airline, Royal Dutch Airlines, was established in 1919 as was the future of Prohibition in the United States. Plus, in 1919 the first woman got elected to the British House of Commons. Also worth noting is that the White Sox threw the World Series in 1919.

View 1919 Historical Events in a full screen map

Above all, 1919 was a year of many important firsts and many tragic events. Use the categories to easily navigate the map above, or read on for highlights from nearly 200 major events from 100 years ago.

Politics

The political events of 1919 brought widespread change around the world. For the U.S., President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in October that debilitated him for the rest of his life. Before his stroke, President Wilson actively supported the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. Yet, the Senate rejected the treaty anyway. Also occurring in 1919: the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, authorizing Prohibition, even against President Wilson’s veto. In Oregon, the first state tax on gasoline went into effect, starting at one cent per gallon.

Around the world, the League of Nations was established in order to resolve international disputes. Towards the end of the year, Britain observed the first Remembrance Day in honor of those who lost their lives during World War I. There were also 26 politically motivated strikes and uprisings that took place in 1919. This includes the Winnipeg general strike and the Spartacist uprising.

Women’s Rights

1919 was quite the year for women. Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands gave women the right to vote. The U.S. was not too far behind — in 1919, Congress approved the 19th Amendment to legalize women’s suffrage. Though the states had to ratify the amendment first which didn’t occur until 1920. Belgium also gave certain classes of women the right to vote in 1919. Plus, American-born Nancy Astor became the first woman elected to the British House of Commons.

War

The Polish-Soviet War began in 1919, which unfortunately saw the massacre of 35 Jewish residents of Pinsk. 1919 was also the start of the Egyptian Revolution and the continuation of the Mexican Revolution. On a better note, 1919 brought the conclusion of World War I with the Treaty of Versailles in June.

Russia’s Civil War began at the end of 1917 and continued well into 1919 when the last of the British army’s troops left Archangel. This left the fighting to the Russians. As for the Estonian War of Independence, ongoing since November of 1918, 1919 saw the Battle of Cēsis. Today, the anniversary of the Battle of Cēsis is celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia.

Disaster

There were seven major disasters that occurred in 1919. The 1918 influenza pandemic carried on into 1919, killing between 50 and 100 million people worldwide. Though, in November of 1919, health officials declared this particular flu over. Also in 1919, the volcanic eruption of Kelud in Java killed 5,000 folks. The Florida Keys hurricane hit and killed 600 people throughout the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and Texas. To see the most tragic hurricanes and other disasters, check out our map of the most disastrous natural disasters.

One of the United Kingdom’s worst maritime disasters of the 20th century occurred in 1919. The HMY Iolaire yacht sunk off the coast of Scotland, resulting in the deaths of 201 of the 283 people aboard. In the U.S., a wave of literal molasses swept through Boston, killing 21 and injuring an additional 150 people. In Chicago, an aircraft caught on fire over downtown. This disaster killed two passengers, one aircrew person, and ten bystanders. Lastly, a fire caused New Orleans’ landmark, the French Opera House, to burn down.

Nobel Prize Winners

Four outstanding minds won Nobel Prizes in 1919. This is one less laurate than most years as the Nobel Committee did not award the Chemistry Prize. The Nobel Prize winners of 1919 included German physicist Johannes Stark who won the Physics Nobel Prize. Jules Bordet of Belgium won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Swiss poet Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler won for Literature in 1919, and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson earned the Nobel Peace Prize of 1919. To find out more about the world’s Nobel Prize laureates, check out “The Noblest By Country: Nobel Prize Winners Mapped.”

Culture

Perhaps the most memorable cultural event that took place in 1919 was the World Series. The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago White Sox, though fans later discovered that the White Sox intentionally lost. Had the White Sox not thrown the game, they would now have four World Series wins under their belt with five appearances. The White Sox would also have a winning percentage of 80% had they not thrown the 1919 World Series. Instead, the White Sox have a very different MLB World Series profile, which you can find within our map of the World Series winners and losers.

Some very important non-sport-related firsts took place in 1919, including the creation of the Montreal radio station, XWA, now CINW. It was the first public radio station in North America to go on air. Plus, the world’s oldest airline to keep its name — KLM in the Netherlands — was formed in 1919.

Speaking of airlines, a great many firsts for transatlantic flight occurred in 1919. The U.S. sent a seaplane piloted by Albert Cushing Read on the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, flying from Long Island to England. This important first took 23 days to complete, included six stops, and paved the way for two additional firsts: the first westbound transatlantic flight from Scotland to New York and the first non-stop transatlantic flight.

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As you can see, 1919 was a very memorable year, and here we are, one hundred years later. Plot some history of your own with a map today.

It’s the end of the line for Google Fusion Tables. The search giant announced that it will shut down its experimental data visualization tool. Since it first came out of Google Labs in 2009, people have used the service, which was a combination of spreadsheet and database, to store data, then display maps and charts that analyze the data.

The maps became an especially popular part of Google Fusion Tables, because geocoding was built-in. With a list of addresses in Fusion Tables, Google would automatically create geographic coordinates and plot them on a map. While you can get much of the charting from Google Spreadsheets, Excel, and other tabular tools, the maps are harder to replace. To make a map from your Fusion Tables data, you either learning to program the Google Maps API or look for a tool outside of Google.

We’ll show how you can replace your Google Fusion Tables maps with BatchGeo. It’s an easy import/export process to get even more powerful maps than Fusion Tables provided.

Export a Fusion Table to CSV

The first thing you need to do is find your Fusion Tables and decide on which one you want to turn into a map. We’ll need to export your Fusion Table to CSV–that’s a comma-separated value file, a format easy to open in spreadsheets and works nicely with lots of tools.

1. Make sure you’re logged into your Google account, then list your Fusion Tables in Google Drive by searching for type:table.

   

2. Double-click the Fusion Table you want to export to open it.

   

3. Click the File menu, then select Download.

   

4. Confirm the details and click Download again

   

The file should now download to your computer (or you should be prompted to choose a location). Once you find the CSV file on your computer, you’ve successfully exported your Google Fusion Table.

Now you can repeat the process with other tables you want to download. Before Google Fusion Tables is completely shut down, Google will create a way to download everything at once. In the meantime, we need to go one at a time.

Choose your favorite table and head to the next section to see how quickly you can turn it into a powerful map with BatchGeo.

Import a CSV Into a Map

With your Fusion Table downloaded, you now have a CSV sitting on your hard drive, waiting to be turned into a map. If you want to look at the data or edit it, you can open the CSV file in Excel, Numbers, or any other spreadsheet program (including Google Spreadsheets!). You can also view it in an ordinary text file, though you’ll need to be careful, as the formatting is important to help maintain the columns and rows.

If you open up your CSV file in a spreadsheet program, you’ll see the headers and data from your Fusion Table:

Now simply follow these steps:

1. Highlight and copy the entire spreadsheet, including the header row.
2. Go to the BatchGeo homepage
3. Click in the big box and paste your data.

Now you’ll see your data within the big box on the BatchGeo home page. Click the “Map Now” button and see your data transformed into a map in seconds.

Alternatively, you can skip the step of opening the data in your spreadsheet. Simply drag the CSV file into the big box on the BatchGeo home page. We’ll do the importing for you!

Either way, you now have a map easily made from your Google Fusion Tables data. BatchGeo performs automatic geocoding of your addresses so they can be placed on a map.

Do More With Your Map

In addition to creating simple maps, BatchGeo also displays your non-geographic data automatically. You can click on markers to see details, or use some other features to get more information from your map.

View Google Fusion Tables Exported Map in a full screen map

If you have other columns within your data, such as categories or types, you’ll be able to use the map filtering and grouping technology within BatchGeo. In our example map, the color of the markers are determined by the different values in the “Type” column. You can click a label in the bottom of the map to see only the markers you want.

Another way to display additional data within the map itself is to enable map marker clustering, which will display high density markers with circles sized accordingly. In addition, you can pick a numeric column from your dataset and display the average or sum from that column for the area covered.

Now that you’ve transformed your Google Fusion Tables, there are countless other ways to bring your data to life, including BatchGeo Advanced Mode, available with Pro accounts.

There are thousands of APIs, tools used by developers to connect data from one service to another. Many APIs have data that could be useful in everyday situations, and you don’t necessarily have to be a programmer to connect to the data. However, it can be helpful to have it in a format that is familiar and easy to use.

The trusty spreadsheet—whether it’s Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, or any tool that can accept comma separated values (CSV) files—is the data tool of the non-programmer. We’ve grown accustomed to viewing our data as columns and rows. Most APIs produce a different data format, called JSON (or XML). It’s full of curly braces and doesn’t look very user-friendly. However, you can convert JSON to CSV or Excel to get the data in a more familiar format.

Find Your Data Source

Before you can convert your JSON, you need to have the data. Perhaps you already know where you’ll get your data, but if you’ve never used an API before, that can be intimidating. Once you know what to look for, though, accessing many APIs is as intuitive as loading a webpage.

First, to discover the API, there are a couple of approaches that work well once you know who has the data you want:

• Look in the footer or header of the website for the words “API,” “developer,” “partners,” or “integrations”
• Google it by searching for “website name API”
• Look in a directory like ProgrammableWeb.

Next, you’ll need to navigate the API documentation. The best APIs will have a “getting started” guide or similar tutorial for first-timers. It can still be intimidating, but you’re looking for descriptions of the type of data you want. For example, if you use a CRM and you’re wanting to get your contacts via API, look for sections of the documentation that reference “getting contacts” or “listing contacts.”

For our Halloween celebration map of events and our holiday light displays map, we went to Eventful and found “Developer API” in its footer. Within its API documentation, we saw an endpoint (which is like a web address URL) for /events/search. Using their examples, we could put together the API call right in the web browser: http://api.eventful.com/json/events/search?app_key=SECRETKEY&keywords=halloween&page_size=250&date=2018103000-2018110100

When you replace “SECRETKEY” with your API key, that returns a bunch of text. It’s in JSON format, but if you don’t know what to look for, it might not seem very useful.

Understand the JSON Results

Much of the time, JSON is returned as a giant wall of text, which is one reason it looks incredibly confusing to non-programmers (and many programmers can’t make much sense of it, either). One quick trick to make JSON more readable is to either “pretty print” it or get an extension such as JSONView for Chrome that automatically displays JSON with colors and indentation to make it easier to understand the data within.

Take the example above. It still may be daunting, but hopefully, some of it looks familiar. For example, can you tell the total number of results? Almost 3,000—as referenced by the total_items.

Most JSON data is stored as key/value pairs. That is, there is a way to reference a value (total_items in our example) and the value itself (2869). All related key/value pairs are stored within a single object, as denoted by the curly brackets { and }. Each pair is separated by a comma. There can be objects within objects by using more curly brackets as the value.

In addition, there’s one more important type of value, highly relevant to converting from JSON to CSV: an array or list. This is many values in a row, often many objects in a row. A list occurs between two sets of square brackets, [ and ].

Our example shows a primary object defined by the { on the first line, followed by a few key/value pairs, then e key called “events” whose value is an object. Within that object, there is a single key, “event” which includes a list value (the [ shows us this is a list) and the values within the list are yet more objects. There’s a lot to unpack there and understand, and it might be helpful to see the full JSON file displayed using JSONView.

Even if it’s confusing, the JSON will always have a structure you can figure out using these basic building blocks: objects with key/value pairs, where values can be additional objects or lists of values.

Convert JSON to Excel or CSV

Once you understand the type of data that can be converted, it’s time to make your JSON data usable in Excel. That means you need to convert the JSON either directly to an Excel document, or more likely to a text document that Excel can read, such as CSV.

Let’s look back at our Eventful data again. We need to extract the list of events, which are a series of objects. The key/value pairs in all of the event objects will all contain the same keys. The values will obviously be different since they describe individual events.

Therefore, in spreadsheet terms: the keys become the header row.

You can copy all the key/values, or just the ones you want. For example, we can see the “latitude” key in the screenshot from the previous section. That is a useful value for making a map!

If there’s only a small amount of data, you could make quick progress by copying and then pasting your data from JSON to a spreadsheet. However, most of the time there’s a lot of data. In our Eventful example, there were almost 3,000 events! Use a tool like this to convert file formats automatically.

Optional: Create a Map with Your Data

Many APIs and data sources include location data, such as addresses, city names, or latitude/longitude coordinates. Once your data is in spreadsheet format (as a CSV, Excel, Google Sheets, and more) you can easily create a map like this:

View 2018 Tour de France Route in a full screen map

Create a latitude and longitude map by copy-pasting your spreadsheet data in the cases where you have geographic coordinates. Otherwise, you can automatically geocode location names using our Google Map creator.