Author: Adam DuVander

Whether you’re working on a project for school or need to come up with a data-related analysis for work, BatchGeo can help you easily visualize your data so that you can provide smarter insights. Take Nobel Prize winners, for instance. The winners of the Nobel Prize — also called laureates, which stems from ancient Greece when the laurel wreath was awarded to winners for their honor — come from far and wide, although there are some countries with more Nobel Prize winners than days in a year. Yet, the countries with the most Nobel Prize winners don’t always hold the record for most laureates in each category. Some countries even have a slight advantage, seeing as some of their Nobel Prize winners have won more than one Nobel! Then there are those countries that missed out on adding another tally to their winners’ list because a winner said: “Nah, I don’t really want a Nobel.”

View Nobel Prize Winners by Country in a full screen map

Check out the map above of the Nobel Prize winners by country, which is just one of the millions of examples of maps you could create in seconds with BatchGeo. Or read on for examples of the insights we were able to pull from the map.

History Lesson Worthy of a Nobel Prize…

Even though there’s no Nobel Prize for History, we thought we’d briefly cover exactly how the Nobel Prize came to be. The prize was first awarded in 1901, but its origin actually came about before that. Alfred Nobel, a Swedish scientist, expressed his desire for the creation of the prizes in his will way back in 1895. Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were the original prizes first awarded in 1901. In 1968, the Economic Sciences prize was created. Although not technically a Nobel, it was created in Alfred Nobel’s memory, and so it often gets looped in with the rest of the prizes.

All of the Nobel Prize winners receive a gold medal, a diploma, and a bag of cash. As of 2017, that nice chunk of change is just over one million dollars.

Countries with the Most Nobels

As you can see from the map above if you group by medals, only three countries have won 100 or more Nobel Prizes. So let’s give it up for:

• Germany
• the United Kingdom
• the United States

Germany is a superstar when it comes to producing Nobel Prize winners, having won 108 medals. Thirty-three of those 108 medals are for Chemistry, and another 33 are for Physics. The most famous Nobel Prize winner in Physics was Albert Einstein in 1921. The next most prizes are 25 for Physiology or Medicine. The country has also received 10 medals for Literature, six medals for Peace, and one for Economic Sciences.

The United Kingdom has received 129 medals in total, with 34 of those awards coming from Physiology or Medicine, 31 coming from Chemistry, and 27 from Physics. The U.K. has also been awarded 13 prizes for Literature, another 13 for Peace, and 11 for Economic Sciences. Like Germany, even with the likes of famous British Nobel Prize-winning authors like Rudyard Kipling (1907), T.S. Eliot (1948), and a Prime Minister himself, Winston Churchill (1953), the bulk of the U.K.’s Nobel Prizes come from the hard sciences.

Last but not least is the United States with 371 Nobel Prize winners. Over 100 of the U.S.’s impressively large collection of Nobel Prize winners come as a result of Physiology or Medicine: 104 to be exact. Ninety-nine prizes stem from Physics-related Nobel Prize winners. Seventy-five prizes are for Chemistry, and 58 for Economic Sciences. The U.S. has also brought home 22 Peace Medals, with esteemed winners including Theodore Roosevelt (1906), Woodrow Wilson (1919), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964), Elie Wiesel (1986), Jimmy Carter (2002), Al Gore (2007), and of course Barack Obama (2009). America also has 13 fine Literature winners like T.S. Eliot (1948), William Faulkner (1949), Ernest Hemingway (1954), John Steinbeck (1962), Toni Morrison (1993), and Bob Dylan (2016).

T.S. Eliot brought home medals that count towards both the U.K. and the U.S.’s grand total. Eliot was born in the United States, but was living and writing in the United Kingdom at the time of the prize’s awarding.

Literature is Literally Hard to Win

It would seem that the top three winners would hold the highest number of medals in each individual category, but that is actually not the case.

France, with 68 medals to its name, is not a top three winner. However, it does have something that none of the above top three winners have, not even the U.S. with its 371 Nobel Prize winners. France has 16 Nobel Prizes in Literature to the U.S.’s 13, the U.K.’s 13, and Germany’s 10 winners.

Double the Nobels

Four Nobel Prize winners have won two separate Nobel Prizes. Marie Curie and her husband won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, and in 1911 she also received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Curie is the only person to have received Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.

She is also one of the few female Nobel Prize winners, one of only two in Physics (as of 2014) and four in Chemistry (also as of 2014). As of now, only 48 women have won Nobel Prizes in total, opposed to 844 men, making Curie all the more special.

For Curie, winning Nobel Prizes is a family affair. She’s won two prizes and her husband has won one prize, and their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie won a Chemistry Nobel Prize just like her mother in 1935. Also, like her mother, Joliot-Curie shared that win with her husband. Marie Curie’s other son-in-law, Henry Labouisse, was the director of UNICEF when the organization was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1965, which Labouisse accepted on UNICEF’s behalf.

In addition to Curie, three other winners can tout multiple prizes. Linus Pauling won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and again in 1962 when he was awarded a Peace Prize. John Bardeen won a Nobel Prize in Physics twice. His first win was in 1956 the second was in 1972. Frederick Sanger won a Chemistry Nobel Prize twice. The first time was in 1958 and he won again in 1980.

In addition to those men and women who have two Nobel Prizes, two organizations have won multiple Nobel Prizes, all for Peace. The Red Cross has won the Peace Prize three different times, in 1917, 1944, and again in 1963. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees won the Peace Prize in 1954 and 1981.

No Thanks, I’ll Pass on A Nobel Prize

On the other end of the Nobel Prize spectrum from those who have won more than once, are those who declined their Nobel Prize. This has only happened twice, but the fact that it has ever happened at all is worth looking into. Both Jean-Paul Sartre and Lê Đức Thọ flat-out refused the honor, although for different reasons.

Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 but declined the prize because he did not want to be “transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honourable form.” As for Lê Đức Thọ, he declined the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded for his role in the Paris Peace Accords on the basis that there was not yet peace in Vietnam.

The 20 Noblest Nobelists

Now, all of the over 900 Nobel Prize winners have achieved great things for humankind. Here are some of the most recognizable names:

• Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader and activist
• Marie Curie, the first Nobel Prize winner to win a second Nobel, and one of two to win in two different fields
• Mother Teresa, nun and missionary who was declared a saint in 2016
• Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black President and an anti-apartheid revolutionary and philanthropist
• Barack Obama, first black President of the U.S.
• Kofi Annan, civil servant and the seventh Secretary-General of the U.N. from Ghana; died on August 18th, 2018
• Toni Morrison, Pulitzer (and Nobel) winning novelist and the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize
• Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, best-selling author, and activist
• Albert Einstein, physicist and scientist; creator of the theory of relativity and E=MC2
• 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, political leader opposed to Chinese occupation of Tibet and an activist for peace
• Desmond Tutu, an anti-apartheid civil rights activist in South Africa
• Alexander Fleming, the scientist and biologist who discovered penicillin, which paved the way for antibiotics
• Robert Koch, doctor who founded bacteriology
• Watson, Crick, & Wilkins, the scientists who discovered the chemical structure of DNA
• Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the U.S. who helped to establish the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel
• Ernest Hemingway, American author
• Al Gore, previous Vice President of the U.S. and global warming activist
• Bob Dylan, singer and songwriter
• The Red Cross, three-time Nobel Prize winner

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Making maps for your important data opens up a world of otherwise missed opportunities for insight. Improve your knowledge of the Nobel Prize winners by country, the U.S.’s commute times and transportation rates, electricity use by country, or quickly map your own data today with BatchGeo.

When you think of suspension bridges, the likes of the Golden Gate Bridge may pop into your head. However, this well-known suspension bridge doesn’t even make the top ten list of bridges with the longest spans. So, we decided to map over 100 of the suspension bridges from all around the world with the longest spans. Anyone can build an über long bridge, but what’s really impressive stems from bridges with the longest spans — or the length of solid bridge between two supporting towers. And, while most suspension bridges are pretty long, there’s always those that hold the records when it comes to their main span.

View World’s Longest Suspension Bridge Spans in a full screen map

Check out the world’s longest suspension bridge spans on the map above, or read on for details about the lengths, locations, and future record-breaking suspension bridges in the works.

The Suspense is Killing Us: the Longest Completed Suspension Bridge Spans

While all of the completed suspension bridges we mapped have spans that are either close to or way over 2,000 feet long, the following ten completed suspension bridges from around the world hold the record:

Rank	Name	Main Span (meters)	Main Span (feet)	Year Opened	Location	Country
1	Akashi Kaikyō Bridge	1,991	6,532	1998	Kobe	Japan
2	Xihoumen Bridge	1,650	5,413	2009	Zhoushan	China
3	Great Belt Bridge	1,624	5,328	1998	Korsør	Denmark
4	Osman Gazi Bridge	1,550	5,090	2016	Dilovası	Turkey
5	Yi Sun-sin Bridge	1,545	5,069	2012	Gwangyang	South Korea
6	Runyang Bridge	1,490	4,888	2005	Yangzhou	China
7	Dongting Lake Bridge Hangrui	1,480	4,856	2018	Yueyang	China
8	Nanjing Fourth Yangtze Bridge	1,418	4,652	2012	Nanjing	China
9	Humber Bridge	1,410	4,626	1981	Hessle	United Kingdom
10	Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge	1,408	4,619	2016	İstanbul	Turkey

Note that of the top ten completed suspension bridges with the longest spans, four are located in China. Overall, of the 79 completed longest suspension bridge spans we mapped, 31 are located in China, or nearly 40%.

However, while China may have the most completed suspension bridges with long spans, the country is not home to the number one longest completed suspension bridge span. That honor belongs to Japan. The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge in Japan has the longest completed suspension bridge span. The bridge connects the city of Kobe to Awaji Island and even has lookout points at the very top if its two towers. This super long bridge’s span is nearly 1,000 feet longer than Xihoumen Bridge, the second longest suspension bridge span on our list.

The most recently built and completed suspension bridge to make the top ten longest span list is the Dongting Lake Bridge Hangrui in Yueyang, China. The bridge crosses Dongting Lake, and it opened in February of this year.

Under Construction: the Longest Bridge Spans Being Built

We didn’t want to leave out those bridges that are still under construction. You can order the map to show only these in-progress bridges by grouping by bridge status, but here are the top five longest under-construction spans:

• Çanakkale 1915 Bridge — Turkey, 6,637 feet
• Yangsigang Yangtse River Bridge — China, 5,577 feet
• Second Humen Bridge East — China, 5,538 feet
• Lingding Bridge — China, 5,466 feet
• Jin’an Bridge — China, 4,547 feet

Disappointedly for the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge in Japan, the Çanakkale 1915 Bridge, which is set to open in 2022 in Turkey, will surpass the longest completed suspension bridge span in the world. At 2,023 meters or 6,637 feet, the Çanakkale 1915 Bridge’s main span will be longer than Japan’s Akashi Kaikyō Bridge’s by a little over one hundred feet.

China has 24 bridges currently under construction which range from the 5,577 feet of the Yangsigang Yangtse River Bridge to 1,969 feet. Put into perspective, there are only 29 bridges under construction on our list, and China makes up nearly 83% of them.

And, when you combine the longest existing suspension bridge spans and longest bridge spans under construction, 55 of them are located in China. The next most? Just 13 in the United States. Those 13 longest suspension bridge spans in the U.S. are all existing bridges, which means the U.S. currently has no bridges under construction that would make the list of longest bridge spans.

TBD: Longest Bridge Spans in the Planning Stages

While the suspension bridges that don’t technically exist yet can’t be compared to those that have been standing for a while or those being built, we still thought we’d look to the future to see what it has in store. The following are all the suspension bridges that are planned for the future and are said to have pretty huge spans:

• Gibraltar Bridge, Spain to Morocco
• HAFAST, Sulafjorden, Norway
• Sognebrua, Sognefjorden, Norway
• Strait of Messina Bridge, Sicily to mainland Italy
• Sunda Strait Bridge, Java to Sumatra, Indonesia
• Malacca Strait Bridge, Peninsular Malaysia, Malaysia to Sumatra, Indonesia
• Storfjord Bridge, Storfjorden, Norway
• Edvard Grieg Bridge, Halsafjord, Norway
• Mao Zedong Bridge, Qiongzhou Strait, China
• Chacao Channel Bridge, Chiloé to mainland Chile

Of the ten bridges in the works, only the Chacao Channel Bridge in Chile will fail to replace one of the top ten completed bridges as new holders of the longest spans title. Still, the Chacao Channel Bridge is no small feat, hitting 1,100 meters, or 3,600 feet, although it is definitely the smallest of the ten future bridges.

As for the rest of these TBD bridges, if they hold up to their planned span, every single one will bump all of the completed bridges off the longest bridge spans list and all of the under-construction bridges other than the Çanakkale 1915 Bridge. Turkey’s pride and joy would be bumped down and ranked at #8.

The HAFAST bridge is still under planning in Norway, but it has the biggest explicitly stated span of 4,000 meters or 13,000 feet. The Sognebrua bridge, also in Norway will hopefully be 3,700 meters or 12,100 feet. The Norwegians are really trying to out-rank the rest of the world when it comes to suspension bridges. However, it’s possible the Gibraltar Bridge, which would connect Europe to Africa and is only stated to be “very long” may take the cake for the future suspension bridge with the longest span.

The Malacca Strait Bridge, Storfjord Bridge, and Edvard Grieg Bridge in Indonesia, Norway, and once again Norway, respectively are all proposed or planned to be 2,000 meters or longer. The Malacca Strait Bridge will be 2,600 meters long or a whopping 8,500 feet. The Storfjord Bridge will be 2,300 meters in length (7,500 feet), and the Edvard Grieg Bridge will be just slightly smaller at 2,000 meters or 6,600 feet long.

As we’ve seen, China really doesn’t need any more bridges since the country already monopolizes the suspension bridge game. So it’s not really much of a surprise that China only has one super long bridge in the planning stages. That one bridge China is planning is the Mao Zedong Bridge. It would cross the 14-mile Qiongzhou Strait, and consist of ten towers. If successful, it would be one of the longest suspension bridges ever created, although the spans between the towers aren’t as long at 2,000 meters or 6,600 feet. The bridge is in the very beginning stages of being worked on.

So, in the case of the world’s longest suspension bridge spans, the future will beat out the past.

Some future planned bridges aren’t as lucky as the above bridges being planned. In fact, two bridges that were in the works were canceled. Plans for the Strait of Messina Bridge from Sicily to Italy and the Suna Strait Bridge in Indonesia have been halted. The Strait of Messina Bridge was set to be a whopping 3,300 meters or 10,800 feet but was canceled back in 2006 due to a controversy over how much it cost to build. In 2008, however, it was put on the queue again but was once again canceled in 2013. The Sunda Strait Bridge in Indonesia would have been around 3,000 meters or 9,800 feet had it not been canceled.

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All in all, the bridge spans of the past, present, and future are pretty impressive length-wise. And so are buildings. You can check out the world’s tallest buildings on a map here to see if there are any near you.

Moving on is never easy, especially when that moving on involves packing up everything you’ve ever owned and settling down elsewhere. Apartment hunting may not be the most stressful thing you’ll ever do, but it’s definitely up there. Not only will you have to live with your decision for the duration of your lease, your apartment is where you’ll be spending the majority of your time, even if it is just sleeping. Whether you graduated, got a job cross-country, or just needed a change of pace, making an apartment hunting map with BatchGeo can make the best of this process, and make your moving experience much less daunting.

View N.Y.C. Apartment Hunting in a full screen map

Your new digs need more than just certain amenities. They also need to be close to the places you frequent the most. Sure, it can be great when that apartment in your price range has a washer and dryer in unit, but if it’s a 45-minute drive to work or 30 minutes to the only grocery store that carries those brownies you like, you might start regretting your decision.

We’re here to make sure that never happens. Learning how to make a map of your apartment options and the nearby conveniences you need can save you a lot of time, money, and regrets three months after the move when you’re spending more time commuting than in your own apartment.

Create an Apartment Options Spreadsheet — With Some Important Additions

The first step towards creating your apartment options spreadsheet is to identify your apartment’s distance needs. For instance, do you need your apartment to be within a 15-minute walk to work because you get grumpy in the mornings with a long commute in the car? Is there a specific location, such as your favorite grocery store that would be convenient to have nearby? What about that little coffee shop you go to on your days off? Start out by identifying these distance needs, and then input your two or three most frequented places into an Excel or Google spreadsheet.

When putting your two or three most frequented locations in your spreadsheet, be sure to include columns for the name of the place, the address, and the type of place it is. The type will be useful when sorting your map later. Your spreadsheet should look something like this:

Add Your Apartment Options to Your Spreadsheet

After you’ve added in all of your important locations to your spreadsheet, you can start adding in your apartment options. Here is where you can include details about the apartment itself, including rent price, how many bedrooms it has, or if it’s a studio, and whether or not pets are allowed.

Be sure to assign a type to your apartments just like you did with your important locations. Something like “Apartment Option” will allow you to easily sort out your apartment options from your frequently attended locations later on in the map. When you’ve successfully added in all of the apartments you’re considering, your spreadsheet will look something like this:

Now, just simply copy and paste your data into BatchGeo.

Map It & Group By Type

Once you’ve copied and pasted your apartment data into BatchGeo, click on Map Now to easily map your data. From there, be sure to group your data by “Type.”

This way, you can easily sort your data once your map is complete. Next, just click on Make Map to map your data. Your map will look something like this:

View N.Y.C. Apartment Hunting in a full screen map

Visually, you can see the distances between your apartment options in one color, and your most frequented places in the other colors. We added a park and a gym for good measure.

Location, Location, Location: How to Measure Distance

What’s more, though is that you can do more than just eyeball how close your favorite apartment option is to your work. With BatchGeo, you can actually calculate distances between two addresses or points.

In order to do so, when you’re mapping your data, simply:

Click Validate and Set Options and click on Advanced Options. Then, check the option to calculate distance from the first address and select the units. We picked miles. Click Make Map. Our first address was work, and so BatchGeo will automatically calculate just how far every other item on the spreadsheet is from our work. When your spreadsheet is comprised of ten different apartment possibilities, this can be incredibly useful to get a sense of just how far you’ll be walking or driving every weekday.

More Measurement Options

There is one more way BatchGeo can help to make your moving process go as smooth as possible, and it’s related to, you guessed it, location once again. In the event that you don’t want to only know the distance of everything on your map to your work, BatchGeo also gives you the opportunity to measure on the fly. Simply click on the little ruler in the top left corner of your map:

And select the measuring tool. From here, you can draw a line to each point and BatchGeo will let you know how far they are apart. To change the unit of measurement, click the scale on the bottom right of your map. This feature is only available in BatchGeo’s Advanced Mode, which can add even more insights to your map. Advanced Mode is only available if you are a BatchGeo Pro member.

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Before you make your apartment decision based on how much you just want this to be over with, take five minutes to make apartment hunting easier and map it out! And, if you’re done with living in apartments and are in the market to buy a home, check out how to make an open house map.