U.S. presidents rely heavily on their second-in-command, the vice president. Oftentimes, vice-presidential candidates are selected to balance the ticket. Diversity in race, gender (as with the 2020 election), age, and geography can increase an administration’s chances of winning the election. As such, let’s take a look at the birthplaces of past U.S. vice presidents to see which state most V.P.s have been from and which states are without ties to a vice president. Additionally, birth dates and age ranges at inauguration are included on the map below.

View Birthdates and birthplaces of U.S. vice presidents in a full screen map

The data displayed on the map is from the List of vice presidents of the United States by place of primary affiliation on Wikipedia, though we used some Excel skills to note the age of each vice president when they first took office. You can sort the map by that information or if you’re more interested in where each V.P. started Biden their time, note the geographic facts about the vice presidency below.

Most Vice Presidents Were Born in This State

As we learned from the map of US president births and burials, eight presidents were born in Virginia, which is also incidentally nicknamed the Mother of Presidents. Additionally, seven presidents are buried in Virginia, so the state tops in both births and burials. Let’s see if the same state that produced the most U.S. presidents also resulted in the most V.P.s.

Home state	Number of VPs
New York	8
Virginia	3
Vermont	3
Ohio	3
Massachusetts	3
Kentucky	3
Indiana	3
Texas	2
Pennsylvania	2
North Carolina	2
New Jersey	2
Nebraska	2
Maine	2
California	2
South Dakota	1
South Carolina	1
New Hampshire	1
Missouri	1
Minnesota	1
Maryland	1
Kansas	1
Iowa	1
District of Columbia	1
Grand Total	49

New York has been the home state of eight past Vice Presidents. These are George Clinton (the 4th V.P.), Daniel D. Tompkins (6th), Martin Van Buren (8th), Millard Fillmore (12th), William A. Wheeler (19th), Schuyler Colfax (17th), Theodore Roosevelt (25th), and James S. Sherman (27th). Additionally, New York City is the only city where more than one vice president was born. Both the 17th and 25th V.P.s were born in the Big Apple: Schuyler Colfax and Theodore Roosevelt, respectively.

The other 49 states have each borne three or fewer V.P.s. Explore them via the map—you may note the only Western state that can claim vice presidents is California. Let’s see which other states lack V.P. representation.

States With Zero Vice Presidential Ties

Twenty-two states have been the early home of past vice presidents, leaving 28 without a tie to a V.P. This includes 10 of the 11 Western states (and Alaska and Hawaii), with California being the only exception.

Three Southwestern states lack a connection to a vice president: Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico. The same can be said for four states in the Midwest including North Dakota, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Eight Southeastern states of West Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida are also sans a V.P. birth. Additionally, three states in the Northeast are in the same boat: Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Delaware. Now let’s switch gears from birthplace to birth month.

Birth Months and Ages of the V.P.s

A heartbeat away from the presidency means that V.P.s must meet the requirements, including the minimum age of 35. There are political reasons for candidates to choose either youthful or elder statesman running mates. But astrologists might also consider their Zodiac sign. We’ve included both age and birth month in this section.

Vice Presidential Age Ranges

John Adams and Kamala Harris may both be V.P.s with October birthdays, but there’s also a 229-year age gap between the two. Let’s take a look at some more notable age differences between the V.P.s.

The youngest U.S. vice president to take office was just 36 years old. That youngster was John C. Breckinridge, who held the position for one term between 1857 and 1861. On the other hand, Alben W. Barkley was the oldest V.P. to ever hold office. He first took the oath at the ripe age of 72 in 1949. As for the average age of all the vice presidents, it’s about 55 (55.163 to be exact).

Popular Veep Birth Months

Unlike with the 50 U.S. states, all 12 months of the year are represented, though one month only has a single V.P. October is the birth month of eight vice presidents. These include John Adams (the 1st V.P.), Richard M. Johnson (9th), Chester A. Arthur (20th), Adlai E. Stevenson (23rd), Theodore Roosevelt (25th), James S. Sherman (27th), Henry A. Wallace (33rd), and Kamala Harris (49th).

Six V.P.s each were born in January and July. For January, it’s Millard Fillmore (12th), John C. Breckinridge (14th), Charles Curtis (31st), Richard Nixon (36th), Walter Mondale (42nd), and Dick Cheney (46th). Then, George Clinton (4th), Elbridge Gerry (5th), George M. Dallas (11th), Calvin Coolidge (29th), Gerald Ford (40th), and Nelson Rockefeller (41st) were all born in July.

March and June bore five Vice Presidents. The March births were John C. Calhoun (7th), John Tyler (10th), Schuyler Colfax (17th), Thomas R. Marshall (28th), and Al Gore (45th). June saw Daniel D. Tompkins (6th), William A. Wheeler (19th), Garret Hobart (24th), George H. W. Bush (43rd), and Mike Pence (48th) born.

The remaining months have under five V.P. births, the lowest of which is September with the birth of just one vice president: Thomas A. Hendricks.

More Political Maps Made With BatchGeo

Below is a list of related maps you can create online for free with BatchGeo.

• Births and Burials of US Presidents
• The President Abroad: International Travels Of U.S. Presidents
• Presidential Assassination Attempts Mapped
• 2020 Presidential Primary Dates & Locations on a Map

Take a look, or make a map of your own so that you too can get visual insights into any dataset.

Ships have been sailing the five North American freshwater lakes known as the Great Lakes since the 17th century. Naturally, this means that like the 569 shipwrecks in international waters, a number of ships have sunk there. While many were never found, making the exact number of Great Lakes shipwrecks somewhat of a mystery, plenty of others’ whereabouts are known, like that of the 1975 sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald.

In our coverage of the shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, we’ll go over the deadliest lake of the five, along with the months when ships sank most frequently, and the most disastrous years. Learn more about the stories in the wreckages on the map below.

View Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes in a full screen map

Of 396 total ships that have gone down in the Great Lakes, only one hundred or so have identifiable locations. Find those on the map, which was made from the List of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. You can sort by lake or sunk date/month/year. Let’s dive into which of the Great Lakes has sunk the most ships.

The Deadliest Great Lake: Lake Erie Shipwrecks

To start, let’s look at which of the five Great Lakes is home to the most shipwrecks—the ones with precise coordinates and those that are more mysterious.

• Lake Erie (137 shipwrecks)
• Lake Ontario (89)
• Lake Superior (69)
• Lake Michigan (60)
• Lake Huron (41)

As noted above, the waters of Lake Erie have claimed the most ships. What’s surprising is that Lake Erie is the smallest Great Lake in volume. However, as it’s also the shallowest, this may be what causes so many ships to sink. 78 of Lake Erie’s shipwrecks can be pinpointed on a map, such as PS Anthony Wayne, the oldest steamboat wreck (sunk in 1850) on the Great Lakes. On the other hand, 59 wrecks lie in unknown places in the lake.

Another surprise, Lake Ontario, the second-smallest volume-wise and smallest in area, is home to the second-most shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. Most of these (83 to be exact) sank at unidentified points. The six known wrecks include HMS Speedy, St. Peter, the confusingly-named Unknown, William Johnston, HMS St Lawrence, and HMS Wolfe.

In the deepest and largest lake by volume, there have been 69 total Lake Superior shipwrecks. Of these, 55 are visitable while, for 14, their exact coordinates remain unknown. And though Lake Michigan has only the second-largest volume and is third-largest by area, 60 Lake Michigan shipwrecks have taken place there.

Lake Huron, the third-largest by volume and second largest in area, has been much kinder to sailors traversing its waves. Just 41 ships have gone down there over the years.

Altogether, the bottoms of these five lakes contain a grand total of 396 shipwrecks, though, for 229, the exact location remains unknown. And now that we know where these ships sunk (most were Lake Erie shipwrecks), we can take a look at when they went down.

Wreck Dates: Months & Years

Of the 199 wrecks with recorded sunk months, nearly 30% took place in the same winter month. See for yourself on the table below.

Month	Number of shipwrecks
November	58
October	43
September	22
May	17
June	16
August	13
July	9
December	9
April	8
January	3
February	1
March	0

The Great Lakes’ November waters should have sailors weary. Just over 29% of all recorded ships sunk in that month alone throughout the years. These include two in Lake Ontario, six in Lake Erie, 16 each in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and the 18 Lake Superior shipwrecks.

And October is not too far behind in the tally of boat sinking. Three shipwrecks from Lake Ontario, along with Huron’s and Superior’s eight, Lake Erie’s 11, and 13 Lake Michigan shipwrecks add up to 43.

Contrary to what began to look like a winter trend, December, January, and February each have less than 10. Sailors should also feel the safest going across any—or all—the Great Lakes in March. No ship from 1780 to 2000 has ever gone down in that timeframe.

Years

As for years, 1905 was a deadly one for ships: exactly 15 sank that year. Among those, one sank in Lake Erie, while two each went down in Huron and Michigan, and 10 in Lake Superior.

The year with the second-most wrecks was 1913, when 12 ships went down: one each in Lakes Erie and Superior, two in Michigan, and eight in Huron. Most were a result of the Great Storm of 1913, which occurred in November of that year.

See the names of the ships that sank during these years when you sort the map by the “Sunk year” group.

Now, both of these years were quite a long time ago. The only year this century with a single Great Lakes wreck was 2000 when tour boat True North II sank, killing two students in Georgian Bay, Lake Huron.

You should now set sail to more water-related content, like the busiest ports worldwide or every US shark attack fatality since 1900.

If you’ve ever made a week’s worth of meals in one day, paid your bills a stack at a time, or shopped at a membership club like Costco, you understand the concept of “batching.” It’s more efficient than handling each of those activities one at a time. You can wait until you have multiple tasks that are similar and then batch them at a particular time. Just as it makes sense in your personal life, batching is an important concept when working with data, including the stuff you store in Excel.

You may be storing many types of data in Excel, including financial, accounting, and sales data. Any of this may also include locations, such as cities, addresses, and postal codes. These can be converted into geographic coordinates—either one at a time or all at once. Anytime you have more than one location to geocode, that’s where you’ll use batch geocoding. So let’s dive into more about what batch geocoding is and some of the popular ways to batch geocode an Excel spreadsheet.

Batch Geocoding 101

Geocoding is the process of turning text location descriptions into numbered geographic coordinates, usually latitude and longitude. These pairs identify a point on the Earth’s surface. So what type of text-based descriptions can be geocoded?

The most common geocoding task is one or more full addresses, typically including the city and sometimes state or country. However, many geocoders accept several other types of locations. You can send city names (with or without state/country), postal codes, and state or country names. Some batch geocoders can even take common landmarks, business names, or place names, such as the largest houses in the U.S. like Biltmore Estate or Oheka Castle.

Geocoding larger geographic areas (such as entire countries) typically returns the center point of a place. With that overview, let’s take a look at how to geocode addresses in Excel.

Two Ways to Batch Geocode Your Spreadsheets

There are many great methods of batch geocoding your Excel or Google Sheets data, though the options range in price and their limitations. While multiple free ways exist (we’ll show you two), they can have downsides of address limits and difficulty.

Install a Google Sheets Add-On

This method of batch geocoding your spreadsheet works whether your data is stored in Excel or Google Sheets. It’s also free for 1,000 records per day. If you’re interested in this option, here’s how to go about it.

1. In your web browser, navigate to Google Drive
2. Click New > Google Sheets > Blank spreadsheet
3. Either copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) and paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your data from Excel or add your data directly into Google Sheets
4. Download the Geocode by Awesome Table plugin for Google Sheets
5. In the navigation bar, opt for Add-ons > Geocode by Awesome Table > Start Geocoding
6. Determine if you want to continue working in Google Sheets or copy and paste the newly geocoded data from Google Sheets back into your Excel spreadsheet. Then you’re done!

However, this option has two downsides. First, for those with over 1,000 locations, this isn’t ideal due to its limits. Secondly, this method requires navigation to multiple external platforms depending on the spreadsheet tool you begin with. It isn’t possible to complete the steps all in Excel, nor is it even possible to remain entirely in Google Sheets, as you must install the add-on.

Another method that involves Google Sheets is importing JSON data in Google Sheets.

But let’s move on to a method that allows you to batch geocode more than 1,000 rows of your spreadsheet without switching between too many platforms.

Use Bing’s Free API

Here’s another option, in the event that you have more than 1,000 records and you’d rather not install an add-on. Or maybe you just dislike Google Sheets (let us change your mind; here’s why Google Sheets is better than Excel.)

This is where one of the most popular and the fastest geocoders come in. A Bing API key allows users to geocode 10,000 addresses.

Follow the steps below to take advantage of this option:

1. Head over to http://excelgeocodingtool.com/
2. Hit Download Excel File
3. Open the downloaded file and enable Macros
4. Create a Bing API key and copy and paste it into the Bing Maps Key field
5. On the second sheet entitled Geocode, paste your addresses into the location column, opt to Geocode all rows, and you’re done!

Beyond 10,000, you must make a new account to obtain a new key, which can be a hassle. Plus, as you’ve seen, both of these options can be a bit difficult. Let’s check out an easier alternative.

An Easier Alternative

There’s more out there than clever hacks of tools that were never meant for batch geocoding. Instead of low quantity limits, add-on installations, and API keys, it’s easier to use an established tool with the sole purpose of batch geocoding your spreadsheets. BatchGeo enables you to simply copy and paste in any spreadsheet data.

To get started batch geocoding your spreadsheet, follow our simple steps below:

1. Open your spreadsheet
2. Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) your data
3. Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
4. Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own data
5. Check to make sure you have the proper location data columns available by clicking “Validate and Set Options”
6. Select the proper location column from each drop-down
7. Click “Make Map” and watch as the geocoder performs its process

Our web-based tool’s free version is more than enough for most users while our Pro option enables the quick mapping of 20,000 addresses at a time. For even more on how to batch geocode addresses quickly and easily, check out our page on the subject.

A Step Further: Mapping Addresses From Excel

With an understanding of batch geocoding and some options to utilize it for your spreadsheets—including our always easy geocoder— it’s time to take it one step further. Note that our tool also enables you to create custom maps, like the one below.

View Largest houses in the U.S. in a full screen map

We mapped this Wikipedia list of the 100 largest houses in the U.S. in seconds thanks to our mapping tool. Batch geocode and map your own spreadsheets today at batchgeo.com.