In the midst of the after-effects of Hurricane Florence sweeping the Carolinas and a more accurate — and higher — casualty count from the September to October 2017 Hurricane Maria, we thought we’d make a map to highlight other historical natural disasters, specifically, the most disastrous. While Hurricane Maria wouldn’t make our list of the most disastrous natural disasters with the previous official report of 64 deaths, it would be considered one of the deadlier hurricanes with what is said to be the more probable death count: 2,975. This is more than 45 times the official number and makes Hurricane Maria one of the deadliest hurricanes to ever hit the U.S. We searched for even more data about the world’s deadliest earthquakes, floods, and wildfires, and costliest tropical hurricanes and tornadoes, including the overall most disastrous, some pretty recent natural disasters, and where in the world these disasters strike most frequently.

View Most Disastrous Natural Disasters in a full screen map

Check out the map above for the facts regarding the locations and casualty count of the most disastrous natural disasters ever. Or read on for more info about these tragic occurrences.

Dismal Disasters: All-Time Most Disastrous

All of the natural disasters we mapped resulted in the loss of 1,000 or more lives, but there are always those catastrophes that result in the greatest amount of lives lost. Here are the top ten most disastrous natural disasters by their estimated death toll:

Type	Rank	Estimated Death Toll	Event	Location	Year	Notes
Flood	1	1,000,000	1931 China floods	China	1931	May have been as high as 4,000,000 casualties
Flood	2	900,000	1887 Yellow River flood	China	1887	May have been as high as 2,000,000 casualties
Flood	3	500,000	1938 Yellow River flood	China	1938	May have been as high as 800,000 casualties
Hurricane	4	500,000	1970 Bhola cyclone	Bangladesh	1970	Then East Pakistan; may have been higher — November 13, 1970
Hurricane	5	300,000	1737 Calcutta cyclone	India	1737	October 7, 1737
Hurricane	6	300,000	1839 India Cyclone	India	1839	November 25, 1839
Earthquake	7	280,000	2004 Indian Ocean earthquake	Indonesia	2004	December 26, 2004
Earthquake	8	273,400	1920 Haiyuan earthquake	China	1920	December 16, 1920
Earthquake	9	242,769	1976 Tangshan earthquake	China	1976	May have been as high as 700,000 casualties —  July 28, 1976
Flood	10	231,000	Banqiao Dam	China	1975

As you can see from the table above, only three of the five types of natural disasters we mapped make the top ten most disastrous. Floods, earthquakes, and tropical hurricanes are the costliest natural disasters in all of history. To see only the three costliest natural disasters for yourself on the map, use our grouping feature to group the map by type. Note that when you do this and select flood, hurricane, and earthquake, 98 out of the 102 disastrous natural disasters we mapped belong to those three categories.

Country-wise, China has bore witness to the worst — and most — natural disasters on the top ten most disastrous list. That is without taking into account that four out of six of China’s top natural disasters may have resulted in more casualties than officially recorded. If those casualty counts are as high as some experts say they are, the #1 ranked 1931 China floods would be eight times the size of Bangladesh’s fourth-ranked 1970 Bhola cyclone. Whether or not the estimated death toll for the 1931 China floods is lower than the reality, it still takes the cake as the costliest natural disaster in history with 1 million deaths, but up to as many as 4 million deaths. The second-place natural disaster, China’s 1887 Yellow River flood would be four times the size of Bangladesh’s fourth-ranked hurricane if experts are correct that the casualty count may have been as high as two million.

India has also seen some pretty terrible disasters, especially in the form of cyclones or hurricanes. India’s hurricanes seem to occur almost exactly one century apart. As for the most recent natural disaster to make the top ten deadliest list: it’s the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which hit Indonesia the day after Christmas just 14 years ago. The deadliest earthquake since the 1600s, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake is only to be beaten by an earthquake from way back in 1556: the Shaanxi, China earthquake. The 1556 Shaanxi, China earthquake is officially reported to have caused the deaths of 820,000 people, but the death count may have been as high as 830,000 casualties.

Modern Mayhem: Worst of the 21st Century

Even more recent than the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake are the following natural disasters, ordered by year:

• 2016 India floods — estimated death toll of 1,000
• 2013 North India floods — estimated death toll of 5,700
• 2011 Southeast Asian floods — estimated death toll of 2,828
• 2011 Philippines floods — estimated death toll of 1,268
• 2010 Haiti earthquake — estimated death toll of 160,000
• 2010 China floods — estimated death toll of 3,189
• 2010 Pakistan floods — estimated death toll of 1,600
• 2008 Sichuan, China earthquake — estimated death toll of 87,587
• 2008 Myanmar Cyclone Nargis — estimated death toll of 138,366
• 2007 China flood — estimated death toll of 1,348
• 2006 Southern Leyte, Philippines mudslide — estimated death toll of 1,144
• 2005 Kashmir, Pakistan earthquake — estimated death toll of 100,000
• 2005 Fujian, China flood — estimated death toll of 1,624
• 2005 Mumbai, India flood — estimated death toll of 1,503
• 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake — estimated death toll of 280,000
• 2004 Eastern India flood — estimated death toll of 3,076
• 2004 Haiti Spring Flooding — estimated death toll of 1,605
• 2004 China flood — estimated death toll of 1,029
• 2002 China flood, torrential floods, mud-rock flows — estimated death toll of 1,532

Four of these 21st-century natural disasters resulted in over 100,000 deaths. Ranked at #7, #14, #19, and #24 (out of 102), respectively, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, 2010 Haiti earthquake, Cyclone Nargis, and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake are the natural disasters that have taken place during our current century with the most lives lost.

Floods and Earthquakes and More, Oh My!

You would think that the most common deadly natural disasters are the three that appeared on our top ten deadliest natural disaster list. Remember that our top ten deadliest natural disasters since the 1600s were comprised of only three types: four were floods, three were earthquakes, and three were tropical hurricanes.

While these three types of natural disasters certainly are the most common and deadly, it’s not necessarily in the order you’d expect. Of the 102 most disastrous natural disasters on our map, 62 are floods, 27 are earthquakes, and just nine are tropical hurricanes. That’s not necessarily what you’d expect glancing at the top ten list, in which the amount of earthquakes tied with hurricanes. Clearly, floods are by far the most frequent natural disaster to result in the deaths over 1,000 people. As for the low number of hurricanes? Three of the nine tropical hurricanes resulting in 1,000+ deaths since 1600 are accounted for in the top ten most disastrous natural disasters of all time.

So while tropical hurricanes that cause the death of over 1,000 people rarely occur (only nine times since 1600), when they are that severe, they result in lots and lots more casualties than 1,000. Three wildfires also make our map, along with just one tornado that has killed over 1,000 people. Watch out, Dorthy!

Take Caution in these Countries with the Most Disasters

We already know that China has historically been home to many of the costliest natural disasters ever seen, but just how many natural disasters has China withstood over the years? If you count up all of China’s natural disasters on the map above, they total to 28 natural disasters since the 1600s that resulted in 1,000+ deaths, which is more than any other country. India, known to face many a hurricane or cyclone throughout the years, has had 13 natural disasters resulting in 1,000 or more lives lost. Other countries that have witnessed more than one deadly natural disaster include:

• Bangladesh — 7
• Iran — 6
• Pakistan — 5
• Italy — 4
• Netherlands — 4
• Japan — 3
• Peru — 3
• Philippines — 3
• United States — 3
• Ecuador — 2
• Haiti — 2
• Vietnam — 2

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Now that we know all about the world’s most disastrous natural disasters, it’s time to do something about it! Learn how to make a Disaster Relief map to help members of your community find the resources they may need after a natural disaster. It’s easy to make maps that matter with BatchGeo.

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.