Atlas — the interactive world

On the map

• El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) · via a source adapter

  • 2026-07-09 El Niño Advisory in effect at the July 2026 CPC discussion
  • 2026-06-11 ENSO conditions summarised in the June 2026 discussion
  • 1998 The first global mass bleaching event

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory

  • 2026-07-09 The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
  • 2025-03-24 Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off
  • 2025-02-25 Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
  • 1972 The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission

• London Marathon

  • 2026-04-26 The first sub-two-hour marathon in a record-eligible race
  • 2025 Tigst Assefa sets a women-only world record in London
  • 1981-03-29 The first London Marathon

• Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39B · via a source adapter

  • 2026-04-01 22:35 UTC Artemis II launches — first crew beyond low Earth orbit since 1972
  • 2022-11-16 11:47 UTC Artemis I launches uncrewed from Launch Complex 39B

• Jakarta

  • 2025-11-18 World Urbanization Prospects 2025 changes the measurement

• Marseille

  • 2025-11-17 The core of 2Africa is completed

• The Red Sea cable corridor

  • 2025-09-06 SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
  • 2024-02 A sinking ship's anchor severs Red Sea cables
  • 2016-12-13 SEA-ME-WE 5 is ready for service

• National Ignition Facility

  • 2025-04-07 NIF reaches 8.6 MJ yield and a target gain of 4.13
  • 2024-11-18 NIF achieves ignition for the sixth time
  • 2023-07-30 NIF repeats target gain and raises the yield to 3.88 MJ
  • 2022-12-05 NIF achieves target gain greater than unity for the first time
  • 2021-08-08 NIF exceeds the Lawson criterion for ignition

• Gemini North telescope, Maunakea

  • 2025-07 (reported; detection observation December 2024) A close companion to Betelgeuse is probably detected

• Bayan Obo mining district

  • 2025-04 China imposes export controls on rare earths and magnets

• Makoko

  • 2025-12 – 2026-02 Makoko is cleared again, and the legislature stops it
  • 2012-07 Lagos State demolishes part of Makoko

• Notre-Dame de Paris

  • 2024-12-08 Notre-Dame de Paris reopens for worship
  • 2019-04-15 Fire destroys the roof and spire of Notre-Dame de Paris
  • 1163 Notre-Dame de Paris is begun

• Chicago Marathon

  • 2024-10-13 Ruth Chepngetich runs 2:09:56 in Chicago
  • 2023-10-08 Kelvin Kiptum runs 2:00:35 in Chicago
  • 1977-09-25 The first Chicago Marathon, as the Mayor Daley Marathon

• Nusantara

  • 2024-08-17 Independence Day is marked at Nusantara
  • 2019-08 Indonesia announces the capital move to East Kalimantan
  • 2026 Nusantara's funding is cut and its status downgraded · unresolved

• ITER

  • 2024-06-19 ITER presents an updated project baseline to the ITER Council
  • 2016 ITER adopts the 2016 reference baseline
  • 2039 ITER's declared target date for the start of deuterium-tritium operation · scheduled

• Stonehenge

  • 2024-08 The Altar Stone is traced to north-east Scotland
  • 2020 The Stonehenge sarsens are traced to West Woods
  • c. 2500 BCE The sarsen circle and trilithons are raised at Stonehenge

• Songdo

  • 2024 Songdo passes 200,000 residents — and stays short on jobs
  • 2003 Construction begins at Songdo

• Joint European Torus (JET)

  • 2023-10-03 JET sets the single-pulse fusion energy record of 69.26 MJ
  • 2023-12 JET ceases plasma operations after 105,842 pulses
  • 2021-12 JET's DTE2 campaign releases 59 MJ in a single pulse
  • 1997 JET's DTE1 campaign sets the first deuterium-tritium fusion power record

• Venice and its Lagoon

  • 2023-09 The Committee declines, again, to place Venice on the danger list

• Lagos Blue Line

  • 2023-09 The Lagos Blue Line carries its first passengers
  • 2009 Construction starts on the Lagos Blue Line
  • 2027 Q1 (target) Blue Line phase 2 is targeted for passenger service · scheduled

• Manaus

  • 2023-2024 The most severe drought in the instrumental record
  • 2010 A second severe drought follows within five years

• Anatolia

  • 2023 A hybrid model is proposed for the Indo-European origin
  • 2012 Phylogeography puts the Indo-European homeland in Anatolia
  • 2003 A Bayesian phylogeny dates Indo-European to the Anatolian Neolithic

• Weddell Sea

  • 2023 Antarctic meltwater is projected to slow the abyssal cell

• Lagos

  • 2023 Nigeria's census is postponed again
  • 2006 Nigeria conducts its most recent census

• Antarctica

  • 2023-02 Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one
  • 1959-12-01 The Antarctic Treaty is signed at Washington
  • 1957-07 / 1958-12 The International Geophysical Year puts twelve nations on the ice at once
  • 2048 (earliest possible review) The Madrid Protocol becomes open to a review conference · scheduled

• Serengeti National Park

  • 2023 TAWIRI Aerial Point Survey estimates 1,366,109 wildebeest
  • 2022–2023 imagery; published 2025 AI satellite survey returns fewer than 600,000, and is contested
  • 1993–1994 Drought kills roughly a quarter of the wildebeest population
  • 1981 Serengeti National Park inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List
  • c. 1977–2018 (40-year record) Edge degradation squeezes wildlife into the ecosystem core
  • 1963–1977 The wildebeest population irrupts from roughly 250,000 to over a million
  • c. 1960–1964 Rinderpest disappears from the Serengeti–Mara ecosystem
  • 1959 Serengeti closed to residence; Ngorongoro Conservation Area created and Maasai evicted from the plains
  • 1951 Serengeti National Park established on land used by Maasai pastoralists

• AlphaFold Protein Structure Database

  • 2022-07-28 The AlphaFold database expands to over 200 million structures
  • 2021-07 AlphaFold2 is published and the database opens

• Ngorongoro Conservation Area

  • 2022-06-16 Tanzania begins relocating residents from Ngorongoro and demarcating Loliondo

• Arctic Council

  • 2022-03-03 Seven Arctic states pause participation in the Arctic Council
  • 1996-09-19 The Arctic Council is founded at Ottawa

• Kavango–Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA)

  • 2022-08/2022-10 Coordinated KAZA aerial survey estimates about 227,900 elephants
  • 2011 Five states sign the KAZA Transfrontier Conservation Area treaty

• Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City (delisted 2021)

  • 2021-07-21 Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City deleted — the third and most recent removal
  • 2012 Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger

• Challenger Deep

  • 2021 Revised depth of the Challenger Deep published
  • 2020-06 Submersible pressure transects across the Challenger Deep floor
  • 2019-04-28/2019-05-07 Five Deeps Expedition dives the Challenger Deep four times
  • 2014 So, How Deep Is the Mariana Trench? asks the question in print
  • 2012 First solo crewed dive to the Challenger Deep
  • 2010 Multibeam survey reports a 10,984 m maximum sounding
  • 1995 JAMSTEC's Kaiko reaches the Challenger Deep floor
  • 1960-01-23 Trieste reaches the bottom of the Challenger Deep
  • 1875 HMS Challenger sounds the deep that will bear her name

• Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso

  • 2020 Neutrinos from the solar CNO cycle are detected

• Paranal Observatory and the GRAVITY interferometer

  • 2020 The orbit of S2 is shown to precess as general relativity predicts
  • 2018-05 S2 passes pericentre and its light is measurably redshifted

• South Georgia

  • 2020-02 Blue whales are found back at South Georgia
  • 2026 An individual Antarctic blue whale is re-sighted at South Georgia · unresolved

• INPE (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais)

  • 2019 INPE's director is dismissed after defending the deforestation data
  • 2004 PPCDAm launched and DETER alerts begin
  • 1988 INPE begins the annual PRODES deforestation series

• Labrador Sea

  • 2019-02 OSNAP moves the engine room out of the Labrador Sea
  • 2014 OSNAP is deployed across the subpolar North Atlantic

• Moscow

  • 2018-08-01 Russian Railways abandons Moscow time across the network

• Isua supracrustal belt, southwest Greenland

  • 2018 The Isua stromatolite claim is reassessed and rejected
  • 1999 Carbon-isotope evidence reported from 3.7 Ga Isua sediments
  • 2016 Structures at Isua are reported as 3.7 Ga stromatolites · unresolved

• Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

  • 2017-04 The Event Horizon Telescope observes M87* and Sagittarius A*

• Tokyo Marathon

  • 2017 Tokyo redesigns its course for speed
  • 2013-02-24 Tokyo becomes the sixth Major
  • 2007-02-18 The first Tokyo Marathon

• Timbuktu

  • 2016-09-27 ICC convicts Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi for the destruction of Timbuktu's mausoleums
  • 2012-06-30/2012-07-11 Fourteen of Timbuktu's sixteen inscribed mausoleums destroyed

• IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature)

  • 2016-08-31 Great Elephant Census reports 352,271 savanna elephants and a 30% decline

• LIGO Hanford Observatory

  • 2016-02-11 The detection is announced and published
  • 2015-09-14 09:50:45 UTC GW150914 - two black holes merge and the signal reaches Earth

• Australian Institute of Marine Science

  • 2016-03 to 2016-04 Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
  • 2012 Twenty-seven years of monitoring show coral cover roughly halved
  • 1985 The Long-Term Monitoring Program begins annual reef surveys

• Chicxulub impact crater, Yucatán

  • 2016 (April–May) IODP–ICDP Expedition 364 drills the Chicxulub peak ring
  • 2013 The K–Pg boundary is dated to 66.043 ± 0.043 Ma
  • 1991 Chicxulub is identified as the K–Pg impact crater

• Medellín

  • 2016–2019 Medellín plants its green corridors

• Landing Zone 1, Cape Canaveral

  • 2015-12-21 A Falcon 9 first stage lands after an orbital launch

• Site of Palmyra

  • 2015-08-30 The Temple of Bel at Palmyra destroyed

• The Pontic–Caspian steppe

  • 2015 Ancient DNA finds a mass movement from the steppe into Europe
  • ~3000 BCE Proto-Indo-European is spoken · unresolved

• Okavango Delta

  • 2014-06-22 Okavango Delta inscribed as the 1,000th UNESCO World Heritage site

• Xi'an

  • 2014 Chang'an-Tianshan corridor inscribed by UNESCO

• Meishan GSSP, Changxing, Zhejiang

  • 2014 The end-Permian extinction is resolved to about sixty thousand years

• Boston Marathon

  • 2013-04-15 Bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line
  • 2006-01-23 The World Marathon Majors series is announced
  • 1966–1972 Women run Boston, unofficially and then officially
  • 1924 Boston lengthens its course and moves the start to Hopkinton
  • 1897-04-19 The first Boston Marathon

• Ahmedabad

  • 2013 Ahmedabad adopts South Asia's first heat action plan

• Great Wall of China

  • 2012-06-05 China announces the measured length of the Great Wall

• Titanic wreck site

  • 2012-04-15 Wreck becomes eligible for UNESCO protection
  • 1986-07 First human visits to the wreck
  • 1985-09-01 Wreck located by the Argo camera sled
  • 1912-04-15 00:15 First distress call transmitted — CQD, later SOS
  • 1912-04-15 02:18 Lights fail and the hull breaks in two

• Arctic Ocean

  • 2012-09 The lowest Arctic sea-ice extent in the satellite record
  • 2007-09 The Arctic summer minimum drops far below anything previously observed
  • 1979 The continuous satellite sea-ice record begins

• Burj Khalifa

  • 2010-01-04 Burj Khalifa opens at 828 m

• Dresden Elbe Valley (delisted 2009)

  • 2009-06 Dresden Elbe Valley deleted — the second removal, by a vote of 14 to 5