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Landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy of several thousand personnel — patrolling Lake Titicaca and waiting to reclaim the coastline it lost to Chile in 1884.

Bir Tawil, a patch of desert between Egypt and Sudan, is claimed by neither country — one of the only unclaimed pieces of land on Earth.

The Ottomans still held the Balkans and the Holy Roman Empire dominated the center — Europe before the age of nation-states.

The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed ~13,000 houses and 87 churches — yet the official recorded death toll was in single digits. Historians suspect many deaths simply went unrecorded.

In September 1914, the French army rushed ~5,000 soldiers to the Battle of the Marne in commandeered Paris taxis.

From Poland's 'Unity' to Russia's silence, the opening words of national anthems reveal a lot about national identity.

Is 1453 the end of the Middle Ages for you? Follow @forummapping for more maps like this.

6/ In the far northeast sits Muscovy. The same year, a Tver writer was already calling Moscow heir to fallen Rome, an idea that grew into the 'Third Rome'. We'll map that claim next.

5/ Mehmed made Constantinople his capital, replacing Edirne. Notice how the Ottoman Empire already fills the Balkans on the map, with Serbia, Bosnia and Wallachia as the remaining buffers.

4/ The last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died in the final assault. His exact fate is unknown, though he is said to have fought in the streets.

3/ The Theodosian walls had protected the city for about 800 years. Gunpowder artillery finally broke them, including a giant cannon cast by Orban that could throw a stone ball weighing around 270 kg over a mile.

2/ The numbers were lopsided. Defenders totalled about 7,000, roughly 2,000 of them foreigners. Recent estimates put the Ottoman army at 50,000 to 80,000.

1/ Constantinople fell on 29 May 1453, after a 53-day siege that began on 6 April. The Ottoman sultan, Mehmed II, was only in his early twenties.

Europe in 1453: the year a capital that had stood for over a thousand years fell. Look at who surrounds it on this map. a thread 🧵🗺️

44 countries have no coastline. Two are double-landlocked (you must cross TWO countries to reach the sea): Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan.

In 1943, British intelligence dressed a corpse as a Royal Marines officer, gave it fake invasion plans, and floated it to a Spanish beach. Hitler moved divisions to Greece; the Allies landed in Sicily.

Some countries have millions more men than women, others the reverse. The global gender imbalance mapped.

Was this a religious war or a power struggle in disguise? Follow @forummapping for more maps like this.

6/ The toll: modern estimates run from 4.5 to 8 million dead, mostly civilians. Some German regions reported population drops of over half, though that includes people who fled.

5/ The Peace of Westphalia ended it on 24 October 1648. Sweden gained Swedish Pomerania, Bremen and Verden, and France gained territory in Alsace and Lorraine.