Ancient Rome Was How Big?

Today I came across a very cool site from the BBC. It is called Dimensions and it takes important events in history and current events and shows how big they are over a give area on a Google Map.

For example here is an image showing how big an area the flood in Pakistan is on the East Coast of the U.S.

Kinda puts things in perspective...

Or here is an image of what the footprint of the moon would look like centered over North America.

There are lots of other types of layers. Everything from environmental disasters like the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill to just how big an area the Three Gorges Damn is in China to the size of ancient cities. There are also layers for depths and distances.

I didn't find too many limitations with locations. I used both zip codes and the names of towns.You might have trouble with specific locations like the name of a school so stick with zip/postal codes or the name of your town.

What a cool way to show students just how big an area an event or place in history is or was. So head over to the BBC Dimensions and check it out!