The BBC's Dimensions

Check out this cool site, built as an experimental prototype for the BBC to "bring home the human scale of events and places in history" by juxtaposing the "size of historical events with your home and neighborhood, overlaying important places, events, and things on a satellite view of where you live." The site is called Dimensions.

According to their About/FAQs page, "Dimensions is part of the BBC's continual experimentation in trying to find new ways to communicate history" - something I love!

Currently you can superimpose over the place of your choosing:

• the area affected by the 2010 Pakistan floods
• the War on Terror, including the Twin Towers, the 911 plane routes, the Afghanistan/Pakistan border
• Space, including the moon, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Mars Rover route
• depths, like the Kola Superdeep Borehold and the Marianas Trench
• Ancient worlds, including the Great Wall of China, the first Olympic marathon, the Pyramids of Gize
• environmental disasters, such as the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Pacific garbage patch
• festivals and spectacles, like St. Peter's Basilica and Square, the New Orleans Mardi Gras Rex parade, the Rio Carnival Samba Parade
• the Industrial Age, including Silicon Valley, China's Three Gorges Dam span
• World War II and the Battle of Britain, including the distance a Spitfire would need to take off, the flight range of a Bf109E, Biggin Hill Airfield
• cities in history, such as Beijing in 1425, Stalingrad in 1942, London in 1870, Paris in 1852.

You can enter your zip code and a place name and superimpose any of these over an area you are familiar with. What you can't currently do is create a map of your own (e.g., the Battle of Gettysburg is not a choice and you can't create it), but they hope to open up that ability in a future version.

Meanwhile, have some fun plunking Victorian London over your house!