Mapping NATO's 32 countries across North America and Europe

How NATO works

NATO now includes 32 member nations—but how does the alliance actually function? This explainer breaks down its structure, decision-making process, and funding model. From its founding in 1949 to its collective response after 9/11, here’s how NATO operates on a global scale.

NATO was formed in 1949 to deter Soviet expansion and integrate Europe

Europe was in shambles after World War II, which saw 36 million Europeans killed, and the Soviets were looking to increase their influence. Beyond deterring the Soviets, the alliance sought to restore Europe and prevent nationalist militarism akin to the German Nazis and Italian Fascists.

Poland spends the most on NATO (as a share of GDP) at 4.1%, as of 2024

BBC explores how much each NATO member spends on defense and includes a helpful map displaying the defense spending of European countries as a percentage of GDP.

Tensions between the US and European NATO allies

The Associated Press article discusses US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's assertion in February of 2025 that restoring Ukraine's prewar borders or NATO membership for the country are both unrealistic. This represented a large rift between the United States and its other NATO allies, prompting concern about America’s commitment to the future of the alliance.

Watch the historic treaty signing that established NATO in 1949

NATO was created with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, in Washington, DC. The clip embedded in the webpage includes a newsreel with an excerpt from US President Harry Truman’s speech celebrating the historic day.

Explore the countries with a federal system—and see how they work

This resource from the Forum of Federations catalogs the world's federal countries. It provides background information on each, including the emergence of federalism, the division of power, and the practical interaction between national and regional governments.

Mapping the route options between the Pacific and Atlantic

This map shows some of the alternative trade route options that are available to shipping companies, from overland routes that rely on railways to transport goods coast-to-coast, to Arctic Ocean passages.

The Council on Foreign Relations maps conflicts to watch in 2026

This interactive map highlights conflicts to watch in 2026, rating each by likelihood and potential impact and allowing users to explore detailed background on every potential hotspot.

View a map of America's regional pizza styles

It may all be pizza, but it's not all the same. From California to New York and from Quad City-style to Old Forge, this interactive map of the US lets you see the country's different takes on the classic dish.

Compare the true size of any country

This interactive lets you drag any country across the conventional Mercator projection to compare its true size to others. Africa, which appears similar in size to Greenland on standard maps, is actually close to 15 times larger. It's a great way to recalibrate your assumptions about world geography.

Explore NASCAR’s dozens of tracks across the US and Mexico

See detailed information on every track used for NASCAR’s top three divisions. Tracks vary in shape, length, and seating capacity.

193 nations are members of the United Nations

The UN's Member States webpage provides an alphabetical list of all 193 member countries, along with the exact dates they were admitted. Take a look at how the UN has expanded over time and understand each nation's place in the global organization.

A map of the Milky Way

Curious about the layout of the cosmos? This resource presents a detailed map of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Learn the basic structure and identify prominent global clusters, nebulae, main arms, spurs, and constellations. With numerous different maps and mediums, get oriented with the universe’s configuration and where exactly we fit into it.

Mapping the world's 25 largest stock exchanges

Totaling a market capitalization of $106T (as of 2023), this map identifies the major stock exchanges worldwide on a map, ranking them by total market value. Nearly half of that value is located in the Americas.

View major global infrastructure, including power plants, fuel lines, and water pumping stations

The Open Infrastructure Map displays data from the OpenStreetMap database, which aggregates information from freely licensed geodata sources, surveys, and photographic and satellite imagery. It also displays power lines, generators, substations, various chemical pipelines, telecommunications towers, data centers, and more in daytime and nighttime maps.

There are 32 teams in the NHL

Click a team to see their current record and opponent for the day; read the latest news, including injuries; view the remaining schedule; scan where the team is in the divisional standings; review the current roster; skim all the player and team stats; and watch the latest video highlights.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

40 maps that explain North Korea

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is one of the most misunderstood countries in the world. Use these maps and charts, compiled by Vox, for context and clarity on North Korea. North Korea has a large military and an advanced nuclear...

General Jennie Carignan was the first woman to lead a NATO mission

"NATO Through Time" is a podcast exploring NATO’s history and its impact on today’s world. This episode features General Jennie Carignan, Canada’s top military leader, as she shares insights from her NATO missions in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Watch Mediterranean power shift over millennia with this animated map

The ancient Mediterranean holds a vast amount of history; from Egypt to Rome, the coasts of this sea are home to some of the most advanced ancient civilizations. This video displays on a map the many different civilizations that rose and fell around the fertile region, from the year 2500 BCE to 0 BCE.

See a timeline of colonial settlement in North America

This interactive timeline uses archival maps, illustrations, and documents to trace early American history—from the failed 1590 Roanoke colony and Indigenous accounts of a devastating smallpox epidemic to the political tensions that culminated in the Revolutionary War.

NUKEMAP lets you model the effects of a nuclear detonation anywhere on Earth

The tool was built by Alex Wellerstein, a historian of nuclear technology at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. NUKEMAP uses declassified weapons data to calculate blast radius, thermal radiation, fallout patterns, and estimated casualties for any nuclear device dropped on any city. More than 50 million people have used it since its 2012 launch.

The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 26 overseas military cemeteries in 16 countries

The cemeteries honor more than 218,000 American war dead, with the majority of sites located in France and Belgium, where some of the heaviest fighting of both World Wars took place.

Mapping migrations of hundreds of bird species

The birds we see throughout the year are long distance fliers, often traveling over thousands of miles to reach optimal nesting grounds, better feeding, and more. This thorough interactive map tracks over 450 types of bird on their annual migrations, depicting both their route as well as some of the conservation hurdles each species faces. Fly along with your favorite bird here.

National parks, explained

Roughly 83 million acres of the United States are set aside as federal National Parks land, an area large as Germany. From the original Yellowstone Park to small monuments and memorials, learn the essentials on this portion of America dedicated to public enjoyment and recreation with our quick explainer video.

Find connections between Wikipedia articles utilizing a node mapping tool

Multiple Wikipedia articles can be placed on the map, each with its own node, and expanded to reveal related articles. The goal is to expand as many subsequent nodes as needed to connect articles and identify related concepts. Any node can be double-clicked on to open its respective Wikipedia page.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.