Open Plaques is an open-sourced project that documents and records the location of historic plaques around the world. Based out of Great Britain, Open Plaques has received support from the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce). Anyone can submit a plaque for inclusion in this project, which currently features over 35,000 plaques worldwide. Users can browse or search for plaques by place, by the individual honored by the plaque, or by the organization that placed the plaque. Twitter users can follow @openplaques to both view recently added plaques and to explore how individuals have used Open Plaques to gain insight into history and how societies memorialize the past. For example, Steve Peters has created an infographic using sizing circles to represent the most popular subjects and individuals featured in U.K. plaques. Peters' infographic reveals that "knight" and, interestingly, "bachelor" top the subject list. John Wesley, meanwhile, edges out Charles Dickens for the honor of being featured on the most U.K. plaques featured in this project.
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