One of the first recorded longest paper airplane flights was in the 1980s. It took place in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Had I known when I I was a professor at UW-La Crosse, I may have celebrated this day with the family earlier. Alas… should’ve, could’ve. Maybe, if I don’t die penniless, I will leave money to build a monument in celebration or something. (If I remember…)

It’s hard to follow Towel Day. That day actually means something. I was pleased to see Paper Airplane Day, however, as I remember fondly building many of these things in the 1980s. I had a Scholastic book on how to build different types of paper airplanes, and since there was no internet, and northern Minnesota was frozen 10 months a year, I made 100s and tested them out in our house.

So this day made me happy. And I didn’t feel like making another satirical or straight-up sarcastic map. Rather, I thought I’d just make a cute little, harmless info graphic showing how the record keeps getting stretched further and further.

And here it is.

No Aviation Mechanic Technicians required.

View Map Here

ChatGPT 5.5 Straight-Up

I would like to make an animated info graphic concerning paper airplanes.

My thought is:
– we create a dataset of paper airplane record throws/lengths in the 20th century or whenever such competitions and records started being recorded.
– I would like a simple, modern looking animation showing a plane take off from the left-side of the window and land. It should make a mark where it lands, and fade away. Leaving behind a tick mark and a distance in meters.
– Then another plane, which will go slightly farther.
– Then another…
– They should go in chronological order.
– When it’s done, there should be a scatterplot of sorts, but with just a zone one starting at 0 and 0. The Y axis should represent years proportionally and the X axis distance in meters.

Make the points interactive including the name of the plane thrower, the year, and the distance in meters.

Style the planes as a cute, polished plane graphic that floats through the air in a slightly up and down motion like a real paper airplane flying until it gradually lands softly.

Keep the visualization minimalist. No axis values, etc. Just simples but styled and modern.

At the top, provide a title that is kind of direct, similar: “Temporal Atlas of Record Paper Airplane Flights”

Visually, focus on the paper airplanes looking stellar adn their flight motion. Thanks!