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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

It's too bad there are so many duplicates. I think it would be more interesting if it was based on birthplace, since big cities that attract lots of businesspeople/celebrities just get tagged with someone really famous who doesn't have any particular connection with the city (e.g. Elon Musk on Los Angeles, Steve Jobs on basically everywhere in the Bay Area).

The Wikidata "place of birth" field would probably be a reasonably reliable source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P19

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The person for my hometown on that website seems to only have been born there but moved away before elementary school, so I'm not sure how that's really all that interesting.

Well, it’s interesting to some people because they keep searching for that person.

It’s probably because they were trying to find out when that person lived there.

I grew up in Visalia, CA which lists Kevin Costner, the actor. He was in my high school class in my sophomore and part of my junior year when his family moved away. Although his later fame is what puts him there, we had a Nobel Prize-winning physicist actually grow up there but he never won an Oscar. Seems unfair.

I don't think popularity contests (which is pretty close to what this is) are meant to be fair.

Hulk Hogan is credited as being born in Augusta, GA; but his family moved to Florida when he was one and a half. Also, I'm not sure why Viggo Mortensen is listed way up in north Idaho, he only lived there three years?

I was born in Houston, Texas, but subsequently lived in 8 other cities in 6 states before I graduated from High School. I usually tell people I am from the last city I lived in when I graduated from High School (even though I haven't had any family that has lived there in decades and I haven't been back since I left for college), but really I don't have a "hometown". I'm not sure what the appropriate city would be for me if I became famous.

Hey, are you me? My childhood wasn't as spread out as yours, but I still lived in four separate towns before I graduated high school, and then went off to college in a fifth town. The first two towns I lived in were close enough together I can name a vague region when someone asks where I'm from, but if they press for details I have a little story to tell.

Jobs shows up in Palo Alto, San Jose, Mountain View, Cupertino, and strangely, Portland, OR.

Probably because he went to Reed College there before dropping out.

That explains it.

Some more info: https://pdxpeople.com/steve-jobs/

Birthplace would be interesting, but there’s plenty of famous/important people who are connected to a location other than their birthplace. Think sports stars who were on a team far away from their home.

Maybe, but it's still lame that Denver is represented by Peyton Manning. He was there a few years, but he isn't even the first person that the phrase "Denver quarterback" calls to mind.

I mean that probably proves he is Wiki'ed much more than John Elway. Mostly a recency thing I would guess.

Right, but I think that's a problem for large cities like Los Angeles. There's nothing particularly "Los Angeles" about Elon Musk that I know of, he's just really famous and (maybe?) happens to live there.

And with birthplace, I think it's pretty interesting to browse the map for random tiny towns no one has heard of that happen to be the birthplaces of very famous people.

If I had to associate a place with Elon Musk, LA would probably be it. SpaceX is based in the LA area, and IIRC Musk does live down there somewhere (although I don't think it's in LA proper). Musk has also captured quite a lot of attention lately for his various antics and ventures.

The problem that LA has is that there are a lot of very famous people you might associate with it. It seems like a nearly impossible problem to solve.

I do agree that birthplace would be a more interesting map, but I think it would be more interesting for tiny places. I think LA would suffer from the exact same problem.

I think there's also a lot of missing entries because the person's page and/or the town's page doesn't directly link to that person.

I figured the one lone dot in northern Idaho would be Randy Weaver. Nope. Upon checking it turns out there's no direct link between Randy Weaver and Naples, Idaho. The path goes through the Ruby Ridge page.

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