History of the Wal-Mart Empire

I offer no opinion on the merits of shopping at Wal-Mart, but I feel compelled to point out this cool video from the Wall Street Journal. "The Diffusion of Wal-Mart" is actually a series of maps of store locations, from 1962 to the present. Watch as Sam Walton’s big boxes sprout up in northwestern Arkansas, then across the South, and finally up to New England.

It reminds me of those time-lapse maps in the 1980s that showed how killer bees were going to move into Texas, then head north to blanket the entire country. (Current apiary atlases seem to be less alarmist.)

Boing Boing discusses the maps here; it also has a few screen shots in case the WSJ has taken down the video.