The other day I ran across this website, LICENSE PLATES OF THE WORLD, which has got to be the largest collection of – you guessed it! – license plates on the Internet (and not just because the title is in all caps, but that helps). If it's not, well, then please show me an online collection of license plates larger than this one. I dare you! I spent the better part of an hour going through and finding some truly bizarre plates from places like Antarctica and – get this – Texas!

It reminds me of when I was a kid, traveling the country with my family, kicking the back of the driver seat and asking, "Are we there yet?" No, my father would say, encouraging me to play one of the many car games kids played to pass the time. I always enjoyed the license plate game, where you had to find a plate from every state in the US. Alaska and Hawaii were usually quite rare, but if you spotted one you were pretty much ensured a victory.

Think of this website as an online, globalized version of that game. Only the license plates on the website are indexed by country and state, so you don't have to sit in the car and search the backs of random cars. Okay, so it's nothing like the game I played as a kid. But it does involve license plates!

Filed under: History, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, South America, Antarctica, United States