For teaching purposes (options for a class project), I am looking for sources of monthly data that can be programmatically accessed and downloaded into a high-level language (say R or python).
I am interested in any topic, ranging from geophysical to socio-economical all the way to financial, although I am particularly interested in socio-economical sources.
Ideally, the data should be as centralized and as global as possible. By that, I mean that I would prefer a single (or a few) stable sources providing access to a variety of data from all over the world than a long list of "smaller" providers each giving access to smaller and more local amounts of monthly data (e.g., one gateway for monthly climate data all over the world rather than a long list of individual weather stations each with their own API).
