It’s a shorter drive from Detroit to Atlanta than from Detroit to Ironwood, MI.
There are no natural lakes in Ohio other than Erie.
The downhill skiers in Sochi had a perfect view of Sarah Palin’s house (no, not really).
Iceland has a more hospitable climate than Greenland.
A thing that I didn’t realise – once again, was sent to the atlas for verification. A rather analogous thing in Europe: Antwerp is an important port, but it’s not on Belgium’s short North Sea coast – it’s some way inland, on the Schelde river. You have to sail up the Schelde estuary, through the Netherlands, before crossing the border into Belgium and reaching Antwerp.
(Shakespeare, of course, seems to have thought that the modern-day Czech Republic [Bohemia] had a seacoast; but the general consensus is, he was just lousy at geography.)
We’re given to understand that Greenland’s name, resulted from an early exercise in public relations: the Norse discoverers and promoters of the region – seeking for further settlement of it – named it in a way suggesting that it was more lush and welcoming, than was truly the case.
I love maps and I like to think I know pretty much where most places are, but I still tend to think of Bermuda as being a Caribbean island. And I used to get the Maldives and the Seychelles mixed up, but I think I know which is which now!
The idea that California is partly north of Canada does make my head hurt a bit, though. And the idea that here, in the south of England, I live further north than most Canadians…
When I was in Guatemala, I met a North American guy who asked me where I was from. I said Maine. He said he was from Canada, and I said, “Oh, our neighbors to the South!” He startled for a moment.
I have trouble picturing the North American continent without Maine hanging out there, with water delineating its north and west boundaries. I know Canada is glommed onto it there, but the outline of the US is in my head, isolated from its neighbors.
I always place Ireland farther south relative to Britain than it is. When I think of Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield I imagine them as as far north as Belfast but they’re at roughly the same latitude as Dublin. I also imagine London to be roughly the same latitude as Dublin when it is quite a bit farther south. In contrast, I place the Isle of Man farther south than its actual location, imagining it is just a wee bit north of the Dublin-Holyhead run.
Fifty miles is much further than anyone can see across the ocean. You can’t see the mainland of Russia from the mainland of Alaska. There is a tiny, remote Alaskan island, Little Diomede, in the middle of the Bering Strait, which would is uninhabited were it not for a small US border garrison, from which you can see another small, remote island, Big Diomede, which belongs to Russia, and which would also be uninhabited were it not for a small Russian border garrison.
So yes, technically it is true that you can see Russia from Alaska, but for all practical purposes it is nonsense.
from which
Us veterans of the Cold War were always intimately aware of the reverse trip: an ICBM launched from Russia flies more-or-less north until it crosses over the polar region… same with over-the-pole bombers.
The Canadians were never thrilled of being the area that short-falling missiles and destroyed bombers would be crashing.
North is where the end of the world would come from. Except for those Soviet boomers off the coasts.
I see this factoid repeated often, it is not true. Ohio has many natural lakes, 110 of them larger than 5 acres:
http://www.epa.state.oh.us/portals/35/inland_lakes/05_Natural_lakes_in_ohio_1991.pdf
Well doggone! I stand corrected. Thanks for the info. I’ve heard this so many times I was sure that was true.
Of course, Ohio still stinks.
The Tri-Cities area of northeast Tennessee is closer to Canada than Memphis.
Actually, you can. Siberian mountains are visible from the high ground at Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. New York Times Cite
This. A hundred times this. If the Eagle and the Bear had ever decided to dance, we would have been among the first trampled.
That must be heading straight up to the top of Ohio and into Lake Erie. I always heard that growing up in Bristol, but never checked it out until now.
In the old soap opera All My Children, which was set in Pennsylvania, the state did have a coast. Nobody ever figured out how that happened.
The city of Stockton, California, which is 75 miles east of San Francisco, is a deepwater port on the San Joaquin River.
The ski resorts in Park City, Utah are closer to Los Angeles than the ski resorts in Northern California.
But it does, as has been pointed out – on Lake Erie.
Yeah, but they weren’t in the Lake Erie part of the state, they were in the Philadelphia part of the state.
Hmm. They couldn’t have just gone down the river then? It was a port for large ocean-going ships?
They could have, but they didn’t. They were always visiting the Pennsylvania Sea (as fans called it) to hang out at the beach.