The OP is closer in time to the USSR, Yugoslavia, East Germany and Czechoslovakia existing as countries than it is to present day. :eek:
I had a neighbor, a native American, of incredible dumbness. She once asked me if Hawaii was part of California, and if it was located in southern California.
She had three children (all by different fathers, only one of them paying kid support), two of them of school age, both of those noticeably dumb too.
I began to be more consciously aware, some years ago, that I had little-to-no idea where a lot of foreign places were, that I saw mentioned in the news. Eventually, I discovered Google Maps. Then, when I saw a news story of any interest, involving some place I couldn’t place on a map, I’d look it up.
For example, I had only a vague idea where Ukraine was (I thought it was on the western edge of Russia but father north, like near Poland), and no idea at all where Crimea was. When those broke into the news, I went to Google Maps and found out where they are.
Now, alas, the late lamented Google Maps is a thing of the past. The new version, so much maligned by so many people, does not function at all on my computer. All I get is a totally blank screen. I’ve looked at a few other map sites, and haven’t found a good one. They all give me a blank screen or function so poorly as to be unusable.
Can anyone suggest other on-line map sites I could try?
I always mentally want Cambodia to be where Thailand is and vice versa. I reconcile involvement in Cambodia during the Indochina War by thinking that Laos ends prematurely and that there’s a little strip that connects to Cambodia-Thailand.
True story. My family used to spend a week each summer at a fishing camp along the MN-Canada border. When I returned to school one year and we had the obligatory “what did you do during your summer vacation” moment, I told the teacher I had been fishing near the Canadian border. She turned to the class and said “Isn’t that nice, class? Stillowned spent her summer in the Arctic.” Who knew Canada had only a northern border?
Well it is darn cold up there, ay?
The state of New Mexico puts out a magazine called, logically enough, “New Mexico Magazine”. They run a regular feature called “One of Our 50 is Missing”, about New Mexicans who have had encounters with people who had no clue that New Mexico is a US state. Here’s the archive of columns for the last couple of years:
As a born and bred Yooper, I’m often amazed at the number of times Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is left off maps. Once back in the 80’s - the Michigan Department of Education put out a document which left the UP off the state map on the cover - which was bad enough. But when the Feds do it - it just seems so much more wronger.
I worked for a large company, and was in a group that had people in multiple locations across the US. I worked in the Kansas City, Missouri office.
We had an all-hands teleconference, and one of the slides was a map of the US, with stars indicating where each group was located. And there was our star, in Montana.
For the non-US folks (and probably some of them) - the US Postal Service state code for Missouri is MO - Montana has MT. Too many states beginning with M.
On the other hand: I saw somewhere a pair of tests. One of the tests had a list of US cities, and the other had a list of German cities. In either case, the objective of the test was to put the cities in order of population. Both tests were given to both American and German students. The Americans outperformed the Germans on the test of German cities, and the Germans outperformed the Americans on the test of American cities.
What’s interesting is why this happens: Ignorance can actually be itself a sort of knowledge. Often, a test-taker confronted with a pair of foreign city names will have heard of one, but not have heard of the other. The test-taker is likely to then conclude “Well, the one I’ve heard of is probably larger”, and that conclusion is often right. On the other hand, with domestic cities, the test-taker is likely to have heard of most or all of them, and so can’t decide between them.
You may have seen this elsewhere, but for those who are curious, this test is referenced in Gerd Gigerenzer’s very interesting book Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions. I think it was “here are two cities: which has a greater population,” though, rather than “put these cities in order.”
This isn’t what you were asking for, but a while ago I found this site, Lizard Point Geography Quizzes, which is a pretty well set up website to quiz you on where countries are, grouped by continent. I was bad at geography and wanted to be better at knowing where countries are. After doing those quizzes for a while, I’m much better at knowing off the top of my head where countries are, and what borders they have, and all that. It’s helpful for news stories.
I don’t know if it would be helpful to you, but other nerds like me might like it.
I have a friend from Maine who believes Maine is the most northerly of the contiguous 48 states. I blame the Mercator projection. Classrooms need more globes.
That one can’t be blamed on Mercator. Mercator maps have all of the lines of latitude as horizontal lines, so it’s easy to see at a glance which of two points is further north. Most maps of the US specifically, however, are some sort of conical projection, which will minimize distortions of both shape and area over the extent of the US. This works pretty well for a country the shape and size of the US, but it’s not entirely without cost: on such a projection, the latitude lines will be curved, and Maine will be higher up on the page than Lake of the Woods, MN.
And for what it’s worth, there are perfectly good and legitimate reasons to use the Mercator projection, for certain applications. Google Maps uses it, for instance, and it’s the right choice there. But a general-purpose hang-on-the-classroom-wall map is not one of those applications where it’s appropriate.
I have a friend who believes New Mexico is part of Mexico and that Chicago is a state.
Oh well, wrong projection. My statement on globes still stands.
I just found out that Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island.
Nope, it’s in Washington, on the banks of the Columbia River.
??? I had to hit the mapbook; I’d never heard of Vancouver, WA. Keen!
You just combated ignorance that I didn’t even know I had! “Unknown unknowns!”