Initially, I thought you were talking about the “New Yorker” map of the USA View of the World from 9th Avenue - Wikipedia
See also this “equal population” map Population map: Use our interactive map to figure out how many flyover states it takes to equal one New York City. which is just cool.
New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Middle Desert, Upper Desert, South Desert and New Zealand. Sorry, but you’re gonna have to blame the British publishers Mills & Boon for my ignorance since I learned this as a pre-teen reading Harlequins.
I’m goin’ back to Indiana!
Indiana here I come-- Com’on Tito, you can do it!
I was just trying to add precision to that comment.
Your post didn’t specify that population was the measure. That made the statement potentially ambiguous, especially because when I see a statement like that, the first thing that comes to mind is geographic area, not population.
And I think that a statement like “New York state is mostly New York City,” calls for specifying that the population of adjoining states are being taken into account.
I think it makes sense to specify all that.
Growing up in the UK, I knew the names and approximate locations of Florida, California, New York* and Washington (though admittedly the latter was due solely to being a grunge fan). I could name most of the states, though I would have missed a few (Mississippi? That’s a river! West Virginia? That’s just the western part of Virginia, right?) and added some that don’t exist (New England). I also would have pronounced Arkansas the way it looks, and I would only have been able to name it at all because of Bill Clinton.
*Even today, I can’t reliably locate New York on a blank state map, and I’ve lived in the US for 20 years and visited NYC several times.
To get a feeling on the geographical knowledge of “normal” people from the UK, you might want to have a look at yesterday’s episode of “Richard Osman’s House of games” (S01E14). It is readily available on Youtube (I am not sure about the legality of the video, so I won’t provide a link).
From minute 16:26 to 22:00 there is a section misleadingly called “Where in Kazakhstan”, that deals with locating things on a map. In this episode is is things within the US.
The contestants are not completely but are in fact celebrities (far from A-listers, of course). But their geographical knowledge is probably not far of from “everyday normal people”.
The old Jersey isn’t in the old England either.
All you have to do is look for Long Island, it’s at the western end of that. This works whether it’s a blank map of the state or the US as a whole.
When I was growing up, we had Trivial Pursuit (Genus II edition). The answer given for “how many states make up the USA?” was 52. Presumably, the US version didn’t include that answer (probably didn’t even include that question). Wikipedia doesn’t seem to think there was a UK version of the game, though.
I played Trivial Pursuit a lot back in the day but never encountered that question, although I did hear there were extra questions not included in the US sets. One question in the Canadian version supposedly had to do with Reagan being the only president to marry a pregnant bride. But I’m curious what your version thought were the other two states. Washington DC presumably. Puerto Rico too?
Alaska and Hawaii, most certainly. It depends on whether you think “the US consists of 50 states, including the two that don’t fit on the map” or whether its “50 states, plus 2.”
I’ve never heard of anyone mistaking the Lower 48 as 50 and then Hawaii and Alaska are extra. But I can imagine someone mistaking DC for a state.
Also, Georgetown, a private university in Washington, DC.
And I’ve known people to think that American University is the same as one of the above, because I don’t even know.
And Eastern Washington University is big enough to get mixed in on occasion. It’s a public school in Eastern Washington state.
Well, if you want to get into the local Georges, there’s
Georgetown University, a private Catholic university in Washington, D.C.
George Mason University, a public university in Fairfax, Virginia
and, okay, as you say, go ahead and add:
Just started reading the thread, but can’t resist a challenge: Western Australia (Perth), South Australia (Adelaide), Northern Australia (Darwin), Queensland (Brisbane), New South Wales (Canberra, and also Sydney, the capital of the whole place), Victoria (Melbourne), & Tasmania (Hobart). Your totality also includes Christmas Island, Norfolk Island, and a couple of other places.
As for your list, good going, but “New England” is not a state; it’s a region, like “The Pacific Northwest,” “The Deep South,” or “The Bible Belt.”
The capital city is usually centrally located. The idea is that it should not present any undue burden for an elected representative to travel there. The largest city is a state is usually a port city. That’s why NYC is huge, but Albany is the capital of New York, and Chicago is huge, but Springfield is the capital of Illinois.
In states without large port cities, the capital often did end up becoming the largest city-- Indianapolis, Indiana, for example.
Yeah, we’ve been going on about New England for four pages now.