Continuing on the “more East/west” theme.
London is due east of Casablanca, Madrid, Dakar. It’s almost due North of Valencia.
Florida is due West of almost all the S American Pacific coast. Interestingly the eastern tip of Long Island is due north to part of the Atlantic coast of South America, admittedly fairly south where the continent narrows but it does show the orientation of the Eastern seaboard of North America is East-West.
The Ural mountain range, one of the traditional borders between Europe and Asia is east of the Persian gulf, and almost its due north of the Pakistan Iran border.
Vladivostok is East of Korea and almost due north of Hiroshima
Perhaps this is a differing of opinion of the meaning of due, but in no world is Florida “due west” of any part of South America. It may be west of parts of South America, but not due west. That would imply that Florida is in the South Pacific ocean.
However I will note that if Florida was an island just north of Panama it COULD in fact be due west of South America without being in the South Pacific!
Back in the cold war era, flights from western countries were generally prohibited from flying over Soviet or Chinese air space. This led to some flights heading off in what appeared to be the wrong direction. If you were flying from Paris to Tokyo, for example, your flight would take off and head for Anchorage. Then you’d fly the second half of your flight from Anchorage to Tokyo.
For the longest time I could not understand why Japan divided itself into East and West and not North and South like it should!
You have to look at the two major regions (Kansai, West and Kanto, East) where you can see that the difference in latitude is much smaller than the longitude.
As a small boy, I had an atlas that I loved to read, and I had a set of plastic states that I loved to assemble. As a result I had a very good map of the United States in my head.
But my lack of knowledge of how the world worked got in my way. At some point I learned about the Civil War and secession. I was convinced that someone had gotten a large saw, cut out the Confederacy “along the lines,” and floated it out to the middle of the Atlantic somewhere. I had no trouble visualizing what both pieces of the country would look like without the other, and I acted it out with my states on occasion. Then when the war was over and the Confederates lost, they floated it back and…glued it into place? I’m not sure.
Not really a geographical misconception, I suppose, but geography-adjacent.
And some were billed as “weight unknown” which lead one announcer(probably Jessie “The Body” Ventura) to quip, “How can their weight be unknown? They can’t get them to jump on a scale in the locker room?”
Although I once went to a bush league boxing match where for one of the fights it was obvious the intended opponent had no-showed. So they promoter found some schlub in the parking lot who for $50 (at most) agreed to be beaten up by a real boxer. We soon saw the guy had no boxing skills, no muscles, was overweight, had no stamina, etc. Just your typical couch potato 25yo suburban Midwesterner.
This guy’s, name, origin, and weight were all unknown. Because nobody bothered to check. He was willing to stand in the ring and that was good enough.
The ref stopped the fight halfway through the second round when the victim’s defense of his face finally failed. He’d yet to throw a punch. It was appalling to watch; the crowd started booing early and not at the schlub. The poor guy must’ve hurt something fierce tomorrow, but almost certainly suffered no lasting damage.
Not so much a misconception as a confusion – As fast as the world changed between roughly 1950 and 1970, in my early school days in the late 60s/early 70s there were in our textbooks and in the school library atlases and on the school walls, maps with representations of just about every permutation of the first, postwar, then, postcolonial world. It was a bit annoying for me having to look up when did Place A turn into Place B or cease to exist or become split. And of course Og help the pupils if some ancient teacher still thinks it’s the Gold Coast or Transjordan.
Re: Canadian Southernness – myself just looked it up, my northernmost CONUS stop, Coeur D’Alene ID, is north of anywhere I’ve been in the Great White as well.
Mercator maps are ineffective for determining whether A is actually “closer to” B anywhere beyond very short distances outside the tropics, but are good for visualizing what is further N/S/E/W on the grid.
To the point the vehicle license plate explicitly says “New Mexico, U.S.A.”
Frome the article, it seems a bunch of the more Western countries switched from Greenwich Time to Berlin Time in the early 40s for kinda obvious causes, but then never bothered to “liberate” the clock.
Another confusion, not misconception - I have a hard time remembering where Malaysia ends and Indonesia starts. I know that Malaysia is on the Malay peninsula (cause I is smart that way), but for some reason I think Malaysia includes far more islands that are actually Indonesia.
Micronesia, of course, is a mythical place.
I have a map of Europe that was printed in Germany in 1942 or 1943. It’s… interesting.
