My sister used to be a university geography professor in Texas, and for the first day of freshman geography class she’d pass out a blank sheet of paper. As an exercise she asked each freshman to draw the lower 48 states from memory. She said the results were pretty comical. I’ll ask her to see if she has any of them scanned and posted.
Portugal is really east. So east that it shares the same time zone as the U.K.
Which is another thing. The Central European Time zone is really wide. At least Spain, and probably also France, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands should also be in the same time zone as the U.K.
Speaking of time zones, I can tell somebody which states are in Eastern and which are in Pacific. The rest of them? No clue.
The first time I learned Rome and New York are at the same latitude really confused me. It’s still weird. Link to latitude comparison.
But each time zone is, on average, 15° wide. Why should the CET be any wider?
Just last year, I got to teach a New Zealander coworker a geographic mnemonic, which he thought was great. 'Twas “HOMES” for the names of the Great Lakes. I use that even to this day, decades after I learned it, yet I have no idea which order the lakes actually are in, going from East to West, or West to East.
I’ve read that a lot of people don’t realize New Mexico is actually a state in the U.S. New Mexico magazine has a section of stories about the misconception. I admit though not knowing where a lot of countries are (example: where the heck is Belarus?)
That one’s easy: BEarLeftAtRUSsia and there you are 
.
Yes, I just made that up. No, it’s not very good - so sue me.
Bela = White, so Belarus is the Land of the White Rus. Not to be confused with the Kievan Rus or Russia herself, but it does give you an idea of where the larger group of Rus peoples hail from.
Yeah, I visited Peru last year for the first time and was pleased to learn the west coast of SA is the same time zone as Eastern Standard Time.
Reno, NV is more west than Los Angeles.
I was surprised to learn how close The Bahamas are to Florida, and how far out in the Atlantic Bermuda is.
Texas is so big, if you flipped it on it’s western point, the eastern edge would reach the Pacific, and if you flipped it on it’s eastern edge, the western point would reach the Atlantic. I have not had the pleasure of driving across the Lone Star state, but I hear it goes on and on.
For a long time I thought Mongolia was just a Chinese province. I didn’t know they were an independent country.
You would cease to think that if you ever had to drive between them. An hour from L.A. is just more L.A.
Visitors can be surprised at how large California is. I have had people ask if they can visit Yosemite as a day trip from San Francisco - it’s about 4 hours drive each way with low traffic. And making a day trip between SF and LA - just no - it’s a 6-8 hour drive between the two.
I’ve done it from Tracy and it wasn’t particularly strenuous but I probably wouldn’t want to do it if I were in San Francisco per se. If I had to do it all over again I’d still do it, even considering that it would be my second time there. I merely left pretty early and got back at a reasonable time. If I were in SF I would have had to leave AND return too early/late.
It always amused me when I lived in El Paso that I was closer to San Diego than I was to Houston. And that we’d go skiing in Ruidoso, NM, which is farther south than Atlanta.
I did drive from El Paso to CT once, and yes, it’s a slog. I didn’t even make it to Arkansas that first day, although I wasn’t exactly pushing it either.
This is threadshitting. From the TOS:
Please don’t do it again.
More of a misperception than a misconception, but I’ve been surfing south-facing beaches in Southern California my whole life and still imagine that if I could magically paddle straight out to the other side of the ocean I’d end up in Japan and not New Zealand.
Gander, NFLD is slightly (by 3 km) closer to London, England than to London, Ontario.
Part of Florida is in the Central time zone and part of Oregon is in the Mountain zone. This means for one hour every year a clock in an Atlantic coast state reads the same as one in a Pacific coast state.
Between 2 and 3 AM on the night DST ends.
My son in Seattle is further north than me in Montreal.
There is place in Canada at the same latitude as the northern border of California (Pt. Pelee at 42 deg N)
Because the geographical and official CET do not match.
The CET time zone, were it drawn by purely geographical terms, would consist of exactly the area between meridians 7°30′ E and 22°30′ E.
Reality is that the western most point is at approximately 15° W and the eastern most point is at 30° E, which means the official CET is approximately 45° wide.
Mind blown! That is a great one!
The UP, of course!
As a kid, I strongly believed (and for long refused to be convinced otherwise) that the UP was a part of Wisconsin, NOT that oven-mitt shaped state across the lake from me.