Your geographical misconceptions

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#642

Aw, don’t be embarrassed. Scotland was fun because of the bollocks. We rode a coach tour, and when we got to Edinburgh, our regular tour guide was replaced with a bombastic 6-and-a-half-foot-tall Scotsman with a kilt. He would probably have made you cringe with all the lies he was telling, but I laughed my ass off. At one point we passed by the birthplace of the man who invented chloroform. He’s credited for ensuring the birth of Mary, Queen of Scots, thus he’s a national hero. We then got to attend the Festival of the Haggiss at our hotel.

Is it true that Scots consider the current Queen Elizabeth as the First because they refuse to recognize the existence of the actual first Elizabeth, who ordered the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots? The tour guide said even the postal code reflects that.

#643

Elizabeth I of England was never queen of Scotland; her cousin Mary was, as her title indicates. Mary’s son James inherited both the crown of Scotland and that of England, becoming James VI of Scotland but James I of England.

#644

No, it’s because Queen Elizabeth I was never queen of Scotland. She was just queen of England, so the current Queen Elizabeth is the first Elizabeth who is monarch of Scotland.

#645

That’s a really bizarre one - there are no popular stories about the birth of Mary Stewart other than the fact that her dad, the king, died in a different palace 5 days later. The medicinal use of chloroform was developed in Scotland by an obstetrician, James Young Simpson, but 300 years later. He isn’t particularly well known, let alone a hero. I can’t begin to work out how they got the story you heard out of that.

Greyfriars Kirkyard wasn’t a cemetery at the time of the original Black Death in the 14th century. I think coffins probably were piled on top of the remains of old ones and covered only with shallow soil in a lot of old cemeteries, but that happened over centuries and didn’t need a plague to happen.

The stuff about Burke is true.

#646

Heh, I understand all that because of operas, not history books.

#647

The post boxes. Wikipedia is my cite. :slightly_smiling_face:

#648

Thank you - a UK native of 36 years, and the first time I came across this neat little bit of history.

#649

I was always under the impression that the southern border of California lay along a parallel. Turns out the eastern end of the line, where it meets the Colorado at Arizona, is almost exactly 12.5 miles farther north than the western end at the Pacific.

#650

Yeah, that was a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo:

The southern border of California was designated as a line from the junction of the Colorado and Gila rivers westward to the Pacific Ocean, so that it passes one Spanish league south of the southernmost portion of San Diego Bay. This was done to ensure that the United States received San Diego and its excellent natural harbor, without relying on potentially inaccurate designations by latitude.

#651

Sorry if this has been mentioned; I don’t see how to search a particular thread.

Rome is east of San Marino (I had hoped to say “Vatican City is east of…”, but it isn’t. Very nearly, though).

Also, oranges are not merely legal in the Orange Free State but some there make their living by growing them.

#652

Click the magnifying glass at upper right, check the box labeled “Search this topic”, then enter your search terms into the box. Then wait a couple seconds for a dropdown to populate with the results. You can click one of those results to scroll within the thread to that spot.

#653

Even quicker: press control-F and fill in the search box.

#654

We’ve gone around that bush a couple of times.

For some people on some browsers sometimes that works to open the Discourse search which works great as you say.

For other people on other browsers at other times that will open the browser’s “find on page” feature. Which only works on whatever subset of the thread is loaded into the browser’s local copy. IIRC we established that’s normally about 50 posts total. So very much useless for large threads.

#655

Krakatoa is actually west of Java, not East of Java.

Despite the geographic error in the film’s title, its makers chose to leave it unchanged, apparently believing that it was a more exotic title than " Krakatoa, West of Java ."

#656

Well sure, after it blew up

#657

Well, when someone conspires to have you assassinated, execution is not the wrong way to go.

#658

And, apparently, the Mexicans were ready to hand over all of Californian, Baja too, but We just asked for Alta California. (In the day, Baja wasn’t worth much, admittedly).

#659

Wow, really? But that’s okay, it would’ve made maps really hard to fit on one piece of paper… as it is, we have to move AK and HI into little boxes off the west coast…

Come to think of it, I’m all for cleaning up the boundaries on all our maps. That little notch in northern Minnesota? It’s mostly a lake, and… BAM, it’s Canadian, now. Upper Michigan? You’re part of Wisconsin (or you can be Superior, the 51st state). Kentucky Bend, the fifteen people who live there send their kids to school in Tennessee anyhow, so ::poof:: goodbye. And Colorado, you’re SO close to being square… make it so.

#660

While we are at it…

That irritating notch on Connecticut’s northern border with Massachusetts, gone! That is just asking to be a straight line.

Same with Michigan’s southern borders with Indiana and Ohio - boom! Straight now.

That little strip on the New Mexico/Oklahoma border - nuh-uh! That’s going in line with the Texas/New Mexico border.

Point Roberts, WA? You mean Point Roberts, BC, amiright?

#661

And do something with Maryland. That state’s shape is just… wrong.

And while we’re at it, get rid of that shit hole called Indiana. Divvy it up between Illinois and Ohio.