Yep. I was in Recife Brazil once, and never noticed it is probably the first city in the Americas to see the sun every day. At least that’s how it looks on a globe.
Regarding the “East Side” of Chicago.
I was a teenager living on the South Side when the song came out. It was a nine days’ wonder, with at least one radio station refusing to play the song at all because there was no “East Side” and a lot of media personalities (from the Loop and various parts of the North Side) making fun of the songwriters’ lack of knowledge about the city they were writing about.
They were right, sort of. To oversimplify, Chicago is typically divided into three “sides” – North, South, and West. (You can also talk about other large regions like the Northwest Side and the Southwest Side, but North, South, and West are the basics.) From this perspective, there is indeed no “East Side.”
Ah! But as has been pointed out above Chicago is also divided into dozens of smaller neighborhoods, one of which, way down by the Indiana border, is known as the “East Side.” The media people who mocked the song had never heard of the East Side. It was pointed out to them by some civic leaders in that part of town–who were of course ignored. (The people of the East Side had little access to big media and little political clout.) There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
Note that an area not far from downtown and adjacent to the lake is being rebranded as “the New East Side.” Not sure how this changes the equation.
Was spellbound with modern history from the time I could read.
Was baffled how a man from Australia, could come to rule Germany.
Geography followed along soon after.
It could depend on the time of year, but South America has a pretty sharp corner, there, so it might be true year-round. If you really want to get down to it, it’d be different spots, but probably still in the same city.
Many years ago when I lived in Houston a work colleague from the UK was going to a conference in Los Angeles. He looked at a map, saw that I-10 connected the two cities so suggested that I should “pop over” for the weekend. I replied with something like “Dude, that’s 2000 miles and for half of that I’m still in f-ing Texas!”
Yeah. Last year I was booking a flight from California to Ecuador. I had the option to connect through either Houston or Miami. The Miami option “felt” like it would have involved significant backtracking to fly from there to Quito, but upon looking at a map I realized it really wouldn’t have. Quito is more or less directly south of Miami. (I still went with the Houston flight for other reasons, though).
Maybe they could talk to Journey about South Detroit.
I’ve lived in VA or NC for well over 50 years. I always think of Atlanta, GA, as being pretty much directly south of Raleigh and Richmond. Heck, I’ve driven there several dozen times and I STILL think I should just head directly south. I have no idea why I can’t get this straight in my head.
In 2012 we visited my daughter in Peru, where she was in the Peace Corps. We flew from Kansas City to Houston to Lima. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Lima, although on the Pacific Coast, was still somewhat EAST of Houston.
It would be almost as accurate to call it East America rather than South America.
Years ago someone on another board said that they would be in Luzern, Switzerland, and suggested to meet up. We decided on a day to meet.
A week later they canceled. They were going to Lausanne, not Luzern. Just 215 km (134 miles) away. A bit too far to go after work.
The first time I told my wife that when going to Detroit from Atlanta, we’d be going pretty much due north, actually slightly east of north. She refused to believe me. Even after looking a world map, she wouldn’t believe it. She refused to believe that the straight looking border with Canada is a strictly East-West line.
When I brought her a US map, she finally conceded because it had lines of longitude close enough that you could see that they were on the same line.
The eastward shift of South America really gets people. I run a trivia contest and one of the questions is how many other countries will you fly over if you went in a straight line from Cleveland to the Galapagos Islands? The correct answer is 1 or 2 depending, on exactly where you land in the Galapagos - Honduras and maybe El Salvador or Nicaragua. Without fail the answers were always at least 4-5.
That’s a good comparison!
I’ve also had friends ask me if I’m going drive through Atlanta on my way to Orlando, FL, from Raleigh. I guess that I COULD go through Atlanta.
I have to admit I had to look at a map to verify this fact. That’s when I also realized that Atlanta is almost due south of Cincinnati. I never would have thought that to be true either.
Well, also the US and Ecuador.
The Galápagos being ~700 miles west of the Ecuadorian mainland helps the confusion. Lotta folks assume they’re 25-50 miles offshore. Not so.
Even more so: Easter Island is 2,300 miles from the Chile coast.
Or New Zealand being a 3 hour plane ride from Australia.
I have never been able to shake the notion that Ottawa is north of Montreal. It’s not; they are basically even in latitude.
This comes from the fact that growing up where I did, the water was basically “south.” If I walked south far enough I’d be in Lake Ontario. And so, going to Montreal, the water to my right, well, that’s south. so I must be going east. Therefore, Montreal was east of where I lived. Ottawa, which I’d have to veer left AWAY from the water, is therefore, north.
In fact, Montreal is much more northeast than it felt.
Just realized a good chunk of Virginia is west of West Virginia. Is that area called Western Virginia?