I’ve always been fascinated by the “Three Parallel Rivers” of China. They split off and head in wildly different directions.
The Yangtze ends in the East China Sea.
The Mekong ends in Vietnam, at the South China Sea.
The Salween ends in the Andaman Sea.
And then, not too far away is the Brahmaputra, which ends in the Bay of Bengal.
It wasn’t that long ago that I learned that Michigan and Indiana were originally in the Central TZ and at different points in the 20th Century rolled over into EST except for counties whose economies were tied to the next state over.
We also have the Okavango River, which also has an inland delta, in the middle of a desert.
The California Delta ends about 75 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
You have to be careful when using the phrase “Mississippi Delta.” Are you referring to the delta area of northwest Mississippi - an alluvial plain formed by the floodplains of the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers, and decidedly inland - or are you referring to what is properly called the Mississippi River Delta, in extreme southeast Louisiana.
Oh, yeah, I was made aware of the difference last time we all discussed Ode to Billie Joe. I’m fully recovered, now.
I was definitely adult years old when I learned the former was even a thing, always assuming the latter. Although IME now, people are pretty much always referring to the former.
Well, I just learned today that the Mississippi Delta and the Mississippi River Delta are two different things located several hundred miles apart.
I only recently realized Spitsbergen and Svalbard were not two separate islands somewhere east of Greenland and north of Norway. Spitsbergen is the main island, and the old name for the archipelago, and Svalbard the new (since 1925) name for the archipelago.
I mostly associated either name as staging ground for expeditions to the North Pole, staging ground for rescue missions for the polar expeditions and at least once staging ground for the rescue mission for the rescue mission.
As a kid, I believed that Gibraltar was an island smack in the middle of the Straits of Gibraltar, probably because all those images from Prudential Insurance made it look like an island, and because of the way people talked about it being an isolated British territory. I was flabbergasted to eventually learn that it’s actually on the Spanish mainland, and isn’t isolated from the continent of Europe by any body of water.
I was similarly mistaken about Hong Kong, which I thought was also on a separate island. In fact, only Hong Kong Island itself and collection of other islands are separate, but Kowloon peninsula is very definitely connected to the mainland. I was in high school when a classmate, who was similarly mistaken, showed me a map confirming that The Crown Colony of Hong Kong wasn’t separated from Red China by water.
Speaking of Hong Kong, and not the topic of this thread, but it still bugs me, is the topic of Macau. The media made a big deal about the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. There were TV spots about it, a Dave Barry column, a new James Bond book, and eve a countdown to handover. Yet nobody made such a big deal when Macau, a Portuguese colony under a similar long-term lease, was handed over to China in 1999. It was barely even mentioned in the news. I take this as evidence that our media still too British-centered.
Macao, by the way, apparently IS mostly a separate island. But I never had any thoughts about it, one way or the other.
TIL.
(can’t find the right blush icon in that large assortment)
And in a weird juxtaposition, there’s a Spanish exclave named Ceuta, which is across the straits from Gibraltar, on the African side, bordering Morocco.
Yeah, I remember my college roommate from Arkansas referring to “the Delta”, and me pointing out that the river delta is in Louisiana. His answer was 'I don’t know why, but that’s what that area’s called."
And while Spain claims Gibraltar, Morocco claims Ceuta. Also claimed are a couple other Spanish enclaves along the Moroccan Mediterranean coast: Melilla and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera. That last one is somewhat unusual. It originally was an island, but a storm washed a bunch of sand into the sea right there and turned it into a peninsula.
Not my geograhpical misconception, but one that has me kind of pissed off.
There have been some news noise about “Noah’s Ark” in Turkey, and obviously it is nonsense. But then I see this thing about some grifter who claims to have found coral formations in the Red Sea that look like they could have formed on chariot wheels, which would be evidence of the Red Sea crossing. These formations were found in the Gulf of Aqaba, which is indeed part of the Red Sea – between the Sinai peninsula and Arabia. I cannot even imagine what these con artists are trying to pull, but the broader geographic ignorance of people in general might just give it some traction.
I think I was around 30 when I found out Delta Blues is from the former, not the latter.
Yes, but there’s a geographical misconception there too. Those idiots are looking for the ark on Mount Ararat, whereas the bible clearly states it ended its supposed journey in the mountains of Ararat - an entire different place,
The book, The Artic Grail talks about those.
Is not Mt Ararat one of the mountains of Ararat?
Not at the time, no - on looking into it further I understated the situation, there was no Mount Ararat in biblical times. Apparently it received that name around the Middle Ages due to Christian tradition linking it to the biblical region.
So where were the “mountains of Ararat” thought to be in Biblical times? In more detail:
Wiki tells me there is a not-very-mountainous area in present-day Armenia using that name, and there was a similarly-named region in Armenia maybe 1000 years ago. So well post Biblical Flood times.
Beyond that I’m disinclined to research; just not an area I have enough background in to dig into effectively.
Assuming you mean The Arctic Grail?