Geography

We’ve all gotten so used to seeing maps of the world in cylindrical and pseudo-cylindrical projections, that our sense of where things are placed and their sizes is pretty distorted compared to reality. RealLifeLore explains many misperceptions of our nation’s geography.

In 1992, 12 containers fell off of a ship in the Pacific Ocean. Among the lost cargo – 29,000 rubber duckies. But those ducks would serve a greater purpose, helping oceanographers map currents based on where they washed ashore. Half as Interesting explains.

Despite the crowds, costs, crime, and other drawbacks of big cities, people flock together in densely packed areas, leaving vast areas of the world undeveloped. Wendover Productions looks at the reasons that over 50% of the global population occupies just 1% of the land.

RealLifeLore ponders what is a fairly simple question to answer – what’s the farthest point away from you on Earth at this very moment? Our antipode is far off the coast of Perth, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Find your opposite spot here.

AlternateHistoryHub teaches us that there’s actually already a place that could have qualified as another continent, though the one big problem is that the majority of Zealandia sits underwater. He then imagines what might have happened if it hadn’t been submerged.

“The surface of a sphere cannot be represented as a plane without some form of distortion.” That pretty much sums up the fact that there’s really no way to accurately represent the earth in flat maps, as Vox explains. After you stop saying “Winkel Tripel,” go play with this.