Both of these countries neighbor two of the most well known African countries in West Africa and yet they’re two of the most obscure and unknown in the same region. Benin neighbors Nigeria, and Togo neighbors Ghana. A lot of people know Ghana and Nigeria but I’m sure when it comes to Togo and Benin, they’re very obscure and unknown. For anyone that’s familiar with either of them, tell me some fun and unique facts.
I was scrolling on my map northwest of Birmingham AL, and noticed this odd looking area. It's just south of Williamsburg, AL. I've seen paths like this before, they're typically ATV trails, but they don't typically clear out large areas like this.
Could this be maybe a rural housing development area? I'm just curious, and I'm not a geography expert, so I'm wondering if someone has some insight on things like this.
A reef taller than many skyscrapers remained absent from detailed maps beneath the waters off northern Australia. Rising more than 500 meters, approximately 1,640 feet, it reaches toward the surface from a much deeper seabed. Its summit still lies about 40 meters underwater.
Australian scientists identified the structure on October 20, 2020, while surveying the northern Great Barrier Reef. Robin Beaman of James Cook University led the expedition aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor.
The original expedition announcement described the first discovery of a tall detached reef in the region in more than 120 years. Its importance extended beyond height. Mapping exposed a substantial habitat in a comparatively poorly explored part of an internationally recognized marine ecosystem.
Compare the cities of Basra and Beersheba. They are on the same latitude, less than a thousand kilometers away from each other and the elevation differs by about 200 meters. Yet, the yearly mean temperature in Basra is 27 C / 80 F and in Beersheba it is 21 C / 69 F.
What gives? The Mediterranean and Persian gulf aren’t large enough to have ocean currents. Both have arid climates (190 mm annually as opposed to 130 mm)
I’m not necessarily looking for a place that’s overcast and foggy 24/7, like the Bay Area in California. I mean a city or region where the sunlight intensity or UV index isn’t as strong. Think of it as adjusting the brightness of the smartphone or laptop you’re using to possibly reply to this question. You don’t need the brightness at 100% maximum level, or completely dark at 0% where you can’t see the screen. You need it somewhere in the middle.
Are there any cities that fit this description? Where there is still regular sunlight, and not 200+ days of fog or overcast, or months at a time without direct sunlight, but the sun isn’t blaring down on you and burning your body up. Like the sun is shining frequently, but it’s just in the background of the sky where you can’t feel it. The brightness is there, but the heat and stickiness is completely absent.
Maybe a city with a mild climate, all 4 seasons, but no summer heat, no 90+ or 100+ degree F temperatures, and no heat intensity from the sun. Maybe a city with constant spring or fall weather for 8-9 months, then cold winter weather, then back to what it was before, with the sun still dimly shining in the sky background.
Tamanrasset is a large city with over 100k people. The roads leading from it to the east north and south to Niger/Mali are all asphalted. The city itself has most of the services a city should have like running water, electricity, cars, etc.
However on the Malian and Nigerien side and even the Libyan side, there are a lot fewer people and almost no cities and paved roads.
Question for flat Earth believers: How does your map explain the route Japanese planes took from their carriers to Pearl Harbor—and the distances involved across the Pacific?
I built a free Chrome extension that fixes a quirk of Google Maps in mainland China. In satellite view, the roads and labels are about 500 m off the photos.
The cause is GCJ-02. Chinese law requires maps of the mainland to use it instead of WGS-84, and it shifts every point by a smooth but irregular 100–700 m offset that varies by location. Google draws its roads and labels using Chinese map data, so they're in GCJ-02, but its satellite photos aren't shifted. Around central Shanghai the roads sit about 480 m east-south-east of where they really are.
The before/after image is the Lujiazui district in Shanghai. On the left is Google Maps as it normally looks. On the right, with the extension on, the photos have been moved onto the roads.
Some details I found interesting while working on this:
- The offset formula leaked years ago and is widely re-implemented, but it has no closed-form inverse; you have to solve it iteratively.
- Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan aren't shifted, so borders like Shenzhen–Hong Kong are where the two systems meet.
- Google itself serves pre-aligned imagery to users it thinks are in China. Everyone else sees them misaligned.
Privacy
It doesn't collect, store or send any of your data. The only thing it saves is the on/off switch, and the only extra requests it makes are for Google's own photo tiles, without your cookies.
Caveats
- It moves the photos onto the offset roads rather than the roads back to the truth, since labels, places, search and directions are all offset too. So the aligned map is still about 500 m from true GPS.
- A photo tile straddling a border can't be half-shifted, so there's a visible seam right on the line.
- Google's map data for mainland China is often years out of date anyway, so newer roads may be missing.
One interesting thing I noticed is that despite a good geographic location, there are some areas that remain significantly poorer than their neighbors with the 3 subdivisions in 3 different countries as good examples.
West Virginia is surrounded by more prosperous states and it's eastern tip is just a 2 hour drive from the DC metro area. In fact, only a 4 hour drive separated Mc Dowell and Loudoun counties, the poorest and richest counties in all of America.
Guizhou is located between Chongqing and the industrial cities in the Pearl Valley but remains one of China's poorest.
Pskov Oblast is located strategically between the 2 largest Russian cities, Moscow and St Petersburg, and wealthy EU cities like Tallinn and Riga but remain much less developed than both neighboring regions.
One thing all 3 share in common is the lack of major cities. Furthermore, both Guizhou and West Virginia are extremely mountainous.
