If you want to annoy people by showing off your useless knowledge of arcane facts garnered from TYWKIWDBI, challenge them to identify the easternmost point in the United States. They are unlikely to choose Semisopochnoi Island, which is the technically correct one on the other side of the prime meridian. Photo via.
But what do you do when they point out that Semisopochnoi Islands isn't over the International Date Line and is only over the Prime Meridian?
ReplyDeleteOuch! You got me on that one. I was a bit careless while writing the post. Text amended, with a link. Thank you for the proofreading, Charles.
DeleteThen some annoying pedant like me might point out that we typically call that half of the great circle traced out by extending the prime meridian through the poles the 180th meridian or the antimeridian. 😛
DeleteJust north of the island is a gap in the Google photo pool. Note the vertical black line. I saw a discontinuity in the satellite image for the island and thought it might be a hint or artifact of the Dateline or meridian, but not so. I do not know what it means - perhap just a projection error.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/maps/place/Semisopochnoi+Island/@56.1782444,179.728003,89040m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x58270b443d332cbb:0x7eb4c4032df479d!8m2!3d51.957471!4d179.6411534?hl=en
My sense of direction must be off. Isn't this island located West of Alaska making it the Western most point of America?
ReplyDeleteThat's why I indicated that the argument will annoy people. The island is the tip of Alaska that is farthest to the west, but its geographic coordinates are 51° 57′ 5″ N, 179° 36′ 3″ E. The most "east" you can go in the world is to 180 degrees East, and this island is 179 degrees, 36+ minutes.
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