Geography trivia for the week: identify the only country that straddles all four hemispheres of the earth: north and south, east and west. There is only one such country, in the Pacific. On the other side of the globe the prime meridian coming down from Greenwich crosses the equator below the coastline of Africa, south of Ghana in international waters. That point has been designated Null Island and has been marked in the past by a buoy.
Null Island is the location at zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude (0°N 0°E), i.e., where the prime meridian and the equator intersect. Since there is no landmass located at these coordinates, it is not an actual island. The name is often used in mapping software as a placeholder to help find and correct database entries that have erroneously been assigned the coordinates 0,0. Although "Null Island" started as a joke within the geospatial community, it has become a useful means of addressing a recurring issue in geographic information science.
Kiribati is the answer to the bar quiz trivia question posed above. The equator and 180th meridian intersect in Kiribati's territory (though not on an island).
France. Metropolitan France is in the Eastern, Western, and Northern hemispheres. Mayotte and Reunion are in the Southern hemisphere, and are legally indistinguishable from Metropolitan France; they have the same rights as any other department.
ReplyDeleteFor bonus points, it is pronounced ki-rée-BASS
ReplyDeleteThe borders of Colorado were agreed and defined by the US Congress on 28 Feb 1861 (with a great sweeping gesture on a desk in DC) as a box between 37° and 41° N and 25° and 32° W [from Washington!]. Taking those measures from the Greenwich meridian, The Colorado rectangle almost exactly comprehends the entire Azorean archipelago 36.5°–40° N & 24.5°–31.5° W. If aliens set their landing coordinates on Greenwich (as intergalactic visitors might) they'd find that "Colorado" was unexpectedly a) flat and b) plooosh!
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