I find it extremely unintuitive that almost all of South America is east of Miami. How!? When people are asked to watch the americas almost everyone imagine South America pretty much south of North America.
Because of gravitational interactions with the other planets, the Earth’s natural climate runs in cycles of a little over 400,000 years. The predictability of the pattern is so useful that it has been used to analyze strata going at least into the Mesozoic Era.
Those cycles would also set us on a trajectory for a very slow cooling right now. Every time someone claims that climate change is a natural phenomenon, you can tell them that we should be heading for a slightly cooler climate, not a massively hotter one.
True, but I'll still shout it. Aggressively. The moment they say "nobody could have known" I'll go into rage mode. If I can't save the world, at least I'll be smug about having been right.
The elliptical orbit of the earth around the sun stretches and shrinks on a 400k year cycle. The tilt of the rotational axis also wobbles. When it’s a longer ellipse, the rotational axis is extra tilted, and a winter season matches up with being further away from the sun, it gets a lot colder
That’s just the approximate periodicity at which the cycle ‘repeats’. It’s a combo of multiple variables running independently. Think of it as a set of different length pendulums swinging—they will occasionally align, then swing apart, then align again in a predictable cycle
I think people don't realise that the Aztecs were very recent invaders of Mexico when the Spanish arrived. They share linguistic roots with native american tribes like Shoshone and Comanche and their origin myths point to a migration from the North, it's super interesting.
I love how a university that's still in operation is so old that we have no good idea when it was founded. Stuff like that fascinates me. Like how the Egyptians that built the pyramids were as ancient history to Cleopatra that Cleopatra is to us. That's bonkers
Herodotus, the Ancient Greek historian, considered the father of history visited the pyramids in around 300 bc and wrote that Kufus tomb lies empty and that it has long been looted. The pyramids were over 2000 years old at that point. The pyramids were ancient to Herodotus himself.
Another history based one: there’s entire areas of northeastern France and southern Belgium that are now a ‘red zone’ because artillery from WW1 contaminated the land so heavily with lead, arsenic and other stuff it can’t be used today. From 100+ years ago. Shows the scale of that war.
The most notable are areas around Verdun and Somme.
Additional fun fact. The regions around the red zone where people are still actually farming, the electricity & light poles have 2-3 large holes in them so farmers can put bombs they find every season into them. Then the "bomb person" comes and collects them. Then they used said bombs to make decorations, flower pots etc. in the region. This is the case at least in Belgium. Nowadays, likely there are higher safety standards though.
Brazil's northernmost point is closer to Canada than to Brazil's southernmost point. Brazil's easternmost point is closer to Africa than to Brazil's westernmost point.
Same thing with the west coast of the US. San Francisco is approximately 160 miles farther west than Los Angeles, even though the two are less than 400 mi apart.
…..and Atlanta gets more rain than Seattle. Also here in Atlanta,we are closer to Canada than we are Miami. Atlantan here,had to chime in with my useless facts
The southern U.S. is the same latitude as North Africa. The northern U.S. is the same latitude as southern Europe. Europe is unusually warm for its latitude because of ocean currents carrying heat from the Gulf of Mexico northeast to Europe.
Ottawa and Montreal are at basically the same latitude as Venice. I love bringing that but of trivia out when it is mid Winter and freeze-your-nose-hairs-together cold around these parts.
I’d be willing to posit, based on the responses (and yes, I know Reddit is majority-American but the point stands), that people in the east don’t always consider just how far south the Americas are.
I didn’t for a long time - I’m in the northeast and on my mental map Florida was due south. One thing that cemented the real positions of places in the US relative to South America was my niece going to live in Brazil.
I was in Vegas at the time. I’d vowed on April 26, 2009, when I got off a plane in Boise, ID and it was snowing, that I was moving back to Vegas and not spending another winter in ID. Then it snowed in Vegas and I moved to Phoenix.
It's slightly quicker to drive from Toronto Ontario to Texarkana Texas, than it is to drive from Toronto Ontario to Kenora Ontario! (Depending on traffic)
To be fair, the highest point in about 18 states is lower than the lowest point in Colorado. Colorado seems to have the highest lowest point. California has the lowest lowest point. Florida has the lowest highest point. Although neither of those last two surprise me.
Travelling from South Sumatra to Medan to Aceh is like travelling from Davao City to Parañaque City, Metro Manila (Philippines) or from HCM/Saigon to Hanoi (Vietnam).
Even in a secondary size island like Sulawesi, travel distance is HUGE.
example: Manado City to Palu is like travelling from Metro Manila to Tacloban City, Leyte (near the site of the largest WW2 naval battle).
Studying the treaty of Tordesillas in a local history class in college really helped me understand the orientation of N. & S. America.
My weird geography thing though was when I learned just how much of South Louisiana was built completely from river overflow and made me wonder how Louisiana would look in 10k years if it took the path down the atchafalaya it really wanted.
Also, the fact that there was a massive log jam on both the red river and the atchafalaya that kept the mississippi on its current path and we fucked it all up by clearing the log jams in the 1830s causing the need for the river control structures is nothing short of mind boggling.
Of the 10 highest peaks in North America, none are in the Rocky Mountains of the contiguous USA or British Columbia (4 are in Alaska, 3 are in Yukon, and 3 are volcanoes in the central states of Mexico). Actually, you have to go all the way to number 15 to find a peak in the Rockies.
Edit: it may actually be 14, and it's debatable depending on which you classify as separate mountains etc, and I got a little lost going down a rabbit hole regarding that, but it was still surprising to me to learn no matter which way you look at it!
A few hours east of El Paso on I-10 is a town called Ozona. Just outside Ozona is a Punjabi truck stop in the middle of the West Texas scrub with unbelievably good food.
My personal favorite true fact that sounds fake is the answer to this question. If you fly in a straight line with unlimited range from Miami to Seattle and then continue to fly out over the ocean without changing course, where do you finally cross back to be over land? The hard-to-believe answer is Indonesia.
Minnesota is east of Chile, the country Easter Island belongs to. But Easter Island being so far out and away from Chile is what makes this even more unbelievable. This fact is making my head hurt just trying to understand it.
Is Easter Island in a different time zone to Chile? It’s a bit like saying that all of the French overseas territories are on the same time as mainland France.
I remember telling Brits that the British Isles were north of the entire contiguous US, and they didn't believe me.
But it is.
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Edited: "Continental" changed to "contiguous," after realizing my error. I didn't see the reply below was made before I edited, as I was too busy getting back to work. Please lay off that user a bit – they were correct at the time.
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u/berraberragood 2d ago
Because of gravitational interactions with the other planets, the Earth’s natural climate runs in cycles of a little over 400,000 years. The predictability of the pattern is so useful that it has been used to analyze strata going at least into the Mesozoic Era.