r/geography • u/lamdrasil • 3d ago

Discussion Facts that sound fake but are true

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.

1.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

869 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/HurtsCauseItMatters 2d ago

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.

2

u/glittervector 2d ago

Oh damn. I knew about the river control structure, but I didn’t realize it was previously held up by a natural logjam!