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The actual border between the U.S. and Canada is much stranger than people realize

The border may look like a simple, mostly straight line, but it's got some weird quirks.

Photo credit: Canva

The border between the U.S. and Canada has some funky anomalies.

Canada has been the United States' friendly upstairs neighbor for over 150 years, with people on both sides of the border enjoying good relations and a mutual flow of tourism and trade. But the border that separates us is a bit…odd, and not just because President Trump's confusing second-term commentary about it: "If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S. Just a straight, artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many many decades ago. Makes no sense."

The border itself was formed before Canada officially became a country, when the 49th parallel was negotiated with Britain to become the boundary (without consulting the indigenous tribes that lived along it, which caused no shortage of confusion and displacement). But what appears to be a "straight, artificial line" is not actually straight (and no more artificial than any other manmade border). It's actually a kind of wobbly line with some dips and blips and sticky-outy-places and islands-in-dispute that the average American and Canadian remain largely unaware of.

Long before the leader of the free world began pontificating on the Canadian-U.S. border, CGP Grey created a video that shines a light on how strange it actually is.

Check this out:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com


The 5,500-mile-long border is the longest border between two countries in the world, and there's a 20-foot wide space along the border that's been deforested as basically a "no touchy" zone to delineate where it is. The border line looks straight on a map, but the actual, official border is actually 900 zig-zagging lines that twist and turn by as much as several hundred feet. The uncharted wilderness that made up most of the border when it was being established explains why the line is not perfectly straight. However, as CGP Grey points out, the hundreds of monuments marking the international border are in "about as straight a line as you could expect a pre-GPS civilization to make."

There are some strange anomalies along our border, including an island in the Northeastern U.S./Southeastern Canada that both countries believe belong to them. Machias Seal Island has a fascinating history as it's been a disputed territory since the origination of the border, with Canada and the U.S. holding different interpretations of what defines the parameters of the border. But thankfully, it's a peaceful dispute—or at least it has been so far.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Another weird anomaly on the Canadian border is the little rectangle of land that juts out from the top of Minnesota into the province of Manitoba, mostly over a lake. Oddly enough, that's a result of the erroneous way some maps that were used to plot out the border were made, which eventually led to a dilemma over how to connect the border in that area. Known as the Northwest Angle, or as locals call it, the Angle, this remote area of land and water actually marks the northernmost point in the contiguous U.S.

Another place where the 49th parallel caused an issue was with Vancouver Island, as the line cut off the southernmost tip of the island. That was easily solved by just going around it, but there is a tiny piece of U.S. land that gets cut off on the Canadian mainland, Point Roberts, which creates a bit of a strange reality for the 1,000 or so Americans who live there. Basically, residents can't drive anywhere else without crossing the border, including the kids who go to middle school and high school around the crook of Canadian land that connects the peninsula to the rest of Washington State. Not the end of the world to cross the border a few times a day as long as our countries remain on good terms.

There are several other places along the Canada-U.S. border where one country contains a little bit of the other, creating a fun little game of figuring out why certain places are the way they are. But again, as long relations between our countries stay friendly, those little quirks just constitute a fun part of our mutual history and are not a cause for conflict. Let's do our best to keep it that way.

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This map will let you look at the world a little differently — and a lot more accurately.

Here's a map of the Earth.

Photo via Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance Narukawa Laboratory.

It might look weird, but it's actually one of the most accurate world maps ever created.

Every continent, country, and ocean on this map is drawn to be proportionally accurate. It's as close as possible, size-wise, to the real thing.

The map was designed by Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa, who just won a Good Design Award — one of the most prestigious design awards on the planet.

Speaking of the planet...

This map addresses a problem cartographers have been scratching their heads over for centuries: How exactly do you make an accurate map of the world?

You see, despite what some conspiracy theorists on YouTube think, the Earth is definitely a sphere. So unfolding it and printing it on a flat piece of paper is inherently difficult. It's a geometrical conundrum that will inevitably lead to inaccuracies.

It's like trying to make a square donut. You can pull it off, but it's going to look a little weird.

For hundreds of years, the answer has been this:

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

It's known as the "Mercator Projection." You may recognize it from your fourth grade classroom. Since it's invention in the 1500s, it's been the go-to standard for navigators, educators, diner placemat makers, and map enthusiasts.

It works pretty well for navigation but it's not without its problems. For example, Greenland looks to be a lot bigger than the United States when, in reality, you could comfortably fit Greenland into the U.S. about four times.

This cool interactive map shows the same "real size" effect for other countries around the world.

Narukawa's map takes a new approach. It unfolds the globe in a way that more accurately represents each landmass.

To do it, he divided the Earth into 96 regions. Then he mapped those regions onto a pyramid or tetrahedron. Unfold the tetrahedron and you get a flat rectangle that maintains (as close as possible) all the appropriate size and distance ratios.

Math! Photo via AuthaGraph, Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance Narukawa Laboratory.

There's even a version you can print out and re-fold into a spherical globe.

Photo via Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance Narukawa Laboratory.

It's not perfect, but it's a beautiful design that gives us a fresh, new, and more accurate perspective of our planet. And aside from eating a square donut, how often do you get to look at the world in an entirely new way?

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A 2016 take on a century-old map shows changes in travel over time.

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United Technologies

In 1914, it could take over 40 days to travel to remote places in the world.

That year, John G. Bartholomew — Great Britain’s royal cartographer at the time — published an isochronic map showing travel times from London to various places around the globe. "Isochronic" simply means that lines (isochrones) are drawn on the map between locations that could be reached in the same amount of time. Trips range from “within 5 days journey” to “over 40 days.”

Even at first glance, it’s stunning.

Map by John G. Bartholomew, 1914.

This map tells a story of the evolution of travel in the early 20th century.

Look closely at what happens when a route reaches a land mass.

In North America, the pink range (five to 10 days) extends from New York to Winnipeg.

But in South America, the yellow segment (10 to 20 days) only reaches a hundred miles or so inland before giving way to green, light blue, and soon dark blue (over 40 days).

The difference between these areas lies in railroads, which in 1914 were fairly common in the eastern United States but significantly harder to come by in South America. An article in The Economist quotes geographer L.W. Lyde as writing, “isochronic distances ... change with every additional mile of railway brought into use.”

But the very year that Bartholomew released his map, another form of travel entered the scene: airplanes.

On Jan. 1, 1914, the first scheduled commercial airline flight took place. It lasted just 23 minutes, and its single passenger spent $400 for the ticket (equivalent to over $9,600 today) at an auction, eager to go down in history as the world's first commercial flight passenger.

A Benoist XIV floatplane in 1914, the type used for the first commercial flight. Image from the Florida Photographic Collection/Wikimedia Commons.

By the 1950s, commercial air travel was booming. Passenger flights were expensive and about five times as dangerous as they are today, but rapid innovation and competition among airlines continued to make flights increasingly accessible. From 1954 to 2014, the number of flight passengers in the U.S. grew by by a factor of 21.

Travel on the ground was rapidly changing as well: 1914 was the time of the Ford Model T, a car often credited with bringing affordable travel to middle-class Americans.

A Ford Model T in 1923, nine years after the creation of Bartholomew's map. Via Conrad Poirier/Wikimedia Commons.

In 1956, President Eisenhower authorized the construction of 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System. The Interstate was declared complete in 1992 — at which point the project was about $91 billion over its initial budget and about 23 years overdue.

A century after the original, an updated version of Bartholomew’s map shows how much travel has changed.

In 2016, travel search platform Rome2rio updated Bartholomew’s map to show modern travel times from London around the world. The new map calculates journeys by plane, train, car, bus, ferry, and more.

As Rome2rio wrote on their blog, “What we uncovered was fascinating.”

Map by Rome2rio, 2016. To purchase this map, visit Wellingtons Travel Co. Used with permission.

Note that the legend on this map shows a new time scale. No longer do the dark pink areas represent travel “within 5 days,” but instead, “Within ½ day.” On the other end of the spectrum, in blue, what used to show “over 40 days” now shows “over 1½ days.”

Significant changes in the updated map can be seen in Asia, Africa, and parts of South America. In 1914, a traveler from London could reach any part of India in 10 to 20 days. In 2016, the entire country can be reached within ¾ of a day — with many major cities accessible in less than that.

In the coming years, the isochronic map will undoubtedly continue to change as modes of travel evolve across the globe.

How would a high-speed rail system in the U.S. change the map — not to mention your daily life? Will more of South America become pink in the next couple of decades?

However the map changes in the coming years, one thing is certain: Travel today is faster, safer, and cheaper than it's ever been.

Which begs the question: What part of the globe are you planning to explore next?

Heroes

These 5 bafflingly weird old maps of the Arctic show why it's worth preserving.

The North Pole was once one of the most inaccessible places on Earth.

Robert Peary's 1908 expedition to the Arctic. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Ships trying to sail anywhere near it risked getting permanently frozen in its vast, icy prison.

Fridtjof Nansen's ship, stuck in ice. Photo from Fridtjof Nansen/Wikimedia Commons.

Going on an expedition meant being at sea for at least a few months (maybe even years) and battling horrible cold, wind, snow, and ice, not to mention starvation. Not everyone who set out made it home again; whole expeditions sometimes just ... disappeared.

The crossing was so intense that humans actually reached the South Pole first. It really says a lot when Antarctica is the easier of your two options.

The first verified expedition to the North Pole didn't happen until 1926.

Though U.S. Navy engineer Robert Peary claimed to have made it to the pole in 1909, the first verified, undisputed claim to that achievement didn't happen until Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen flew over it in an airship in 1926.

Roald Amundsen. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Amundsen's team had also been the first to reach the South Pole, which I'm pretty sure means he owns the Earth now.

Before Mr. Roald "Fur Coat" Amundsen, however, mapmakers had been trying to guess what the Arctic looked like for centuries.

See the stone thing in the center and the four islands surrounding the North Pole in this map from 1595?

The red, green, and yellow blobs around the edges are Canada, Europe, and Asia, respectively. The blobs in the middle are ... Mordor? Image from Gerardus Mercator/Wikimedia Commons.

Those are there because mapmaker Gerardus Mercator seemed to think there might be some sort of lost world up there.

By the late 1600s, mapmakers had a better idea of what the pole looked like, but Greenland and Canada still seemed to cause some conundrums.

1680 map by Moses Pitt. Original image from Moses Pitt/Toronto Public Library/Wikimedia Commons.

Like, I'm pretty sure Greenland and Canada don't actually connect to each other.

Original image from Moses Pitt/Wikimedia Commons.

And this mapmaker in 1720 seems to have admitted ignorance, shrugged his shoulders, and just stopped drawing.

C. G. Zorgdrager's 1720 map of the North Pole. Original image from National Library of Norway/Wikimedia Commons.

Some maps, like this one from 1762, made some ... interesting guesses at what the North Pole looks like.

Jean Javier's 1762 map of North America. Image from Jean Lattre/Wikimedia Commons

Interesting guesses like "Maybe future-Alaska isn't a thing."

Image from Jean Lattre/Wikimedia Commons.

And "What if I put a big ol' sea here in the middle of what will one day be Seattle and British Columbia?"

I'm pretty sure I'd remember if Seattle were in the middle of a giant bay. Image from Jean Lattre/Wikimedia Commons.

Even years later, in 1776, Alaska was still proving troublesome to mapmakers.

1776 map. Image from Zatta/Wikimedia Commons.

I mean REALLY.

?!?!?!!!!! Image from Zatta/Wikimedia Commons.

By the 1880s, at least, we knew more or less what was at the North Pole (nothing but water and ice).

Although this map still has a few blank places at the very top of Greenland and Canada.

Those Aleutian Islands look a little short, too. An 1882 map. Image from the New York Public Library.

Good job, 1880s.

Thanks to those explorers and technology, we now know that the Arctic looks like this:

Image from Uwe Dedering/Wikimedia Commons.

But — would those explorers of a century ago, the ones who spent months and years traversing its icy waters, even recognize the place if they saw it today?

In a recent interview, oceanographer Peter Wadhams told The Independent that the Arctic may be on track to be ice-free for the first time in 100,000 years.

Climate change has been consistently reducing the sea ice around the Arctic Ocean for decades, to the extent that the same passages and channels that once baffled and trapped early explorers are now so ice-free that they're being considered for use as shipping lanes.

In late 2015, the Russian icebreaker Vaygach completed a trip along the north coast of Siberia in just seven and a half days. Image from Dudinka_Apu/Wikimedia Commons.

Our maps may be a lot better now, but that doesn't mean we should abandon the Arctic's air of mystery and adventure.

After all, it's still home to seals that look like something out of a Tim Burton film...

Yup, that's definitely the seal version of Beetlejuice. Image from Michael Cameron/Wikimedia Commons.

...not to mention weird methane that seeps from deep in the seabed and these fire-breathing lakes. So even though we now know where we're going when it comes to the North Pole, there's still plenty up there left to discover.

Last year, 174 countries pledged to help fight climate change at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris. Individual people can help, too, by reducing their energy consumption and not only voting for politicians who don't think climate change is a hoax, but making sure they stick to their agreements after they're in office.

If we can accomplish that, we can keep the Arctic cold — and help preserve for future generations the air of mystery and adventure that those old (admittedly faulty) maps embody.

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