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Loading...Back in 1569, Gerardus Mercator, a cartographer and geographer, created his map that he thought would accurately show the spherical Earth on a flat map, while also making it easy for sailors to navigate on open waters. Unfortunately, although Mercator’s map, called the Mercator Projection, was very innovative at the time and is still widely used, it very poorly represents much of the northern and southern hemispheres.
And the fact that we still use the projection is for the reason that there isn’t really any great way to project the Earth on a map. So, you probably grew up with this map:
But, there are many things wrong with it. And all of those things may not be obvious to you, which is why Buzzfeed Blue created the video above to educate people on how wrong the map really is.
And some of the things are really surprising; Greenland is really that small?!? Holy cow.