Geography
Our 10 Best of 2008
This is the 320th post of 2008 at Following the Equator, and we decided to commemorate our blog’s first full calendar year with a top-10 list of favorite posts. We had a lot of stories, videos, photos, interviews, tips and perspectives about educational travel. We launched some regular weekly features, including our Tip of the Read more…
Geography Awareness Week
It’s Geography Awareness Week, and the good folks at the My Wonderful World campaign are celebrating with a wonderful new website. The weeklong celebration promotes the importance of geography education in the United States, and the new website features access to “geo-tours” for Google Earth, tools for exploring the world’s cultures and environments, and insight Read more…
Geography games galore
It’s been awhile since we’ve written about a good global awareness game, but today we hit the jackpot. Our favorite map blog, Cartophilia: Maps and Map Memorabilia, pointed us to a great gaming site called Sporcle. The site is filled with identification games, including dozens of geography games. You can try naming all 53 capitals Read more…
Top 20 Imaginary Lines
Our post last week about the Real Equator got me thinking about Earth’s imaginary lines—those lines we can’t see but still observe. Look at a globe or map, and you’ll see all kinds of imaginary lines running all over the place. I started to ponder the most prominent imaginary lines in the world. What are Read more…
World Heritage Map Update
The World Heritage Centre concluded its annual map outreach campaign after fulfilling 9,000 requests in nine weeks. The World Heritage map, which locates all 851 World Heritage properties, is still available to be downloaded, along with the past four World Heritage Maps.
Learning African Geography
Whenever I play the highly addictive Traveler IQ Challenge on Facebook or try naming as many countries as I can in five minutes or even just play with the globe with my daughter, I’m usually thwarted by my lack of African geography knowledge. Well, I finally have found some help. The Lonely Planet Travel Blog Read more…
The Other Side Of The World
It’s nearly every American kid’s belief that China is on the exact opposite side of the world. That’s what we were told, right? Dig a hole straight through, and you’d arrive in China. But like a lot of things we grew up believing, that’s just not so. This map proves it. From anywhere in the Read more…
Travel Tidbits: Can you spare $10 million?
Think the U.S. economy is problematic? It’s nothing compared to the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. Inflation is so bad—believed to be 50,000 percent annually—that Zimbabwe’s central bank just began issuing notes worth 10,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars. Yes, 10 million bucks. That’s the equivalent of 100 of the bills pictured. Ten million dollars is believed to be Read more…
How many countries can you name in five minutes?
Office productivity dropped slightly this afternoon as we competed to identify countries in this online game. Out of 270 total countries, how many can you name in five minutes? It’s trickier than you may think. You definitely need a good grasp of geography—and especially spelling. You could waste valuable minutes trying to spell the country Read more…
Free World Heritage map
Want a free educational world map? Check out the 2007-08 World Heritage map, which is now available at the UNESCO World Heritage website. The map, which was produced in collaboration with National Geographic and Hewlett Packard, locates 851 World Heritage properties and includes information about the World Heritage Centre and photos and info about some Read more…
