Hello, I’m Laurence and I’m on a quest to uncover all of the memos that Britain and America lost in the Pond and one of those memos pertains to... our place in the world.
And I don’t mean each country’s political standing. I literally mean our place in the world, our coordinates, our latitude and longitude.
On October twenty-fifth, Britain’s clocks go back by one hour - precisely one week before US clocks do the same. Growing up in Britain, this was always a strange time for me, because on the Monday I’d turn up to school before the teachers. But it was also a strange time because it started to get dark really early.
Thanks to a combination of Britain’s latitude and the tilt of the earth, the sun would set as early as 3:40pm in my home town of Grimsby. For context, Chicago enjoys about forty minutes extra daylight on or around winter solstice.
Anyway, all this talk of latitudes got me thinking. The U.S. is a big place. So how much of it is horizontally parallel with—that is on the same latitude as—mainland Britain?
Instinctively, you might imagine, for example, that London and New York are fairly parallel, right? But are they? If you could fly due west from Britain in a giant plane whose wing span measured the length of Britain itself, which US cities would you actually intersect? How many Americans, going about their daily lives, would see this admittedly terrifying vehicle over their heads, and post it to Instagram?
To find out, join me by clicking play.
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