Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: International

  • Keeping It North

    I’d like to focus my attention firmly north a little longer to complete the circle, specifically, the Arctic Circle as it passes through Iceland. The previous articles, in case you haven’t had a chance to review them, involved Deadhorse, Alaska and the FINORU tripoint. The Arctic Circle runs through very few countries, only eight of…

  • Also Very Northerly

    Let’s get back to the second part of the geography puzzle originally posed by loyal reader Matthias. We will continue to explore the current northernmost reaches of Google Street View. It’s still Deadhorse, Alaska at the very moment I draft this article. However, that will change as Google’s adventurous drivers reach new extremes. The European…

  • Clustr-ed

    You might notice something a little different on the page template of Twelve Mile Circle today. I’ve decided to add a ClustrMap after more soul-searching and internal debate that you might image. You may be wondering why this was a difficult choice. After all, what would be more appropriate for a geo-oddities blog than a…

  • Missisquoi Bay Exclave

    Often a question once answered leads to another question on Twelve Mile Circle. So I’d just analyzed the thousands of separate border segments between Canada and the United States. Then I stumbled upon a very small US exclave that I’d never noticed before. It’s located on Missisquoi Bay, an extension of Lake Champlain. Thus, it…

  • Canada-USA Border Segment Extremes

    Many superlatives describe the border between Canada and the United States. It’s the longest non-militarized border on the planet. It touches three different Oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic) plus the Great Lakes. It extends 8,891 kilometres (5,525 miles). While impressive, this isn’t about any of that. No, I’m more interested in the extremes in the opposite…

  • Ignorance or Brilliance?

    So it’s a very simple question. Is there an area with no time zone? Nonetheless, I dismissed the question when it first landed on Twelve Mile Circle in the form of a search query the other morning. I noticed it waiting in my user access logs although this random visitor never asked me personally. The…

  • Northernmost England. Maybe.

    Berwick-upon-Tweed is the northernmost town in England. However, due to geography and history it also holds a lot in common with Scotland. First, notice it’s peculiar location along the River Tweed: specifically the northern side of the River Tweed. How did a little piece of England find its way to the opposite side of a…

  • What? Tonga Too?

    It was only four days ago that I bragged and crowed that I’d recorded a website visitor from the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. Now, apparently Christmas came a little late on Twelve Mile Circle. Someone just landed here from Tonga! It wasn’t a grab-and-dash either. Our mystery visitor stuck around for three page…

  • Cross-Province Municipalities

    Usually towns that rest upon a border are distinct entities. They may have the appearance of a single contiguous municipality but often that’s deceiving. Two separate local governments actually administer the two separate portions. Kansas City along the Missouri/Kansas border comes to mind: one metropolitan area; same name; different municipal governments. However there are two…

  • And Now Vanuatu

    I love it when a new visitor arrives on Twelve Mile Circle from a previously unrepresented geographic location. Now I can focus on another spot on the globe while simultaneously carving a new notch on my visitor map. So today the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu checked in! Some of you are probably thinking,…