Category: Latitude

  • International Latitude Observatories

    I came across an interesting building while researching the Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole a few months ago. It’s just to the east of the hole by a couple of streets, so more accurately it’s just barely on the doughnut, perhaps it’s a coconut sprinkle. Here’s how it appears in a public domain photograph: It looks rather…

  • I’ve Barely Been There

    I’ve been to all of the 50 United States as is true with several others of you who read Twelve Mile Circle regularly. In fact, that’s what got me started on the strange hobby of County Counting. I ran out of things to count so I had to break the individual states into their sub-units…

  • Almost Halfway

    Regular readers know that I find frequent inspiration from one-time visitors who drop onto the site by random search engine queries. Presumably they find what they need and then they move along. Earlier this week the query captured in my website traffic log said, “45th parallel near haines oregon along highway 30.” I’m a big…

  • Closest Antipodal National Capitals

    It’s odd that I keep getting random search engine hits on the phrase, “closest antipodal national capitals” when I’ve never covered the topic on Twelve Mile Circle. Meanwhile, several other websites have covered it rather extensively. The whole topic of antipodes in general seems to receive an inordinate amount of attention. I found a series…

  • Jackson’s Mill (39°05’49.19″N, 80°28’00.72″W)

    It’s not everyday that an advertisement comes complete with a mysterious Latitude/Longitude coordinate. My local newspaper included a special section on the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Civil War in the United States. This image from West Virginia filled the entire back page. The copy reads, “A nation was nearly torn in half. A state…

  • Why THIS Spot?

    What does this mean to you? n 45°55.145′ w 090°05.011′ That’s what the query said when I spotted it in my blog access logs. What an oddly precise item to drop into a search engine. The visitor came to Twelve Mile Circle by following a Google link, one of only five in existence. You know…

  • Bakersfield: A Better California Capital?

    We had a lot of fun and some great comments during the discussion of state capitals most inconvenient to the residents of the states’ largest cities. I mentioned that I’d found the U.S. Census Bureau’s list of Population Centers by State from the year 2000 census. Naturally I took the last two questions from the…

  • Ushuaia

    I can find good geo-topics practically anywhere. Often I derive inspiration from anonymous Twelve Mile Circle visitors who sprinkle digital trails behind them as they travel along. Every one of us leaves fingerprints behind whenever we tunnel through the Intertubes. It’s innocuous for the most part. Generally we don’t think much about it as we…

  • Northernmost Southern Hemispheric Glacier

    I discussed the southernmost glaciers in the northern hemisphere in the last installment and found some surprising answers. Today I take the opposite tack and examine the northernmost glaciers in the southern hemisphere. Let’s start again by reviewing the worldwide glacier map I discovered on the U.S. Geological Survey site. Maybe Cayambe Again? To recap…

  • Southernmost Northern Hemispheric Glacier

    My trip to Alaska got me thinking about snow, ice and glaciation. There were glaciers aplenty on the Kenai Peninsula but that’s not unexpected at sixty degrees north of the equator. Where, I wondered, was the southernmost glacier in the northern hemisphere? It’s not the first time my mind has wandered in this basic direction.…