Twelve Mile Circle
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What the Stravenue?
Followers of Twelve Mile Circle are aware of my fascination with portmanteaus, the mashing together of two distinct words to form a single new word (see the portmanteau tag for several examples). So I stumbled across a new one, or at least a new one to me, as I attempted to find variations on Public…
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Rapid Transit in 1844
I’ve slowly been overhauling the non-12MC part of my website to upgrade to Google Maps API v3. That’s the portion for which I obtained the howderfamily.com domain long before Twelve Mile Circle became the tail wagging the dog. As part of that I revisited a genealogy page I wrote about ten years ago. It looked…
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No Names and Nameless
The article on Public Streets seemed generate more than the usual amount of interest and lots of great comments, as well as a hint of familiarity. Input from loyal reader David Overton sent me down an interesting tangent. He mentioned No Name Street, which he believed might be “another contender for ‘laziest street name’”. He…
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Jeff Davis
I received an interesting query from loyal reader “Katy” via the 12MC Google+(1) account the other day. She wanted to find towns named after people that included the namesakes’ first and last names.(2) Several possibilities came to mind and one name in particular, Jefferson Davis, kept recurring. Jefferson Davis — which I’ll mention primarily for…
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Race Across America
The recently concluded Dust Bowl Marathon Series continues to play on my mind. Five towns served as a home base during the event. Of course, each one of them rolled out the red carpet for us. Ulysses, Kansas stepped it up an additional notch above the high bar exhibited by the rest. They seemed to…
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Most Remote Chinese Restaurants in North America
I wonder if I’ve observed a genuine phenomenon or if I’m falling into a confirmation bias trap. Everywhere I travel, and I meander through extremely rural areas as a matter of preference, I notice Chinese restaurants. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned this peculiarity. I posted Not Fusion, CONfusion a couple of years ago.…
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International Capitals in the USA
The capital of a nation is often its most important city, or certainly one that citizens would recognize by name if not. Place that exact name into another nation and its significance would almost always drop. I wondered if I could find the name of every other capital city within the physical boundaries of the…
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Shaped Like it Sounds
I enjoyed filling in newly captured counties on my county counting map as a result of the recent Dust Bowl trip. The newly drawn map pleased me immensely, a nice block of color added to a previously-empty quadrant. Unfortunately I left behind a couple of doughnut-hole counties that I’ll probably never capture. That’s fine. I’ve…
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Odds and Ends 7
A number of items have come up recently although none large enough for a single article. It’s time to resurrect a recurring theme. The 12MC “Odds and Ends” compilation ratchets up to #7. Google Maps Treasure Map By now everyone should be aware of the April Fools layer on Google Maps yesterday. It created a…
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The Arlington portion is easy, ~245,000. Alexandria is more difficult because it annexed a lot of land outside of the…