Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • But What’s the Meridian?

    The definition of “meridian” sounds straight-forward enough. There are some ancillary definitions relating to greatest moments, highest achievements and such, plus one dealing with acupuncture. However, the one roughly analogous to longitude interests 12MC the most. From Dictionary.com: me·rid·i·an…(1.) Geography. (a.) a great circle of the earth passing through the poles and any given point…

  • Same City Name Distance

    I’ve been experiencing an ongoing conundrum. I have a huge pile of potential topics to cover on Twelve Mile Circle but I never get around to using them. I seem to get diverted onto whatever topic happens to be on hand and I forget about those I’ve held in reserve. Occasionally I’ll take a look…

  • Longest Google Maps Routes

    [EDITOR’S NOTE: Google Maps changes its algorithms over time. Many of the solutions developed when the article was written in 2012 no longer work] I received an email message from 12MC reader Andrew a few days ago. He said that he and a friend have been playing a game using Google Maps. The rules are…

  • Alternate Rhode Islands

    Something has to be the smallest. Most of us, or at least those of us in the 12MC audience from the United States, probably know that Rhode Island (map) claims this honor for the U.S. So exactly how small is it though? One hears frequently of individual counties within the United States as being “larger…

  • Want to be a Lighthouse Keeper?

    Lighthouse Keeper is one of those occupations similar to lamp lighter, elevator operator, stenographer and ice delivery person that probably doesn’t offer many career opportunities in the modern world. It takes a special personality to endure days and weeks of loneliness and isolation. So imagine life in a lighthouse perched on rocky crags far removed…

  • Long Distance

    I thought I would combine elements of several different articles to create something new. Counter-intuitive distances have long been a theme on 12MC. Great examples include Los Angeles located farther east than Reno and Glasgow located farther west than Madrid. Then I stirred-in an online tool used to create circles of user-specified radii on Google…

  • Loudoun Wine Adventure

    Fair warning. This article is going to resemble a travelogue more than a discussion of geo-oddities. I figure I can change the rules occasionally for self-indulgent reasons so I hope you don’t mind. Come back in a couple of days if you’re more a fan of the usual content on Twelve Mile Circle. The in-laws…

  • Sweet Home, uh, Oregon

    I’m still working out all of the details on my upcoming trip to Oregon and Washington later this summer. The path seems to be getting clearer to me as I fill in missing pieces. It appears I’m going to have to apologize in advance to my Portland readers. The route will likely skirt the city…

  • Brezovica pri Metliki & Malo Lesce

    The border between Croatia and Slovenia turns particularly unusual and twisted at several points west of Zagreb. At one point a little bulb of Croatia protrudes into Slovenia like a geographic hernia. It’s not a practical exclave or a pene-exclave, either. A road goes straight down its pencil-thin neck to connect a small town and…

  • License to Map

    I guess I didn’t know until this morning that license plates, those little identification signs we attach to our automobiles, are more generically called vehicle registration plates. Right now I’m sure my North American audience is wondering why I even bothered to define “license plate” when the meaning is so intuitively obvious. That’s because the…

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  2. what is the total population that lives now in the land given back to Virginia should it be part of…

  5. Park ranger at Chalmette (New Orleans) Battlefield let me pull up the Union Jack 20 years ago. My dad would…