A visit to the Middle of the World attraction is one of the must-do things in Ecuador. Sadly, it's a little inaccurate. Photo / 123RF
A visit to the Middle of the World attraction is one of the must-do things in Ecuador. Sadly, it's a little inaccurate. Photo / 123RF
Have you ever visited the spot marking the dead centre of Europe? Or the Greenwich Meridian Line? Or, perhaps, the official middle of the world?
We've got some bad news for you — you may not have been there at all.
The world is filled with geographically significant spots, from international borders, time zone boundaries, and exact centres of countries and continents that are marked with signs and monuments.
These places are big tourist drawcards and there are often local industries that thrive on the interest.
But only now is it emerging some of those markers are in the completely wrong spot. Atlas Obscura explains that advances in cartography — the science of mapping — and other technological developments have revealed these geographic markers are not always where they're meant to be.
If you've been to Ecuador you probably have a photo taken in San Antonio de Pichincha, the location of a massive structure called Ciudad Mital del Mundo (Middle of the World City). A painted line on the footpath marks latitude 0° 0' 0" and it's a popular spot for tourists to pose with one foot in either hemisphere.
But it's in the wrong spot. Calculations by geographer Luis Tufiño in 1936 have been misproven by modern technology, and the actual line of the Equator is about 240 metres north.
GREENWICH MERIDIAN LINE
The real Greenwich Meridian line is about 100 metres from where you think it is. Photo / 123RF
If you've joined the massive queue for a photo at the Greenwich Prime Meridian line at the Royal Observatory in London, you've been fooled.
The real meridian — the line at which most maps mark 0° longitude — is actually about 100 metres east, in a park.
The meridian dates back to 1851, and was determined with instruments that used "clock stars" in the night sky.
When satellite-based GPS navigation was introduced, the position of the meridian was called into question and modern technology zoomed in on the accurate location, further east. So head there for your photo instead.
THE CENTRE OF EUROPE
Nice try, Lithuania. Photo / 123RF
A sculpture at Europos Parkas in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius claims to mark the precise centre of Europe, based on calculations by French scientists in the early 1990s.
But those scientists later revealed they'd made a big mistake, and missed the target by about 14 kilometres.
But over the years, other locations have been determined to be the dead centre of Europe. They include spots in Belarus, Hungary, Estonia, Poland and Slovakia.
THE EQUATOR
The equator is marked by this structure in Indonesia, but actually, the line is moving south. Photo / 123RF
For decades the point at which the northern and southern hemispheres met was believed to be in the Indonesian city of Pontianak — and it has long been marked as such.
Indonesia's Equator monument, built on the exact line of the Equator, is an impressive structure on top of a building.
But global shifts have changed the location of the Equator, which means the monument's location is no longer accurate. According to GPS readings since 2005, the Equator line is moving further south of that spot.
You can still find the incorrect monument to the geographic centre of South America in Cuiaba. Photo / Google Maps
In 1909, this spot in Cuiaba, Brazil, was named as the precise geographic centre of the South American continent. A modest sign marked the spot before an impressive monument took its place.
But many years later, when satellite imaging was developed, it emerged the actual geographic centre of South America was about 45 kilometres away. The original monument still stands in the wrong place.
CENTRE OF THE 50 UNITED STATES
The city of Belle Fourche have made a tourist attraction out of the wrong spot. Photo / Flickr, Tim Pearce
After Hawaii became the 50th US state, a new centre of the nation was pinpointed, and it was in Belle Fourche in South Dakota.
In 2008, the city erected a huge granite compass, labelled as the "Geographic Centre of the Nation", and it's a popular site to visit and take photos.
The thing is, the actual centre of the US (including Alaska and Hawaii) is about 32 kilometres north, on private property. (Separately, there's another marker that pinpoints the centre of the contiguous United States, in Lebanon, Kansas. It is also in the wrong spot.)
According to the Ordinance Survey's 2002 "centre of gravity" method for determining the centre of Scotland, this road is just about it. Photo / Wikimedia Commons, Dave Fergusson
The problem, here, is that there are three measurements used to determine the geographic centre of Scotland, and each returns different results.
One "centre" marks the midway spot between the furthest point in the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Another marks the middle of the Scottish mainland. And the third centre takes into account Scotland's outlying islands.
