Something that Surprised Me

One of the problems of living on a spherical planet is that it is nearly impossible to present an accurate representation of it in two dimensions.  You can't really do it--any given projection is either distorted or all chopped up.  Since we get our pictures of geography more from maps than globes, we tend to internalize those distortions as facts: Greenland looks bigger than Australia, for instance, and despite that my brain knows that the latitude and longitude grid is distorted, I always subconsciously picture it bigger.

That's why I did a double-take when I saw this:

 

A infographic beneath explains:

Well, guilty as charged--though I would point out that this is the continental US and excludes Scandinavia.  But still.  I consider myself pretty well-informed, but it's crazy what can still surprise you.