The True Size Of Countries: Mercator projection

I still remember the first time I learned about this. I was watching the West Wing (Season 2 Episode 16[1] which explains the problem pretty quickly) for the first time in the early 2010's and was absolutely blown away that we'd never been taught about this in public school (U.S.A.). Having graduated High School and a couple of years through undergrad, and just then realizing that my entire perception of the relative size, and in some cases position(!), of the…

I feel very lucky to have grown up with a huge (~ 75 cm diameter) globe as a centerpiece in the living room; I never ended up with Mercator-derived misconceptions in the first place.

From The West Wing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH1bZ0F3zVU

As a Swede, it was mind blowing to see that California is nearly the same size area wise, but about four times larger in population. Plenty of room for us to grow still! Also interesting to see both Russia and USA fit inside of Africa, more or less.[1] I always thought Russia was much bigger. [1]: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY2NjQzMjQ.MTYzNzcxMQ*...