The world as we know it, or at least the way we view it on a map, is wrong.
Astoundingly, we’ve been viewing things incorrectly since 1569. That’s when Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator designed the “Mercator Projection,” to help sailors navigate the seas. His creation was widely praised, thanks to its clean, straight lines for latitude and longitude and the way it preserved the relative shape of each country and continent.
Today, the Mercator Projection is still widely used in schools, and is even the source for Google Maps. Yet there’s a lot about this map, and others, that is inaccurate.