area that is not developed, not inhabited even, and you can be minutes away from say a parking lot and not know it for the bush, not see it. Seven hour plane ride to get from one part of it to another. I only found out the little I know this year. Thanks for the map.

2,969,907 square miles in size v 2,959,064 square miles of the 48 states without Alaska and Hawaii.

than the last four years. It's much easier to rob and control people with platitudes and memes if they cannot exercise critical thinking skills and are ignorant.

That it was the approximate size of the continental U.S.

/snark

Seriously, though. I work in the bagroom of a major international airport. My airline serves both Paris, France and Frankfurt, Germany. Frankfurt's city code is FRA. Employees are (or at least were, once) required to know all the city codes of our destinations. And yet, two out of every three days, some knob will ask me where to find the "France" belt when they want to drop off/pick up some Frankfurt bags. Because "FRA is France, right?" France is a country, knob. We fly to cities. You don't walk up to a counter in Osaka and ask to buy a ticket to "America."

I'm liking the troll potential of this as a campaign slogan for Trump.

Obviously not geography. Good grief.

Throughout elementary school, much of the same content is taught over and over because too much is crammed into each year and many kids simply do not learn to a true level of understanding. And in the last decade, the focus on testing math and reading skills has meant more time on those subjects, along with weeks of test prep, and less time on topics like geography. Many schools no longer teach civics and government, with the obvious result that we have a huge population with no understanding of their own government. People without knowledge can be easily manipulated by a charlatan because they use emotion to make decisions, not facts. Thus the Trump cult is born.

My question was more rhetorical but I appreciate your post and agree completely. They need to bring back home ec and cooking classes. It’s becoming harder and harder to find a young handyman or woman anymore! We need to teach the trades/crafts to survive.

America is the biggest country in the world, right?
It's the home of the brave (but watch out for idiots with guns), the free (whatever time you have left after working multiple jobs), where education and health care are free and the best in the world . . . oh, scratch that last bit.
/sarcasm

Seriously though, I was surprised by that map overlay too. Didn't know it was so close.

But it is big. I've been on a train from Adelaide (south coast, in the middle), to Perth (south coast as far west as you can go) and it takes a long, long time.
Also drove from Adelaide to the Gold coast (East coast, in the middle) through inland roads, both ways, needed two overnight stays each way to do it. And yes, up the top of the mountains, there were flames on the side of the road.

Heaven knows we don't seem to learn it any other way.