Category: History
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But What’s the Meridian?
The definition of “meridian” sounds straight-forward enough. There are some ancillary definitions relating to greatest moments, highest achievements and such, plus one dealing with acupuncture. However, the one roughly analogous to longitude interests 12MC the most. From Dictionary.com: me·rid·i·an…(1.) Geography. (a.) a great circle of the earth passing through the poles and any given point…
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Sweet Home, uh, Oregon
I’m still working out all of the details on my upcoming trip to Oregon and Washington later this summer. The path seems to be getting clearer to me as I fill in missing pieces. It appears I’m going to have to apologize in advance to my Portland readers. The route will likely skirt the city…
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License to Map
I guess I didn’t know until this morning that license plates, those little identification signs we attach to our automobiles, are more generically called vehicle registration plates. Right now I’m sure my North American audience is wondering why I even bothered to define “license plate” when the meaning is so intuitively obvious. That’s because the…
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Natural Forces: Nuclear
My series on Natural Forces seems to be a dud based on the (lack of) comments. Usually they are rather robust in terms of both quantity and quality on Twelve Mile Circle. It goes to show that I have no idea which articles will resonate with an audience. And that probably explains why 12MC readership…
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Natural Forces: Magnetism
Twelve Mile Circle focused recently on gravity. That suggested a theme: the four forces of nature as described by physics. Magnetism comes next on the list. It has more populated places named accordingly than any of the other forces. When I mention the plethora of magnetic place names however, I don’t mean to imply that…
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Natural Forces: Gravitation
Let’s talk about gravity. No, not the physical property whereby objects attract with forces proportional to their masses, but instead the little town in Iowa. I stumbled upon Gravity, Iowa figuratively as I researched the recent Gravity Hills article. Gravity doesn’t have a gravity hill as far as I know so it didn’t elicit a…
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Alabama Capitals
It took awhile for some new states admitted to the United States to settle down with a mature governance structure. Alabama fit that exact pattern. It had five capital cities in less than thirty years. Montgomery is the Alabama capital today (map). It has grown in size and stature to a couple hundred thousand residents…
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First Name, Surname Symmetry
I wondered recently about towns bearing someone’s first name combined with counties bearing the same person’s last name. This spark came after learning that Gail was the county seat of Borden County, Texas. Both honored Gail Borden, the condensed milk guy (and so much more). The only other instance of this first name – surname…
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Space Shuttle Discovery Flyover
We had a moment of excitement this morning when the Space Shuttle “Discovery” set atop a modified 747 jet airline flew right past my office window. Please excuse the low-quality photograph. I had only the camera on my mobile phone at the time and this was the best I could manage. Seeing it live with…
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Condensed Texas
I first came across Borden County, Texas in More Land than People, Part 2. It’s amongst the 63 out of 3,143 counties or equivalents where square mileage exceeds the number of its inhabitants. For Borden (map), that was 897.4 square miles for only 641 people recorded in the 2010 Decennial Census so there was plenty…