Twelve Mile Circle

  • Water Island

    Water Island? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Logically it seems that it should either be water or an island. How could it be both? Actually, it’s not a contradiction. It makes perfect sense at least for the Water Island that’s part of the United States Virgin Islands (map). Early seafarers used its name as a beacon,…

  • St. Patrick’s Day in My Wacky World

    I love my eccentric little neighborhood. It’s a perfect place for someone with unusual interests like me. I’ve discussed its oddities, peculiarities, history and geography on a number of occasions although they probably mean more to me than to you. I write Twelve Mile Circle as much to amuse myself as to appeal to an…

  • Revisiting Previous Articles with Street View – UK

    I’m still having a great time with the recent major release of Google Street View images for the United Kingdom. It’s like somebody opened a new playground with so many different places for me to travel vicariously. It also offered an opportunity to go back to some of my earlier articles and see if I…

  • Random Selection, UK

    Google Maps released a huge set of Street View images for the United Kingdom a few days ago as you’ve undoubtedly learned on all of the geo-blogs by now. This extends the level of coverage for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to upwards of 95% of the road infrastructure. I’m sure you’ve had an…

  • The Highest Island Elevation

    What’s the highest island elevation? Why do I find so many different answer when I try to track it down? I thought it was a rather straightforward question but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Apparently elevation is in the eye of the beholder. Let’s review some of the candidates and see if we…

  • A Couple of Recent Bloggy Finds

    I’ve been getting a few reader referrals over the last couple of days from a blog I’d never seen before. It had a rather intriguing and promising Intertube domain, railmaps.blogspot.com. Naturally I wanted to check it out. The site was kind enough to recommend me to its readers and I hoped to repay the favor.…

  • New Visitor Roundup

    It’s been awhile since you’ve had to endure my gleeful exclamations as each new visitor arrived from a country never represented before on the Twelve Mile Circle. That’s because I was getting tired of that thread and figured you were too. Nonetheless I’ve been collecting them the last couple of months so I can spring…

  • Malware via Google Images

    My post today has nothing to do with geography so feel free to come back tomorrow if you like. Rather, I’m passing along something nefarious I ran across on Google Images. This happened as I investigated someone hijacking one of the photos that I display on my website. Take a look at this photograph This…

  • Superlative Tunnels

    I’ve been enjoying the World’s Longest Tunnel page recently and I decided to see if I could locate some of the more striking examples using maps and photo sites. Oftentimes I could locate those spots although honestly, sometimes the interior of a tunnel isn’t particularly impressive. Anyway, let’s see what we can find in these…

  • Closest Border Monuments — Found!

    I wrote recently about the many thousands of tiny segments that form the boundary between Canada and the United States. Fittingly, I called the article Canada-USA Border Segment Extremes. I’d been following up on a query from loyal reader “Greg”. Back then he asked if I knew where he could find the shortest of those…


Latest Comments

  1. Hi Mr. Howder — Just going from memory, I recall that your “rule” for counting a nation/state/county is “if I’m…

  2. Does anyone have actual music to the song – Tanaha ,Timpson. Bobo and Blair ?? It was recorded by Tex…