School must be back in session. I can sense that must have happened because I’m capturing an exact phrase from multiple Internet Protocol addresses in my search engine query logs: “The Primer Meridian runs through what two capital cities?“
Could it be a Coincidence? I think not. I remember those bygone days of excessive homework and I’m glad I’ve been able to leave them far behind. Sure it was good for me in the long run but I always dreaded homework. I hated that it took me away from other activities such as drawing my own maps of fantasy worlds.
Let me see if I can help a few of those students out just a bit. The easiest way to solve this question involves the drafting of a single line, the Prime Meridian. This takes only about thirty seconds using the Google Maps “My Map” function, as I’ve provided above.
London
This first one is the easy one. The Prime Meridian was defined as running through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, as endorsed by the International Meridian Conference in 1884. London is the first capital city bisected by the Prime Meridian by definition and international convention. I mean the Greater London metropolitan area, not the City of London specifically. Anyway, let’s not get too hung up on semantics and consider London as the first instance.
Accra
I’m going to guess that the second city is Accra, Ghana. It’s not exactly on the line but its eastern boundary appears to be within 5 kilometres. The actual meridian seems to run through a neighboring town, Tema, but I think it’s accurate enough for a homework assignment.
There are some others capital cities that aren’t too far distant either. It’s more than I imagined. Am I missing any?
- Lomé, Togo at +1°12′
- Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso at -1°32′
- Niamey, Niger at +2°6′
- Paris, France at +2°21′
Hope that helps, kids.
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