Ever looked at a map of the world and thought, Greenland must be massive; or Finland looks like one of the largest countries in Europe?

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I just learned that the above map...a very common cartographer's flat map of the world, is actually very distorted.

The distortions arise from trying to turn a sphere into a 2D rectangle and they result in countries further from the equator appearing a lot larger than they actually are.

Have a play at thetruesize.com to see how large countries really are.

It might surprise you to find that Greenland is actually smaller than The Democratic Republic of Congo, and Finland is a lot smaller than Spain