the true size

[LD]

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?

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

[The Legend]

Russia is the biggest indeed and here also looks the biggest. Australia looks bigger than Brazil, but really is 10% smaller (7,633,565 sq. km vs 8,460,415 sq. km). Don't wanna use any rude words, but... Denmark and Greenland have different colors on that picture. Greenland is same-colored as Russia, but has different colors with Denmark.

P.S. For those, who has missed all geography lessons during the school time : The Kingdom of Denmark is a unitary state that comprises, in addition to Denmark proper, two autonomous constituent countries in the North Atlantic Ocean: Greenland and the Faroe Islands.