Screenshot showing the page on the OpenCage blog listing past #fridaygeotrivia questions
As always the best way to practice for #fridaygeotrivia is to review past questions, which you can find over on the blog
https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-april-2026
🚨 #fridaygeotrivia is back! 🚨
As per tradition we play on the final Friday of the month, which is this Friday (24 April) at 17:00 Berlin 🇩🇪 time / 4pm London 🇬🇧 / 11am New York 🇺🇸
Rules and prizes explained here: https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-april-2026
See you on Friday!
Screenshot of the OpenCage blog page where we list all of our geothreads
9/ That's it for our overview of ⛴️ maritime choke points. What did we overlook?
We have more threads about the #geoweirdness of specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc linked on our blog:
https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads
Screenshot of the OpenCage blog page where we list all of our geothreads
9/ That's it for our overview of ⛴️ maritime choke points. What did we overlook?
We have more threads about the #geoweirdness of specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc linked on our blog:
https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads
8/ Finally, looking to South East Asia, Singapore 🇸🇬 and Malaysia 🇲🇾 sit on the 900km long Strait of Malacca, the main shipping channel between the Indian and Pacific oceans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Malacca
Map of the Panama
Map of the Americans showing the location of the Panama Canal
In the Americas the most important maritime choke point is the Panama Canal, which passes through Panama 🇵🇦 and connects the Caribbean (Atlantic) with the Pacific.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal
Until 1979 the Canal Zone was a territory of the United States 🇺🇸
Map of the Baltic
Map of Skagerrak and Kattegat — straits/bays of the North Sea, along Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. By The original uploader was Attilios at English Wikipedia. - Modification of, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4221812
6/ In northern Europe Sweden 🇸🇪, Denmark 🇩🇰, and Norway 🇳🇴 sit on one of the busiest shipping routes in the world - Skagerrak - where the Baltic meets the North Sea / Atlantic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skagerrak
As we covered in our Morocco #geoweirdness thread, nearby Tangier was it's own "international zone" until 1956.
https://en.osm.town/@opencage/112457113480438896
Map showing the Strait of Gibraltar
5/ At the other end of the Mediterranean is the Strait of Gibraltar, connecting the Med with the Atlantic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Gibraltar
The strategic location of Istanbul (previously Constantinople) connecting Asia and Europe has been clear for millennia, but the on-going Russia 🇷🇺 / Ukraine 🇺🇦 war has brought renewed focus to this critical waterway.
Our #geoweirdness thread about Turkey
Map of the Bosphorus
Map showing the location of Istanbul
The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey By Alexxx Malev - Imported from 500px (archived version) by the Archive Team. (detail page), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71346620
4/ Heading north we find the 🇹🇷 Turkish straits (the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles) linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_straits
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obs...
Our #geoweirdness thread about Egypt: https://en.osm.town/@opencage/115729051480488048
Map of the Suez Canal
Map showing the location of the Suez Canal
The container ship Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal in Egypt, viewed from the International Space Station By NASA JSC ISS image library - https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=ISS064&roll=E&frame=48480, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129747075
3/ At the northern end of the Red Sea we have the Suez Canal, passing through Egypt 🇪🇬.
The Canal's critical importance to global logistics and the route from Europe to Asia came into focus a few years ago when it was blocked by a container ship that ran aground.
Nearby is Somaliland, which declared independence from Somalia 🇸🇴 in 1991 and operates as its own country, but is recognized by only one UN member: Israel 🇮🇱
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somaliland
#geoweirdness
Map showing the entrance to the Red Sea with Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somaliland
Map of Bab-el-Mandeb By Archer90 - This work contains information from OpenStreetMap, which is made available under the Open Database License (ODbL).The ODbL does not require any particular license for maps produced from ODbL data. Prior to 1 August 2020, map tiles produced by the OpenStreetMap Foundation were licensed under the CC-BY-SA-2.0 license. Maps produced by other people may be subject to other licences., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39351139
2/ Not far from the Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea we find the Bab-el-Mandeb passage between Yemen 🇾🇪 on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti 🇩🇯and Eritrea 🇪🇷 in the Horn of Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bab-el-Mandeb
#geoweirdness thread we would feature the list of strategic maritime "choke points".
1/
Map showing the Strait of Hormuz
The world's attention remains fixed on the US 🇺🇸 / Israel 🇮🇱 / Iran 🇮🇷 conflict generally and the Strait of Hormuz, the entry to the Persian Gulf, specifically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_hormuz
While the conflict hopefully de-escalates we thought for this week's
RE: https://mapstodon.space/@geomob/116419262767622505
Was a very enjoyable evening
Map of Easter Island
This week was Easter, so it's fitting we reshare our #geoweirdness thread about Chile 🇨🇱 , owners of Easter Island 🗿
Enjoy:
https://en.osm.town/@opencage/112971578046705471
Screenshot of OpenStreetMap showing the building at Kleine Weiherstraße 2 55120 Mainz with the note (engl. translation) "Kleine Weiherstraße no longer exists, but the address is still used. This is not Pestalozzistraße 11. Source: sign at the location and the city of Mainz"
In today's episode of why geocoding is hard ...
English translation of the note "Kleine Weiherstraße no longer exists, but the address is still used. This is not Pestalozzistraße 11. Source: sign at the location and the city of Mainz"
https://en.osm.town/@opencage/110524917750377747
We have many more threads about specific countries and regions, border disputes, geocoding, etc linked over on our blog:
https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads
Screenshot from the OpenCage blog page where we list all the various #geoweirdness threads
6/ That concludes our look at geographic jokes. What did we miss?
If you liked this #geoweirdness thread you may also enjoy our look at
Geo games: https://en.osm.town/@opencage/113606413273241319
and of course "The Vaguely Rude Places Map" is always worth a chuckle
SwissTopo map with a hiker drawn into the topographic lines on a mountain peak
4/ Another bit of cartographic fun is the long tradition of map makers hiding figures in their maps
SwissTopo has a nice article with several examples from their maps:
www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/hidden-images-2016122...
#geoweirdness
3/ No list of geographic jokes would be complete without a discussion of the "Bielefeld Conspiracy" which makes the claim that the German 🇩🇪 city of Bielefeld does not exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_conspiracy
#geoweirdness
It's April Fools' Day so we thought it fitting to pay tribute to one of the greatest geographic jokes of all time.
In 1977 British newspaper The Guardian published a seven page supplement about the fictional nation of San Serriffe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Serriffe
#geoweirdness
We've published some Agent Skills files (SKILL.md) to get your agent up to speed more quickly on our geocoding API and working with our various language-specific SDKs and command line tools so you don't need to re-invent the wheel
Screenshot of a claude code session starting with loading the OpenCage geocoding api Agent Skill
Many of you are working with AI tools like Claude Code to accelerate development.
