The most glaring example of this distortion is Greenland, which appears to be about the same size as Africa on the map, but in reality, the continent is nearly 14-and-a-half times larger.

It's certainly not a small island: It's about three times the size of Texas. But on most maps, Greenland looks almost as big as the entire continent of Africa. In fact, it's 14 times smaller than ...

In fact, it's 14 times smaller than Africa, something that is apparent when you look at its actual size to scale on a ... In 1569 he drew a world map, what's become known as the Mercator projection.