cartographer has come up with a map that shows the longest - possible straight land path on Earth to walk upon.
The line starts at about 10km north of Greenville, Liberia, and ends near Wenling, China.
The route runs through 9 time zones and 18 countries and territories.
This longest - possible straight line across the globe comes, at several points, extremely close to not working our.
In Israel, for example, the oath very nearby runs into the Mediterranean, and in Iran, you'll just miss the Caspian.
Interstingly, when this straight line is viewed on a flat World map, it appears as a curved one.
But that's just another fluke of improper map projections - a limitation of the 'Mercator projection', which makes
it impossible to accurately represent the world's round surface in a flat image without fudging it a bit.
There are a number of oddities in the World map because it needs to match up to the latitude and longitude
coordinates. That's the reason why Greenland is as big as Africa on many maps, and that is why this line is straight
on the globe (and therefore, in reality, on Earth) gets a mighty bend when projected on a flat map.
The road goes like this: Liberia, Cote d' Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Burkina Faso again, Chad, Libya, Israel, the
West Bank, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan again and finally China.
For those who doubt, can refer to the map developed by Guy Bruneau that shows the alternate projection.
Here's how it will look on a flat map below...