Have you played GeoGuesser?

Try GeoGuessr to see how good you are at recognizing the geography of various locations around the globe. This game is addictive!

GeoGuessr was created by Anton Wallén during the hard Swedish winter of 2013 and launched in April later the same year. A few weeks after launch the site started to pick up speed and the traffic greatly increased (largely thanks to our awesome users sharing the site over social media) which lead to more and more people discovering it as well as some of the “regular” media outlets.

The games works by showing you a 360 degee view from a fixed location – you use your mouse to drag the view around you – and then you have to guess the location by pinning it on a world map in the lower right corner of the screen.

Your score for each guess is based on how close you got to the correct location.

It’s Geography Awareness Week!

Each year more than 100,000 Americans actively participate in Geography Awareness Week.  This annual event was established by presidential proclamation more than 25 years ago. Each third week of November, students, families and community members focus on the importance of geography by hosting events; using lessons, games, and challenges in the classroom; and often meeting with policymakers and business leaders as part of that year’s activities.

Every week should be #GeographyAwarenessWeek pic.twitter.com/POJLpvek4P

— Metsker Maps (@MetskerMaps) November 21, 2013

Too many young Americans are unable to make effective decisions, understand geo-spatial issues, or even recognize their impacts as global citizens. Geography Awareness Week raises awareness to this dangerous deficiency in American education and tries to excite people about geography as both a discipline and as a part of everyday life.

You can find plenty of resources and activities this week on Twitter by following the #GeorgraphyAwarenessWeek hashtag and through the Geography Awareness Week Facebook page.

North American Time Zones Adopted

November 18: On this day in 1883 the American and Canadian railroads teamed up to institute standard continental time zones and put an end to the confusion rising from of thousands of local times across North America.

Local solar times used by various towns and cities became increasingly awkward as rail transport and telecommunications improved. Clocks differed between places by an amount corresponding to the difference in their geographical longitude — four minutes for every degree of longitude. The difference between New York and Boston, for example, is about two degrees or 8 minutes. The use of time zones smooths out these differences.