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The US-Canada Border Is 5,500 Miles of Pure Nonsense

50 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this explainer3 months2016–2020 score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN recommends it as an entertaining overview in any thread about border oddities.

CGP Grey walks through the odd history and quirks of the US-Canada border, including how it was surveyed and its irregularities such as exclaves.

“There's a great CGP Grey video on the Canada-US border well worth watching if this interests you” (HN, 2020)

3 recommendations · 2 citations · Explainers

5 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@CoolGuySteve Jan 2019 Recommends
on HN thread Canada's Toughest Border Crossing
There's an entertaining CGP Grey video about other oddities in the US-Canada border. [this video] Considering how inconvenient it is in some geographies and how small the patches of land are, I'm always surprised the State Department doesn't negotiate a land exchange treaty with Canada to fix what are essentially cartography bugs. Both sides would spend a few tens of millions compensating people for land seizures and dealing with the administrative overhead of negotiating and ratifying the deal but would gain it back over time with simplified border stations.
Entertaining look at oddities of the US-Canada border.
@sandworm101 Sep 2020 Recommends
on HN thread Northwestern Point of the Lake of the Woods
There is a great youtube video on this and similar can-US border irregularities. Search for "Canada-US no touching zone". There is another exclave near vancouver. [this video]
Covers US-Canada border irregularities including exclaves.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@sandworm101 Feb 2016 Cites it
on HN thread Canadians don’t live as far north as you think
There was much silliness with the boarder. They actually drew some of it using blank maps. [this video] (And that map missed a huge part of the can-us boarder, focusing only on the southern one.)
Silly history of the US-Canada border
@jffry Jul 2016 Cites it
on HN thread The rectangularness of countries
[this video] The border is defined as a straight line, but was surveyed as a series of slightly wobbly series of lines. They put up thousands of stone pillars, cut out a strip of trees along the border, and it became official. IIRC there's also some stuff about a disputed island
Explains how the US-Canada border was surveyed and marked despite being a straight line.

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