The US states have some iconic shape, but if you look closely ,you'll see many irregularities, such as the Kentucky Bend, which is a tiny piece of Kentucky, home to 18 people, cut off from the rest of Kentucky by the state of Missouri. The border is defined by the Mississippi River, which loops south below, and back north above, the thirty six and a half parallel, which is a boundary between Kentucky and Tennessee. officially the 36.5 parallel was supposed to be the entire Kentucky Tennessee border, but the line drawn up to the Tennesse river in 1780, between what was at the time, parts of Virginia and North Carolina, gradually drifted north as the surveyors travelled across the still mostly unexplored continent. When the line reached the Tennessee River it was more than a tenth of a degree off. But the states were like ... eh ... good enough. In 1819, the border was extended to the mississippi river, this time on the correct line. But the error east Tennessee River remained. Using rivers as natural borders has one fundamental flaw: rivers change. It is generally agreed upon that river borders will change the gradual erosion of banks but when the course of the river changes suddenly through either man-made or natural causes, the old river boundary is used to prevent land and people from switching states. It's fairly common for states have some land on the wrong side of the Mississippi and other rivers in the Great Plains because of earthquakes and floods. Notable examples include Carter Lake, Iowa, which is a city on Nebraka's side of the Missouri River next to Omaha's airport, and the airport of the city of St. Joseph, Missouri, just north of Kansas city, which is cut off from the rest of the state by 1952 flood. These situations are easy to deal with inside the United States, since people can move freely between states but the Rio Grande border between Texas and Mexico has similar river issues. Every once in a while, the two countries will exchange land, to clean up the border, but they both still have some land on the wrong side of the river. The Colorado River border have a different problem: the river ... sort of ... doesn't exist anymore. Because of dams and diversions to irrigate all this farmland, a stretch of border between Arizona and Mexico is on the driver bed where the river used to be. Here they built a tunnel under the driver bed for an irrigation canal in Mexico, just south of the border. This lake known as the Salton Sea was created by accident, in 1905, when a flood broke through the irrigation canal, and water kept flowing for two years while engineers tried to fix the breach. Agreements between governments to conserve water, have allowed the river to occasionally flow all the way to the Gulf of California once again, but it's intermittent, and far less than once was. In New York, Liberty Island and Ellis island are parts of the state of New York, even though they're completely surrounded by the waters of the state of New Jersey. This is the result of an 1834 interstate compact when Ellis Island was expanded between 1892 and 1934, it was thought to all be part of New York, but in 1998, the supreme court ruled that the land reclaimed after 1834 belonged to New Jersey, since it was reclaimed from their waters. This left New York with a landlocked enclave surrounded by new jersey. Delaware has a couple of pieces of land that look like they should be part of New Jersey. This is because part of Delaware's borders are defined by 12 mile circle centered on a courthouse in Newcastle. In this circle, the border with new jersey is defined as the high-water mark of the banks of the Delaware River. Where as outside the circle, the border is defined as the center of the river. Like with Ellis Island, These areas are reclaimed land. Only the tip of the artificial island in the South is part of delaware because the 12 mile circle only intersects part of the reclaimed land. The mid-atlantic is home to many more strange border situations, such as the Eastern Shore of Virginia connected only by this bridge that becomes a tunnel in the middle of the Chesapeake bay. Also the entire state of Maryland is pretty weird. When Maryland was created in 1632 Europeans knew practically nothing about the interior of the continent. Virginia was just a few settlements near the Chesapeake Bay, and the Duchess sweden we're looking to establish colonies of their own nearby. So the British established a new colony on the chesapeake bay, north of the Potomac River, to strenthen their claim to the area. The peninsula was cut approximately across from the mouth of the Potomac, and was later mark precisely. Though the border ended up going through this island in the bay, and this one off the coast. The swedish colony was conquered by the Dutch, and the Dutch by the British, and some of that land eventually became delaware. It was defined as the land to the west of the Delaware River, including the 12-mile circle and land to the south up to Fenwick Island. This directly overlapped with Marilyn's claim so they agreed to split the peninsula in half. The people who drew this border between 1763 and 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, evidently we were good at geometry because the border goes west halfway across the peninsula that follows a tangent line to the 12 mile circle. Then there is a line that goes north from this point, until it meets the mason-dixon line, known for being the boundary between the slave states in the south, and the free states in the North. The line is 15 miles to the south of where the most southernly part of Philadelphia was at the time. The 12 mile circle circle extends past the perpendicular section of the line, so the border follows an arc from the tangent point until it reaches the line going north to the mason-dixon line. though this created a small wedge bounded by the circle and two lines, which according to the definitions, really belong to no one, but both Delaware and Pennsylvania claimed it. The area was administered by delaware and Pennsylvania gave up their claim in 192.1 Maryland strange shape in the West is the result of the up river section of the Potomac coming very close to the Mason-Dixon line. At one point if the river veered north by two miles then Maryland would have a Kentucky Bend situation. Maryland's western border is the near the sourceof the potomac, but Pennsylvania continues to a point five degrees of longitude west of the Delaware River. At the time they would not have known this would be so close to West Virginia's Ohio River border, leaving it with an awkward Panhandle. When the time came to have the civil war in 1861, the border slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware stuck with the Union which was lucky for the North since otherwise the capital Washington DC would be surrounded by rebel states. The state representatives from the western part of Virginia wish to remain in the Union despite the rest wishing to secede. The West Virginians said what the rest of Virgina's Representatives did was revolting, so they should lose their seats and be replaced. They form their own Union Government of Virgina and called the old rebel one illegitimate, and began the process of forming a new state, which was something they wanted to do for a while anyway. Since the Union controlled this border region they split off with West Virginia despite being pro-sucession. Michigan has 2 peninsulas, which have a bridge, but are otherwise disconnected from one another. They received the upper peninsula in order to end the war they were fighting with Ohio over Toledo. Only one person was injured in the fighting, but tensions were high enough that they started shooting each other. The border of ohio was supposed to be the southern tip of Lake Michigan, but the best map they had at the time showed the lake to be a lot shorter than it really was. Thus ohio believed their state would have all the lake erie coast. However, it was reported by first trappers, that lake michigan extended further south than previously thought. In response to this, Ohio said that in that conditional case, Ohio's northern border will be on a diagonal line going from the tip of Lake Michigan a point on Lake Erie north of the port of toledo. However, when the federal government was approving Ohio's state hood they didn't like Ohio's algorithmically defined border, so the only approved the border at being south of Lake Michigan. Thus when they created the Michigan territory they defined its southern border as the tip of Lake Michigan, even Ohio have been assuming Toledo which was north of this line was theres. In 1816, the line claimed by Ohio was surveyed. This angered the Michigan territory who made their own survey which follows the federally defined line. The land between was called the Toledo strip. Ohio blocked Michigan's attempt at statehood while they claimed the strip and both sides used militias to defend their claim. Eventually Michigan ceded the land to ohio in exchange for the upper peninsula and statehood. Interestingly, Detroit is immediately to the north of Windsor, Ontario meaning someone born and raised in South Detroit .. is Canadian. Minnesota also has an exclave called the northwest angle. In order for the hundred and nineteen Americans that live there to reach the rest of the state, they must travel through Canada. When the United States won independence, part of its border was defined as the northwest corner of lake of the woods and a line from that point west to the Mississippi. The Mississippi River failed to exist that far north, so on most Maps the border was just drive south from the lake. The situation was left until 1818 when they agreed to make a simple border on the 49th parallel from the Rockies to Lake. The border would go directly north, or south, from the northwest corner to the 49th parallel, so they sent an expedition to find the corner, built a pile of nearby and called it a day. It turns out is about a third of a degree north of the parallel. They also agreed to "share" the Oregon Territory on the other side of the Rockies and decide what to do with it later. When that time came, the Oregon Territory was in between Mexican California and Russian Alaska, which would eventually be purchased by America in 1867. Alaska is cut off from the rest of America by Canada, but if the Americans have followed through with "fifty four forty or fight" then when they bought Alaska it would have been connected. However the Americans decided to be reasonable, and in 1846 continued the 49th parallel border to the Pacific coast. They even let the British keep their fort on the south of Vancouver Island. Although this border ended up cutting off Point Roberts from the rest of Washington State. America was willing to settle because they get annexed Texas and we're about to fight the mexican-american war. Texas claimed all of mexico's territory immediately north of the Rio Grande, but the state gave the land north of the 36 and a half parallel, as well as most of what became new mexico, to the federal government in exchange for paying off the Texas government debt, as part of the compromise of 1850 between slave and free states. Which worked out ... perfectly. Since in 1854, in the lead-up to the Civil War, Free Staters and slave holders were fighting the bloody Kansas war over whether the Kansas Territory should allow slavery. Its southern border with the 37th parallel which left a small strip at a no man's land. In 1890, it became part of the territory of Oklahoma, along with the Indian Territory, which was the land where a native tribes were forcibly resettled during the trail of tears. But going back to just before the Civil War, in 1859 on the west coast near Point Roberts It was unclear who controlled the island in the channel. Tensions over the island came to a frying point when an American farmer shot a big owned by a worker of a British company on one of the islands. The two sides agreed to let Germany decide the issue. The islands are awarded to U.S. and the pig war ended with no casualties. Well except the pig ... There are enough weird borders around the world to make an entire series, which you can watch on the left. Alternatively you can watch video on the right, which gives the historical reasons some countries like Bolivia and Ethiopia are landlocked. Also please consider clicking the ORB OF SUBSCRIPTION
Can't put my finger on it, but I'm finding it challenging to focus/understand on what the narrator is saying in this video.
Good stuff op! 👍🏽
Nice job OP!
(small critique, as others have said: perhaps slow down a bit? otherwise fantastic!)