For the most part, we tend to trust information that we get from the educational settings and resources around us. This is particularly true when we see the same images over and over again, which is a sign that there is agreement among experts on the topic. Such is the case of the Mercator projection map — a two-dimensional representation of Earth's geography created by 16th-century Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator.
Mercator's famous projection map was created in 1569, and it has had a lasting influence on how we view the world. Unfortunately, a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional sphere is going to have some distortions. Those distortions and the way that Mercator chose to work within the limitations of the transfer from one to the other, have warped the way many people view the world.
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