20 Mind-Bending Facts That Rewrite What We Think We Know

Florida feels like the obvious answer because it reaches south, warm and coastal, toward the Caribbean. A globe tells a different story. The closest U.S. state to Africa is Maine, specifically from its far eastern coast toward Morocco. The reason is not visible on many flat maps, where shapes and distances get stretched in ways that train our instincts badly. On a sphere, the northeastern edge of the United States sits nearer to northwest Africa than Florida does.