American Reacts to Why North is Up

[@RogersRamblings]

"Different rock type" refers to the lack of London Underground railways south of the River Thames. This is partly due to the geology being different. North of the Thames there is a type of clay which is easy to tunnel through. South of the Thames there isn't.

[@lomax343]

On the other hand, civilisation has never caught on south of the river. Hmm, I seem to have proved someone's point...

[@callumbrunton2761]

Also, Tolkien's most famous map (of the lonely mountain) does have east facing up, because that's where the sun rises, and that's what would have been important for those creating the map; i.e. the Dwarves.

[@mothmagic1]

That opening map was the Isle Of Wight off the south coast of Hampshire. Rutland is the smallest county in England.

[@mattbentley9270]

Im in Hampshire, IOW is cool and quaint

[@angharaddenby3389]

10:38 "It's tough to imagine a time when people didn't really know what was outside their world" - so . . . most Americans then, even today, don't know.

[@fiddyb]

Take all the time to look things up. You are one of the few that does it and it adds an extra passion for learning to your vids that I really love. Keep it up JJLA.

[@MushyTales]

Been bingeing a bunch of your videos after finding you today - just want to say how great it is to see you enjoy learning new information, but also how great it is to see someone else opening up new tabs and looking up/fact-checking information etc. After Map Men videos I always end up with a few tabs and various wiki rabbitholes to go down learning new stuff and then forgetting 90% of it :D Keep up the good work!

[@stewedfishproductions7959]

I recognise the top, quote card name 'Simon Quinlank' as being the character portrayed by the British comedian, Kevin Eldon in 'Fist of Fun'. It was a British comedy show series, initially on BBC Radio 1 (in 1993) and then a BBC2 television series (in 1995). So I can only guess they were fans, perhaps? Especially as the character was always 'inventing hobbies' in each episode and was known as the 'Hobby King' etc. Don't know who 'Mary Minston' is (the middle, quote card), but would hazard a guess that it has some sort of 'in joke' too?

[@JJLAReacts]

Ha! These guys fit jokes in everywhere! Thanks for shedding some light on the names!

[@Isleofskye]

@@JJLAReacts Did you see this explanation:) " "Different rock type" refers to the lack of London Underground railways south of the River Thames. This is partly due to the geology being different. North of the Thames there is a type of clay which is easy to tunnel through. South of the Thames there isn't.".....

[@Whitewingdevil]

I'm really glad you take the time to look up references and rewind to catch jokes you missed, Jay Foreman's videos are crazy dense with both references and jokes.

[@trevorlsheppard7906]

The North and South poles. Aren't fixed , they vary slightly over time , approximately every 300,000 years the poles flip and North pole will become the South Pole ,if you look on some Uk maps theres a measurement in degrees of difference between Magnetic North and the North shown on the map , it's called Declination ❤.

[@mothmagic1]

The variation and is still published on aviation charts and possibly nautical ones.

[@trevorlsheppard7906]

@@mothmagic1 It's printed on the legend of Ordannce Survey Maps ., might be on others

[@MrBulky992]

We're talking here only about the magnetic poles, of course. The earth's actual axial points don't ever change, I imagine. If I'm not mistaken, the earth's magnetic field and the positions of the magnetic poles are determined by eddy currents in its molten iron core?

[@adaddinsane]

Magnetic poles. The actual axes of rotation don't flip. (Although they do precess but that's another story.)

[@watchreadplayretro]

Fantastically eye opening! Thank you MapMen (and ReactionMan!)

[@22seanmurphy]

Hi please don't worry about about pausing as I'm 60 year's old from the UK and I'm always learning from you 😊.

[@RyanKeane9]

I second this. Take your time my friend 👍🏻

[@Isleofskye]

60? 60 ? No youngsters,Please!

[@22seanmurphy]

@@Isleofskye why!,

[@Isleofskye]

@@22seanmurphy Because I enter mu 8th decade next year,Sean:)

[@22seanmurphy]

@@Isleofskye oh i see lol you're still a young pup 😊 just seen a bit more of the world than me, age is nothing it's how you feel 🤗

[@GordonHector-fo5gi]

Hi, I've been watching your videos for some time now and have found them refreshing, funny, and educational. As a South Yorkshireman of 77 years, I thought I had seen it all. Your view of the world and the UK is very interesting and informative. Keep up the good work. (Just a boast for God's own country.) We are friendly people with a big heart and the backbone of Britain. By the way, l love your accent. Gordon

[@alan-]

Map Men's "London Boroughs" videos are more interesting and funny than they sound.

[@Isleofskye]

Tru Say,Mi Bredda..

[@johnp8131]

It's true! In London if you ask a cabby (black taxi) to take you South of the river, traditionally, you will get a sharp intake of breath and a "Sorry Governor" as they were unlikely to get a fare paying customer back? Perhaps things have changed?

[@andrewtaylor5984]

London taxi drivers have to take passengers up to six miles within Greater London.

[@pipercharms7374]

Great video as always! Hope you do more of their videos :)

[@giselavaleazar8768]

Dutch maps, mostly west up.. Perhaps having the North Sea up (the most important trade route) is the common thing.

[@riicky83]

Looking at the map with words written in ever direction, that brought back memories when I saw Larry the Loafer.

[@Pixel_Player]

I never thought you’d ever mention Rutland, I live here in Rutland and it’s the smallest county apart from some technicalities, I would love for you to do a video on Rutland but there isn’t much info or videos about it

[@davidwatts-hw2dh]

These guys should be in our schools to make learning geography, fun for our kids!

[@grahamsibbert2412]

Haha, yes, Rutland is the smallest county in England, and quite right, it doesn’t have a motorway.

[@mautbydecoy1]

😂 Norfolk doesn’t have motorways either. Keeps the riffraff out😉

[@TheGarryq]

Rutland is only the smallest county for half of the year. The other half It's high tide and more of the Isle of Wight is underwater 🤣

[@leemcarthur4334]

I don't think Norfolk has any motorways either 🤔

[@andrewtaylor5984]

​@@TheGarryqThe Isle of Wight is properly part of Hampshire.

[@TheGarryq]

@@andrewtaylor5984 The island became a separate administrative county in 1890, independent of Hampshire. It became a lieutenant in 1974, the same year it also became a ceremonial county in its own right. The island has administrative links to Hampshire

[@BritishBeachcomber]

0:56 Rutland is the smallest county in England, but it also has the largest man-made lake/reservoir, Rutland water. In fact, Rutland is mostly water.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

Kielder Water, which is mostly in Northumberland, with a small piece in Roxburghshire, is supposedly larger.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

Rutland also has a short stretch of both the A1 and the East Coast Main Line.

[@stephenlee5929]

Hi, 7:01, the warning about beef butter is probably a reference to Mad Cow Disease (BSE), it caused cows to fall over amongst other things,

[@PHDarren]

02:55 top comment by Simon Quinlank, he was a character created by Kevin Eldon (actor/comedy actor, actually played two different characters in Game of Thrones). Simon Quinlank was protrayed on the TV sketch show Fist of Fun. He was a parody hobby person with a hobby of the day but really just taking the pee out of them.

[@carolineskipper6976]

The map with all the words around the edge was the Isle of Wight, which is off the South coast of England. Some of the names on it were real and some nonsense. Oddly, maps of the UK are often oriented so that the South coast is shown running horizontally, which give no indication of how it sits in relation to mainland Europe, when in reality, Cornwall on the western end is a lot further south than the Kent coast on the eatern end.

[@Isleofskye]

Ironically in England,it is "The Beautiful South" and the "Grim" North....lol

[@Oxley016]

anybody who has been to the north knows it is more beautiful

[@Isleofskye]

@@Oxley016 I prefer Douth London to North London, personally.*** ***Obviously, you can't mean The North Of England. lol I went to Middlesbrough and Stockton On Tees, which has some lovely council estates. Went to Cleethorpes for a stick of rock. I will stick to The North and South Downs and West Country.:)

[@Oxley016]

Lake district, peak district, Yorkshire, Northumberland etc. @@Isleofskye

[@Isleofskye]

@@Oxley016 You can't claim The Peaks,My Friend as it is mainly The Midlands but yes,I grant you The Dales and Moors of Yorkshire and The Lakes takes some beating but the weather !:)

[@AnthonyP73]

I just watched Jay Foreman's video on London's trams, lots of nice gags in there I thought you may appreciate.

[@xolotlnephthys]

we've always known that the world was a sphere. Just that people were less sure how big the sphere was, or how much land was on it

[@adaddinsane]

On the contrary, Eratosthenes measure it very accurately around 400 BCE.

[@kimbirch1202]

On a sunny day, in summer, at lunchtime, your shadow will always be pointing North , if you have forgotten your compass. At least in the Northern Hemisphere.

[@PaulieR1976]

Beef butter is delicious. Used to get a beef sandwich made with beef dripping (beef butter basically). I could eat that til the cows came home.... oh wait

[@maozedong8370]

10:44 Buddy, there are STILL people out there that don't think the Earth is a sphere because they are stupid.

[@alan-]

Thanks to social media, more and more people believe all sorts of utter garbage. Being stupid is merely a pre-requisite, but thanks again to social media, we now know that a disturbingly large proportion of people meet that pre-requisite.

[@Isleofskye]

I am stupid but do realise The Earth is a sphere. Ironic,n'est ce pas?

[@stevenwaton9867]

You should watch funniest uk tv adverts over the last 20 /25 years

[@gwaptiva]

The fact that you look shit up rather than attempting to farm YT's algorithm by asking your viewers to comment on the video, makes you a legit human being. Here, have my subscription (and a comment to attempt to farm YT's algorithm)

[@MrBulky992]

The idea of northern places being given more importance/prominence than southern ones as the eye tends to scan from top to bottom (also left to right in most countries) is proved even at the national level by most British road atlases. The "natural" order, based on north-to-south and left-to-right would be to start in the NW and finish in the SE. As densely populated London and its surrounding area are located in the south east corner of the island of Great Britain and are considered, with some justification, to be more important than anywhere else, most road atlases "correct" this unfortunate geographical anomaly by ordering the detailed map pages so that the most southerly places are represented on the pages at the front of the atlas and the most northerly are right at the back with the others in between starting in the south west (Cornwall, Somerset, Devon etc. - being "left" of London) and finishing in the north east (John O'Groats, Orkney and Shetland) where far fewer people live.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

For the benefit of those who play Scrabble, in the original version of the game, you started in the top left-hand corner, and worked downwards, for the same reasons.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

Ordnance Survey maps are numbered upwards starting with the Shetland Islands, working gradually to Cornwall and Kent. There certainly are atlases of Britain working south from the Shetland Islands.

[@MrBulky992]

​@@andrewtaylor5984I use OS Explorer maps and they are not numbered at all the way you describe, if I have understood. First, looking at my area, the SE of England, Winchester in Hampshire is map 120 and Coventry in the West Midlands is 221. Fort William and Ben Nevis in Scotland are on map 392. John O'Groats is map 451. I do not have a complete list for the whole of Britain but the numbers seem to go roughly left to right and south to north as I would have predicted.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

The Explorer series is clearly numbered differently from the general series.

[@mothmagic1]

You are here maps follow the army principle of "track up" even if it means you have to hold the map at a 45 degree angle to line your map up with the direction you want to go.

[@michaeltaylor2121]

Nice. When i get home from work, im gonna turn my world map upside down. Middle Earth can be on top of the world.

[@davidkettell6236]

those guys are so smart and entertaining.

[@jackie6343]

Lol,whipper snapper is a young person 😊

[@LordRogerPovey]

Rutland is the smallest county in the UK.

[@jillybrooke29]

Isle Of Wight

[@TheJohnboyhunter]

British counties don't have to be tiny to not have any motorways. Northumberland is the 6th largest county in England and doesn't have a single section of motorway.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

Northumberland is in fact the fifth largest county, using the pre-1974 boundaries. There is a stretch of motorway in the centre of Newcastle, again using the historic counties, and that is historically Northumberland. (Tyne and Wear was a creation of politicians.) It is where I was brought up, and the creation of Tyne and Wear did a great deal of damage to the rest of Northumberland.

[@adaddinsane]

@@andrewtaylor5984 And besides, Northumberland isn't as funny as Rutland.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

@@adaddinsane What is so funny about Rutland? Rutland has, in fact, the second largest man-made lake in Britain. In addition, the longest railway viaduct in the country over a river is partly within the county. (Harringworth viaduct over the Welland.)

[@Aloh-od3ef]

May I recommend ‘Harry and Paul. America tourists go for breakfast. Or ‘Women know your limits’. They are nice and short videos. 😉

[@johnp8131]

Good advice.

[@Isleofskye]

"For Heaven's Sake: Women Don't Drive"..

[@bulwinkle]

I am convinced that the Map Men were Monty Python fans.

[@ryttyr14]

Back before people knew the Earth was a sphere? You mean sometime prior to 300 BC?

[@kimbirch1202]

My brother who lives in New Zealand, stands upside down. Or is it me ??

[@Gsoda35]

I imagine some unhappy nation leader said something like this before north was readjusted: those northerners are always so arrogant and getting annoying just because they are at the top! advisor: let's flip the map to annoy them back!

[@bloozee]

Flat earther CC ( from Westchester county) even described a flight from LAX to Santiago as " down" !

[@magdos7160]

1668th

[@boomjacks5703]

Nice

[@andrewtaylor5984]

On the railways, from London is ALWAYS down, and to London is ALWAYS up. When a railway does not serve London, down is from railway headquarters. There are even places where there are down and up lines going in the same direction.

[@bingbong7316]

Exeter St Davids, although arguably not nowadays.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

@@bingbong7316 Trains from Exeter to Barnstaple are down, as they would once have come from Waterloo, whilst those to Taunton are up. The tracks are shared to Cowley Bridge Junction. The same was true at Plymouth. Southern trains from London entered North Road Station from the west whilst Great Western trains entered from the east. Another instance is at Gloucester. The Midland Main Line is down from Derby. Great Western trains on the same line are bound for London, and are therefore up. At Chester, Euston trains left at the east end, whilst Paddington trains left from the west. All trains from Saltney Junction to Chester were therefore up.

[@oastie3]

Isn’t North up because of earth’s orientation with the plane of the ecliptic. I do recognise that this could be viewed in a 180 degrees different orientation but, on this basis only North or South would be ‘up’.

[@TheGarryq]

How north be up when the earth is flat?

[@angharaddenby3389]

You can't be serious here. You're having a joke, right?

[@TheGarryq]

@@angharaddenby3389 Damn, you noticed

[@LynxLord1991]

Being Norse I resent that comment XD

[@lesleycarney8868]

so funny

[@Griff942]

What isn't mentioned is the axis of the planet.

[@stirlingmoss4621]

#4