People shocked as new map shows how small some countries actually are A map showing how small some countries really are has left people shocked.
Reddit users have been surprised by a map showing the real size of countries was posted on the site, in the week after Donald Trump showed he quite fancied a slice of Greenland - an autonomous Danish territory that looks far bigger on typical maps than it actually is.
The Mercator Map Projection was developed by a Flemish cartographer named Gerardus Mercator in 1569 and it is one of the most well-known map projections.
Mercator projection stretches the map vertically to maintain straight longitude and latitude lines, and this alters the size and shape of countries.
It was originally designed for navigation purposes, despite this meaning that many countries featured on the map are distorted in shape and size.
