| I made the following comment on the World's Longest Borders quiz at http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/worldslongestborders, and it is relevant here too. Republic of the Congo's longest border is actually with Gabon. This is not meant as a criticism of the quiz, since the quiz was done correctly in accordance with the World Factbook data. But I think a lot of people may be interested to learn about this quirk in how the 2410 km figure was calculated. "It is worth noting that the 2410 km figure given in the World Factbook is somewhat misleading. For the majority of its length, the border follows the Congo River; however, its alignment in the river (thalweg, shoreline, etc) was never specified in the relevant legal documents. It is therefore considered an indefinite boundary, and frequently it is depicted as such with a line following BOTH BANKS of the Congo. The 2410 km length includes both of those lines. A better estimate of the actual length would only include one of them--or perhaps the length of the thalweg--and it would give a distance of around 1600-1700 km. The U.S. State Department's International Boundary Study contains excellent background information on this border. It gives a length of 1,010 miles (1625 km)." http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/limitsinseas/ibs127.pdf |
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World's Longest Borders
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