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Reddit user boredboarder8 created the below image overlaying the United States on the Moon. The lower forty-eight United States would cover about twenty percent of the Moon’s surface but certainly would be visible from the Earth. (Hat tip: Flowing Data via friend Blueland)

The math works out as the forty-eight contiguous United States has a land area of 3,119,884 square miles (8,080,464 square kilometers). Meanwhile the Moon’s surface area is roughly 14,600,000 square miles (37,800,000 square kilometers). Therefore the United States would cover roughly 40 percent of the Moon’s visible surface.

How Big Is the United States Compared With the Moon?

The comparison is striking because the Moon is much smaller than it can appear from Earth. The contiguous United States covers a little over one-fifth of the Moon’s total surface area.

If only one lunar hemisphere is considered, the lower 48 states are equivalent to roughly two-fifths of that area. The graphic is best understood as a visual comparison rather than a precise equal-area projection, but it gives an immediate sense of scale.

Why the Comparison Is So Surprising

We normally think about the United States and the Moon using completely different scales. Putting the two directly together makes the relationship much easier to visualize.

At the same scale, the contiguous United States stretches across a substantial portion of the Moon’s visible face. It is a simple comparison, but one that makes the size of both the United States and the Moon easier to understand.

In the middle of Ouidah, in present-day Benin, stands the Fortaleza de São João Baptista de Ajudá, also known as the Fort of St. John the Baptist of Ouidah. For much of its later history, this small Portuguese possession formed an extraordinary territorial anomaly: a tiny piece of Portuguese-controlled land surrounded first by French Dahomey and later by the independent Republic of Dahomey.

For a time, São João Baptista de Ajudá was regarded as one of the smallest separate political territories in the world. It had no land connection with another Portuguese possession and sat several kilometres inland, surrounded entirely by territory controlled by another power.

The Portuguese established the fort at Ouidah in 1721, during a period when European trading networks were expanding along the West African coast. Ouidah became one of the region’s most important ports, and the Portuguese fort was deeply connected to the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.

Its unusual geographical status developed much later. France expanded its control over Dahomey during the nineteenth century and eventually governed the land surrounding Ouidah. Portugal, however, retained São João Baptista de Ajudá. The fort was therefore left isolated inside French-controlled territory, without a corridor connecting it to another Portuguese possession.

By the twentieth century, the fort had little of its former commercial or military importance, yet Portugal continued to claim it. The permanent military garrison was withdrawn in 1911, and a 1921 census recorded only five inhabitants.

Dahomey gained independence from France on August 1, 1960, but the Portuguese enclave remained for another year. On August 1, 1961, Dahomey took control of the fort. Portuguese historical accounts record that the remaining Portuguese representatives were instructed to burn parts of the fort before leaving rather than formally surrender it.

With that, one of colonial Africa’s strangest geographical arrangements disappeared from the political map.

Why Was This Tiny Fort So Unusual?

European forts were once common along the West African coast. What made São João Baptista de Ajudá different was that Portugal continued to exercise sovereignty over it even after another colonial power controlled virtually everything around it.

In simple terms, it became a tiny Portuguese territorial island inside Dahomey. Its economic importance had faded, but its political symbolism survived.

Its size and population made the arrangement even stranger. Historical estimates of the enclave’s exact area vary, so there is no single measurement that should be treated as unquestioned. What is clear is that by its final decades it was exceptionally small. Academic research describes its territory as having eventually contracted to around two hectares.

And by the time Dahomey moved against the enclave in 1961, only two people remained as representatives of Portuguese sovereignty. A territorial claim associated with a European empire had effectively been reduced to a tiny compound and two officials.

A Short History of São João Baptista de Ajudá

The Portuguese Fort Today

The end of the enclave did not mean the disappearance of the fort. The historic compound survived and became an important heritage site in Ouidah. It later housed the Ouidah Museum of History, while the fort itself remained closely associated with the history of the transatlantic slave trade.

That history is essential to understanding the site. UNESCO includes the Portuguese Fort among the significant places associated with the Slave Route in Benin. The surviving fort is therefore more than a curiosity left behind by an unusual border; it is also part of a much larger and more painful history linking West Africa, Europe and the Americas.

The site is currently undergoing another transformation. Benin has been rehabilitating the Portuguese Fort and developing the International Museum of the Memory of Slavery within the historic complex, giving it a renewed role as a place of memory and historical interpretation.

São João Baptista de Ajudá is no longer a Portuguese enclave, but the fort still stands in Ouidah as a remarkable reminder of how colonial history could produce borders that survived long after their original purpose had almost disappeared.

Image by Wikimedia Commons

This map shows the traditional locations associated with the deaths of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles. It has also been updated to include Saint Matthias, who was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot after the Ascension.

One of the striking things the map reveals is how far many of the apostles are traditionally believed to have traveled from their homelands. Most Christian traditions also remember them as having died as martyrs, although the historical evidence is much stronger for some apostles than for others.

The map was originally created as a Geographic Travels mapping project. Blue markers indicate locations that are more commonly associated with an apostle’s death in Christian tradition, while yellow markers indicate locations where the tradition is disputed or where more than one place has been proposed.

How to Read the Map

The locations on this map should be understood primarily as traditional death locations, not as equally certain historical facts.

The surviving historical evidence differs greatly from apostle to apostle. For example, the New Testament itself records that James, the son of Zebedee, was put to death by King Herod Agrippa I in Acts 12:1–2. For many of the other apostles, however, details about their later travels, martyrdoms and burial places come from early Christian writings and traditions recorded generations later.

That is also why some apostles have more than one marker. Different Christian traditions sometimes associate the same apostle with different regions or places of death.

Where Tradition Places Some of the Apostles

Why the Locations Are Not All Certain

The journeys of the apostles after the events described in the New Testament are not documented with the same level of historical certainty. Some traditions developed very early, while others survive in later texts, regional churches and accounts of relics or burial places.

For that reason, the purpose of this map is not to suggest that every marker represents a proven historical location. Instead, it provides a geographical view of the places that Christian traditions have associated with the apostles across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Seen together, those locations illustrate something the original map was designed to make immediately visible: the remarkable geographical spread of early Christian tradition far beyond Judea.