This is why you read the code, not the documentation.

Great article. Somehow, this gives me hope that curiosity can still be rewarded in this age of information at our fingertips.

What I wonder is why anyone noticed this in the first place. Who saw the size of the country in Wikipedia and thought, “really? Let me trace that in Google maps, just to be sure…”

this was posted on 27. of november 2024. on the 3rd of december someone found a correct looking number in a yemen government document which was published in 2005 and updated wikipedia. so at least the country itself was not under any illusion of being bigger than they actually are.

I did not expect this to just be a simple mistake, especially one that's been around for decades. Makes you wonder what other kind of basic facts are wrong.

In the age of satellites, computers, Google maps and the like you would think a mistake like this would be impossible to persist for so long.

Always picture it larger, but it's roughly the size of France. Makes you wonder about logistical challenges there.

This happens more frequently then one imagines. Quite a few things fail to start from scratch and instead rely on compounded errors over time. Projections, budgets, etc., are sometimes based on stale information.

15 Yemen Road, Yemen