Its settled, Greenland is neither North American or European, its African.
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
166 points (98.3% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
3469 readers
25 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Weird how they split up Europe into a patchwork.
I’m guessing it’s because France refused to share a prefix code with Britain.
Or more likely, they had a mutual agreement until Britain wanted its own thing, so they exit the deal. Seems like something the English would do. We could have called it Brexit or something
It's not a million miles away from the truth. The UK and France were the main advocates behind the ITU, so they got +33 and +44. Which is...fine...but I've not come across why NA got +1, etc. or even why those numbers were chosen at all.
NA has +1 because the US invented the telephone. Canada is America's hat.
Graham Bell also moved to Canada.
And now we have our most evil telecom, Bell
You sure they're not tied with Rogers?
To be honest, all three are tied for first place evil
Oligopolies control Canada :/
Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish, who moved to Canada and then moved to the US.
It’s interesting to me that Africa is 2. I’d assume that when these were implemented Africa would be a cultural afterthought and Europe would’ve gotten number 2.
Curious what the thought process was there.
Even more curious is Groenland being +2 too
It's interesting to me that the US, Canada, Russia, and Kazakhstan get single digit codes, and the rest of the world get double or triple digits.
US is part of the NANP which means they have their own system for beyond +1, which is shared with Canada and half the Caribbean, and so they were given the whole of +1 rather than +10, +11, +12 etc. all resolving to the same thing, or +10 being for about 10 different countries while +11 was for one
Then the Soviet Union wanted a single digit too, which is why Russia and Kazakhstan share +7
Haha I wondered if the US and Russia being the main places with a single digit was related.
The US is literally #1
Edit: plus Canada, I didn't know we were country calling code buddies 🫶
They needed to make it simple for Americans
Awww :(
I was just pointing it out because we're never #1 in anything that isn't horrible these days
Don't worry. I was only joking.
America is #1 at lots of things, like... erm... yeah. Lots of things.
... Definitely at claiming to be #1. #1 bad or good. Doesn't matter. #1 lol.
Nobody has loved or hated America more than America.
The only other pair sharing the same number are Russia and Kazakhstan with 7
All of the USSR was +7 IIRC. Most changed it after independence, notice how the Baltics, Belarus and whatnot have previously unassigned three-character numbers instead of two like most of Europe (except microstates). They only got their numbers in the 90s, and no shorter ones were available. +37 just became available since east Germany didn't exist anymore.
Same with the former Yugoslavian countries, all of YU used +38, when they split up they had to split up +38 too.
Czechia is 420 😎
It's the award for helping foster the growth of the technology. America is a Petrie dish for tech and they use their people as agar.
One could argue, and one could argue that I'm arguing exactly that right now, that a map is not strictly speaking a list.
I could also agree that a map is just a multidimensional list. But this is map_enthusiasts NOT list_enthusiasts, so... Um... What was the point?
I find that it's often easiest to start typing and hope a point finds me along the way. Doesn't always work!
Feel free to post your own maps
I love how the division in Europe vaguely looks like the Protestant Reformation led to different prefix numbers (I know I know, Poland & co don't match)
What are those, calling codes for ants?
If you have a better version, feel free to provide it, I would update the link
Thanks, updated
You might want to know about this handy site: https://imgops.com/
The various reverse lookup services all seem to be strongest in different areas, but generally I start with tineye and Yandex and only try the others if I don't find what I need.
Mongolia has a calling code that's too hot to handle