Brits were asked to label a map of America.... :D

[mathnerd]

One of my favorite time-sinks:

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Euro..._1024_768.html

They have games for every region of the world.

[Food Lady]

One of them confused Wisconsin for Ohio. Two respondents thought we were Michigan. Still another called us Idaho, and somebody else labeled us Wyoming.

Never knew my state was that forgettable.

When I moved here I told my friends in California that it was the muffin-shaped state next to the big lake that bordered Canada. They still couldn't find it. Stupid CA school system.

[AccountingDrone]

When I moved here I told my friends in California that it was the muffin-shaped state next to the big lake that bordered Canada. They still couldn't find it. Stupid CA school system.

Ontario, Erie, Huron, Superior ... which great lake bordering on Canada...

living in NY I know the answer, as I also knew all the great lakes from something like third grade...

[Aethian]

When I moved here I told my friends in California that it was the muffin-shaped state next to the big lake that bordered Canada.

Big muffin shape? If your talking about Michigan...we're a mitten.

[Antisocial_Worker]

Big muffin shape? If your talking about Michigan...we're a mitten.

Wisconsin is vaguely muffin-shaped, don't you think? Like maybe a lopsided muffin starting to split open on the right side, but vaguely muffin shaped.

[Aethian]

No...? But then I've never thought to look at it like that.

[dalesys]

Wisconsin is vaguely muffin-shaped...

So Irv's the muffin man?

[Moirae]

The brits should know already about the us. One of them is the location of the capital. The rest? Meh. But see... the US should know the same thing... any idiot should be able to place London on a map of England. And the same thing should go with Canadians too.

It's not the map of these countries that other countries should know. It's other things about those countries that they should know. These three countries very heavily associate with each other, and have for centuries.

Canada

1. You do not hit a wall of snow the moment you cross the Canadian border.
2. You will not find snow on the mountains in the middle of a 100 degree Fahrenheit heat wave.
3. They are not communists, they are democratic socialists.
4. The people that come down to the US for health care are less than 1% of the population and most of the ones that do come down to the US for care are things where the doctors are rare such as for breast augmentation and face lifts.
5. Things like health care are covered because the people WANT it that way, they are not government slaves.

United States

1. The aggression of much of the population of the country comes from the way it was founded (in blood and war).
2. Probably 99.9% of the people do not mean to seem arrogant when they talk about how great they are, its the way they were raised. And most of them also don't realize the whole psychological aspect of why they simply feel they MUST talk about how great they are all the time.
3. Most of the people here are just good people trying to make their way in life as best they can with as little problems as they can.
4. They really feel that it is their job (even though most of them will also protest it) to police the world because they have the power and military might to do it.
5. If you really hate the US so much, you wouldn't buy their crap around the world. There are other countries to buy from.

Britain

1. The country is not filled with gap toothed hoakles. They are regular people, working regular jobs. You will find the majority educated and interesting.
2. Their television is not the thing that's interesting about the country. This country is many thousands of years older than Canada and the US can even dream so it has a great deal of history.
3. Yes, the Queen rules but she has both less and more power than people in other countries think she does. She and her family are respected because they have been in power for centuries. And in general, they do a pretty good job.
4. The royal family does not syphon the peoples money. The royal family has jobs and economic investments of their own. They receive a pittance from the government but its mostly for duties performed in the line of duty (such as diplomatic visits to promote the kingdom). The royal palaces and the like are bought and paid for and been in the family for centuries. Yes, it costs to run them, but, as I said, they have economic investments of their own. And yes, they do quite well.
5. The british people are no more controlled by their government than the american people or the canadian people are. The people have revolted against their government in the past. Things like health care are covered because the people WANT it that way, not because the government says so.

There's more but you get the point.

Testing for locations on a map is ridiculous when those are not the point of contention between these countries. The points of contention are misunderstandings about the lives of those who live in each country.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I'd also add the following things about the UK.

1. The UK is NOT just England. There are actually four countries that make up the UK, and they are England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Eire, or "the rest of Ireland", is a separate country. And that's not including the few little islands, like the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, to name the best known.

2. There is no such thing as a "British" accent. Or even an English accent. All the regions have their own accent. For example, you can't mistake a Yorkshire accent for a south eastern accent. Also, the Scottish and Welsh and Irish accents all have different variations for the different regions; for example, a Glasgow accent sounds different to an Edinburgh one. Youtube can help you there, if you want examples of different regional accents.

3. A lot of Americans have the strange impression that we English are either posh gits or Cockneys. That's not true in the slightest. Cockneys come from London, that is to say, true Cockneys. The working classes have different ways of speaking, and even within the working classes are different types. For example, we have chavs. They are our equivilent of your trailer trash.

4. Please don't visit the UK and hold to the delusion that every single Brit knows every corner of the island. I know that the UK is small in comparison to America, but the vast majority of people only know their own little corner. If you want directions anyplace, your best bet is to ask a taxi driver.

5. Don't hold to the fallacy that "America won the war". Movies lied to you. What actually won the war was the combined strength of several countries all working together; the UK's contribution was the sheer bloodymindedness of its people refusing to buckle down to bombardment, plus our fantastic navy and air force. "Battle of Britain" ring any bells? Also, Russia played a huge part. Yes, I know you had the whole Cold War with them, but without them and their weather pwning the Germans, the war couldn't have been won. Your contribution was good, but don't act as tho you did everything. Want to know what really happened? Look it up, the history is fascinating.

6. Contrary to popular belief, it does not rain constantly in Britain. We have summer just like you do; sometimes the temperature is so high, it's better than Spain. While I would advise visitors to take an umbrella along when they come here, don't assume that we spend our entire lives getting drenched. Winter is cold, but then, that's how it's meant to be. We have spring, summer and autumn the same as you do; in fact, the last summer was a boiling heatwave without any rain at all.

7. Our beer is NOT warm. Seriously, ordering a warm beer in any British pub would get people thinking you were insane. True, we don't chill it to the insane level that Americans do, but for a good reason. If you chill a beer too much, you destroy the flavour. Also, the cold, tasteless stuff you call beer is in fact lager. Real ale is something completely different. Try it and see!

8. Tea. A lot of Americans think that all Brits sit around drinking tea all the time. In actual fact, Brits drink as much coffee as they do tea. The reason for this is a simple linguistic misunderstanding. The evening meal is referred to as "dinner" if it consists of cooked food; however, if you've already had your main meal at lunchtime, you would call your evening meal "tea", referring to a sandwich type meal. Of course, this varies due to regional interpretation; some areas always call the evening meal "tea", regardless of the food served and will call a cooked meal in the middle of the day "dinner". This can be confusing to an American, who will then assume that "tea" always refers to the drink. So an English person saying "I've had my tea" isn't necessary stating that he or she had a drink of tea; they could just be saying that they've already eaten this evening.

9. Don't assume that all denizens of the UK are super polite. You're going to get a nasty shock if you ever come here, as politeness isn't a virtue possessed by everyone here. In fact, a lot of people can be downright rude. Read some of my stories about SCs if you don't believe me! And of course, the aforementioned chavs are certainly not polite.

10. Leading on from the last statement, a lot of Americans think that we hate everything and everyone. We don't, it's just that a lot of our humour stems from tearing people to shreds, but believe me, there's no malice in it. We're in fact very friendly and welcoming people and if you can stop your jaw dropping in horror at us taking the piss out of every country in the world, including our own, you'll be fully accepted. XD In fact, British humour hinges on the "make a joke out of everything" thing. Whenever there's a major disaster, within a minute, jokes will be flying out all over the internet about it. We make jokes about serial killers, pedophiles like Jimmy Saville, bomb explosions... in fact, everything. There's nothing nasty about it, it's just our way.

[lordlundar]

5. Don't hold to the fallacy that "America won the war". Movies lied to you. What actually won the war was the combined strength of several countries all working together; the UK's contribution was the sheer bloodymindedness of its people refusing to buckle down to bombardment, plus our fantastic navy and air force. "Battle of Britain" ring any bells? Also, Russia played a huge part. Yes, I know you had the whole Cold War with them, but without them and their weather pwning the Germans, the war couldn't have been won. Your contribution was good, but don't act as tho you did everything. Want to know what really happened? Look it up, the history is fascinating.

To add to this one in particular:

- The US forces at large didn't charge the lines. Patton's division was the only one that did so, largely to it's detriment as they would push too far for supply lines to be established. Most of the US forces were there to reinforce held positions while the other Allied forces pushed the lines back.

- No, Japan did not surrender because of the nukes. In fact it pissed them off. They were starting to mobilize the largest force going as revenge until Intel revealed the Soviet forces were making their way to their lines to the west. They realized that there was no way they could hold off those forces whether or not they mobilized. The surrender was to avoid becoming conquered by the Soviets.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Now here's a fun(?)little thing that even the Brits will get wrong.
So what is Great Britain made up of?The United Kingdom?The British Isles?

[Chromatix]

Great Britain is simply the larger of the two islands that make up the British Isles. Which makes sense if you think about it.

The UK is - to give it the full title - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Which is not the same as the British Isles either.

The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, along with various miscellaneous minor territories scattered worldwide, are not part of the UK but are Crown Dependencies. This is a fine point that is lost on most people, too.

Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state, as monarch, of the UK. She is also, separately, the head of state of the various Commonwealth countries - Canada, Australia, etc. The lines of succession of one are not necessarily the same as of the others.

The British Empire no longer exists. The last Imperial territory was Hong Kong, which we were required to hand over to Chinese rule when the lease expired (which the locals were really not very happy about).

[wolfie]

5. Don't hold to the fallacy that "America won the war". Movies lied to you."Battle of Britain" ring any bells? Also, Russia played a huge part. Yes, I know you had the whole Cold War with them, but without them and their weather pwning the Germans, the war couldn't have been won.

Of course the movies lied - they were made in America, for American audiences, so of course they showed the Americans as the key factor. As for claims the Mustang was more important to the war effort than the Spitfire, that's B.S. The Spitfire was more important due to the Mustang's limited (couldn't escort bombers from Newfoundland to Berlin) range. You say there was no need to fly out of Newfoundland, there were bases in Britain? Considering Sealion was cancelled before the Yanks and their Mustangs joined the war, that shows WHY the Spitfire was more important than the Mustang. Oh yes, the P-51A Mustang was a dog at high altitudes, but later models were much improved. That's because the A's Alisson engine was replaced with a Merlin in later models - and guess which country developed the Merlin.

7. Our beer is NOT warm. Seriously, ordering a warm beer in any British pub would get people thinking you were insane. True, we don't chill it to the insane level that Americans do, but for a good reason. If you chill a beer too much, you destroy the flavour. Also, the cold, tasteless stuff you call beer is in fact lager. Real ale is something completely different. Try it and see!

Fun fact: different types of beer are traditionally served at the same temperature as they're fermented at. Ale yeast works at the top of the vessel, and is happy at a higher temperature than the yeast used for lager, which works at the bottom of the vessel. Interestingly enough, the name "lager" is derived from the German verb "to store". In Bavaria, they needed to brew a beer that could be stored so they'd have something to drink in the summer, when it was illegal to brew beer. Why was it illegal to brew beer in the summer? Because the yeast wasn't happy at summer temperatures, and so the batch wouldn't turn out properly. Ever hear of Oktoberfest? It's a celebration of the first batch of beer to be brewed after the summer "dry" spell ended.

If you actually find Brits drinking their beer warm (as opposed to what was room temperature in the days before central heating), it's because Lucas also makes refrigerators.

9. Don't assume that all denizens of the UK are super polite. You're going to get a nasty shock if you ever come here, as politeness isn't a virtue possessed by everyone here.

Fun fact #2: Rude Brits tend to talk about a type of shotgun that's illegal to possess in the U.S. What kind of shotgun is that? Sawed-off, of course.[/QUOTE]

[AccountingDrone]

Ever hear of Oktoberfest? It's a celebration of the first batch of beer to be brewed after the summer "dry" spell ended.
l:

[/QUOTE]

Oktoberfest originally was a wedding ...
[ripped off of wiki]
Crown Prince Ludwig, later to become King Ludwig I, was married to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on October 12, 1810. The citizens of Munich were invited to attend the festivities held on the fields in front of the city gates to celebrate the happy royal event. The fields were named Theresienwiese ("Theresa's meadow") in honor of the Crown Princess, and have kept that name ever since, although the locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the "Wies'n".
Horse race at the Oktoberfest in Munich 1823

Horse races in the presence of the Royal Family marked the close of the event that was celebrated as a festival for the whole of Bavaria. The decision to repeat the horse races in the subsequent year gave rise to the tradition of the Oktoberfest.

"The festival was eventually prolonged and moved ahead to September to allow for better weather conditions. Today, the last day of the festival is the first Sunday in October. In 2006, the Oktoberfest extended two extra days because the first Tuesday, October 3, was a national holiday. Over the past 200 years, Oktoberfest was cancelled 24 times due to cholera epidemics and war."[2]

[Chromatix]

...and guess which country developed the Merlin.

Yeah, that proved to be an especially versatile engine. The Spitfire started with it (later marks, which needed to fly higher and faster, got the larger Griffon), but the Hurricane, Mosquito, Halifax and Lancaster kept it all the way through, spanning the entire spectrum from basic single-seat fighter to front-line heavy bomber.

A variant of the Merlin (the Meteor) was even used to power tanks on the ground. Of course, the wisdom of using petrol as tank fuel instead of diesel proved to be slightly questionable.

Even late in the war, de Havilland built the Hornet around a pair of Merlins - faster than a P-38, yet carrier-capable when fitted with folding wings. It's a shame none of them are still intact, having been rapidly superseded by jet aircraft.