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GregorianShant t1_j3dyj09 wrote

Reply to comment by Nobody_Speshal in TIL Colorado is actually a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon, meaning it has 697 sides. by Dearfield

By that logic, basically every object in the world is a Hexadecainfintesimaloctogon, because if you zoom in far enough, you will find infinitesimal edges.

But pedantry aside, it has 4 fucking edges.

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starmartyr t1_j3f3bej wrote

That isn't what is happening here. Colorado's border was defined by congress as 37°N to 41°N latitude, and from 25°W to 32°W longitude. That is effectively a trapezoid or at least as close to one that can be drawn on a globe. That shape does have 4 edges as you say. However, when they went to survey the land errors were made. 19th-century surveyors would stray from the legal border by as much as half a mile in some places and would correct it by making a couple of near 90-degree turns to correct this. Congress then accepted the survey boundaries as the legal boundaries making it have more than 4 edges.

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MrDowntown t1_j3fdl0w wrote

> 25°W to 32°W longitude

from the Washington Meridian. An important note.

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