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OpenCage 👉🌍

6. Ireland 🇮🇪 and the UK 🇬🇧 do however disagree on some points.

Ireland does not recognise the UK's claim to Rockall, an uninhabited tiny island in the North Atlantic.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall

#geoweirdness

BTW - there was some recent Rockall news: theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/j

(and yes, we do have an alert set for Rockall news. Obvs)

Map showing the location of Rockall in the Northern Atlantic
9 comments
OpenCage 👉🌍

8. As alluded to earlier, in Ireland 🇮🇪 two languages has official status: Irish and English.

While English is more widely used generally, several areas are designated as "Gaeltacht" where special measures are taken to try to reinforce Irish.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeltach

#geoweirdness

Map of Gaeltacht regions in Ireland
OpenCage 👉🌍

9. Ireland 🇮🇪 was the last country in Europe to introduce a national postal code system. Called "Eircodes", national postcodes where introduced only in 2014 and are still not widely used.

Sadly Eircodes are not open data, which means using them at scale (for example for geocoding) requires a license and paying a licensing fee 😬

finder.eircode.ie

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_a

#geoweirdness #postcodes

Screenshot of the official Eircode site
OpenCage 👉🌍

10. The island of Ireland was historically divided into about 61,000 "townlands", a small geographical division of land of Gaelic origin.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townland

Mapping them has been a very long-running project inthe OpenStreetMap Ireland community

wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ir

#geoweirdness

OpenCage 👉🌍

11. Indeed, the OpenStreetMap community in Ireland 🇮🇪 is very active: openstreetmap.ie

They were one of the very first communities we interviewed in our blog series where we speak with OSM communities around the world:
blog.opencagedata.com/post/995

Limerick was the site of the second ever State of the Map OSM conference, all the way back in 2008 2008.stateofthemap.org (our very own @freyfogle was one of the speakers)

#geoweirdness #openstreetmap

11. Indeed, the OpenStreetMap community in Ireland 🇮🇪 is very active: openstreetmap.ie

They were one of the very first communities we interviewed in our blog series where we speak with OSM communities around the world:
blog.opencagedata.com/post/995

screenshot of openstreetmap.ie
OpenCage 👉🌍 replied to OpenCage

12. Wrapping things up, you may be surprised to learn of New Ireland, a province of Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬 on the other side of the world from Ireland 🇮🇪.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Irel

New Ireland was a correct answer in the April 2023 #fridaygeotrivia competition where we asked about states/provinces named after countries they are not part of:
blog.opencagedata.com/post/geo

#geoweirdness

Map showing the location of New Ireland
Map of New Ireland
OpenCage 👉🌍 replied to OpenCage

13. That's it for our look at 🇮🇪 Ireland's #geoweirdness.

Thanks for reading and boosting. What did we overlook?

We have more threads about specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc on our blog.

Enjoy: blog.opencagedata.com/geothrea

Screenshot of the OpenCage blog page about geothreads
OpenCage 👉🌍 replied to OpenCage

14. Final bonus toot - Ireland 🇮🇪 of course has a rich musical tradition, and has gifted the world with some of the best songs about geocoding.

We close with U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name"

youtube.com/watch?v=GzZWSrr5wF

#geoweirdness #geocoding

JJ Celery

@opencage "Ireland and the UK do however disagree on some points" must be the understatement of the century 🍿

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