The most glaring example of this distortion is Greenland, which appears to be about the same size as Africa on the map, but in reality, the continent is nearly 14-and-a-half times larger.

In fact, it's 14 times smaller than Africa, something that is apparent when you look at its actual size to scale on a ... In 1569 he drew a world map, what's become known as the Mercator projection.