I don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation. I've never thought Africa was small and was taught about the Berlin Conference, etc in school.

All the large continents are near the equator and hence the relative size of Africa, Australia, North/South America, Asia is not affected much by the projection. Antarctica is big too, even though wildly exaggerated by Mercator.

If anything, it makes more sense to say people don't realize how small UK/Europe is.

I would expect that most people have seen a globe at least once in their life though? ;)

> Note of course this includes Scotland!

Don't worry; Americans assume as a matter of course that England includes Scotland. Your internal political divisions are of interest only to you.

The widget also appears to include Northern Ireland, which, unlike Scotland, Americans probably wouldn't expect.

And northern Ireland

And people have no idea how diverse the cultures in Africa are.