Both maps below show U.S. Virgin Islands highlighted. At 18° Mercator inflates U.S. Virgin Islands by only about 10%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Bahamas beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 18°, U.S. Virgin Islands sits in the band the old map drew almost honestly. It is one of the regions Mercator quietly under-represented, and that is exactly what the new Equal Earth map restores.
U.S. Virgin Islands: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| U.S. Virgin Islands | 347 km² | 383 km² | 1.1× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew U.S. Virgin Islands at about 383 km². The truth is 347 km², a difference of 10% that school atlases carried for centuries.