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Those are the 'meridians of longitude'. Each one joins the North Pole and South Pole. They are farthest apart at the equator, and they all converge at the poles. Since there's no obvious place to start numbering, somebody had to make the decision of where to put the 'zero'. The British were the big guys in the navy business at the time, so they needed a standard system more than anyone else did, and they set the standard: The 'zero' of longitude measurement ... the line called the "Prime Meridian", was (and still is) defined as the meridian that passes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. All longitude on the earth is measured as so many degrees east or west of that meridian. (That's why Egypt is the "Near East", Iran is the "Middle East", China is the "Far East", and the US and Canada are the "Western" world.)

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