On the Earth's map, there are four points that lay exactly in-between the equator, a pole, the prime meridian, and the 180th meridian (or roughly also the International Date Line); as they lie on 45th parallels north & south and on 90th meridians west & east, they are called the "45×90 points". The prime meridian is kind of an arbitrary line, versus the equator being something based on the planet's axis, and I'm confident anybody born in Greenwich would have the capacity to push pencil and write a 5-paragraph essay on the significance of their town being the basis for deciding where an invisible geographical line shall be
By far the most frequented 45×90 point is
45°N, 90°W. These coordinates place it smack-dab in central Wisconsin within the unincorporated community of Poniatowski, which is otherwise just representative of the normal lowly-populated farming-galore fare in the state. I myself have actually visited this spot with my mom and brother one day in August of 2016, motivated probably from me learning about it and why it's so special, and how relatively not far of a drive it was from where we were living at the time. I documented my visit in a few ways:
Originally, there was this sign I took a picture of that's been there since decades prior, which conveniently was located in a little bitty "park" off the side of the road and not especially jutting into the expanse of field it's surrounded by.
Here's also a video I captured of the location, showcasing the marker on the ground in front of the sign. Now... I then went to motion my phone camera to the left of the sign and zoomed in on a portion of the field way beyond the fence... since, for context, the true actual point is located about 0.2 of a mile/over a thousand feet/more than 0.3 of a kilometer/etc. into these people's private field... and we skirted through the trees and the edge of the field to reach it because we were that determined, lol.
As proof we physically stood on the legit point, I screenshotted the GPS app I was using to close in further during our mini-hike. There it be, perfectly even and zeroed-out.
It was a really neat endeavor to make that effort and reminisce on what I think was a well-spent day together. That still also was our only time we paid this place a visit. We definitely should again, especially now that as of 2017, the next year funnily enough, there's a proper park with a walkway and some benches that was constructed for visitors to reach a more accurately-placed new marker. I am glad the farmer(s) seemingly were understanding about why this is a big deal and let up a bit of the field for the Park Commission to go forward with the relocating. Hey, good to have trekked through crop before it was cool!
We later found the place in town where we could join the "45×90 Club" by writing our names in the registration book to further mark our visit, and after becoming "members" we received a coin, which I imaged for this post since I hadn't before:
And again with the revamps, the coin as well appears to have gotten a new look in 2017, made of a different metal and has a cool design of the Earth on one side with coordinates for where in North America this imaginary intersection is.
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So, that's probably all I have to mutter about the northwestern 45×90 point. The only other point that's found on land is the northeastern one, or
45°N, 90°E, located in northwest China near the Mongolian border.
If you want, I really recommend reading this story about how someone ever managed to get there.
Both of the southern points are located in ocean water, hundreds of miles from any semblance of land.
45°S, 90°E has some noteworthiness as it was one potential site in the vast Indian Ocean that was searched to determine where, in its fate, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may have disappeared.
