April 2012
Featured in this insight: Culture, heritage & leisure, IT & telecommunications, International
Shocking poll discovers many Britons clueless about world geography: A survey of 1,318 UK adults by online travel agent www.sunshine.co.uk has discovered an alarming ignorance amongst Britons when it comes to capital cities around the world.
Contrary to the belief that Brits are a nation of experienced travellers, the respondents who took part in the poll could only correctly name four different capital cities – one of those being London.
On average, in addition to London the surveyants were only able to recognise Cardiff as the capital of Wales, Paris as the capital of France and Rome as the capital of Italy.
The poll also revealed a rather shameful grasp of the rest of the world – the most popular misconception was that New York is the capital of the United States (rather than Washington DC).
Other mistakes included Cape Town frequently named as the capital of South Africa, Rio de Janeiro the capital of Brazil, Barcelona the capital of Spain, Mumbai the capital of India and Montreal the capital of Canada.
Most shockingly, many surveyants thought that Glasgow, rather than Edinburgh, is the capital of Scotland.
Chris Clarkson of www.sunshine.co.uk commented: “It’s quite surprising when you take a look at Britons’ knowledge of the rest of the world. Even for those who aren’t well travelled, you would expect people to be able to point out certain places on a world map.”
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