The 31st parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 31 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Africa, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America and the Atlantic Ocean.
Part of the border between Iran and Iraq is defined by the parallel. In the United States, it defines part of the border between the states of Mississippi and Louisiana, and most of the border between Alabama and Florida.
Andrew Ellicott surveyed this parallel in 1797, when it was the border between the United States and Spanish territory.
At this latitude the sun is visible for 14 hours, 10 minutes during the summer solstice and 10 hours, 8 minutes during the winter solstice.
Read more about 31st Parallel North: Around The World
Famous quotes containing the words parallel and/or north:
“If from the earth we came, it was an earth
That bore us as a part of all the things
It breeds and that was lewder than it is.
Our nature is her nature. Hence it comes,
Since by our nature we grow old, earth grows
The same. We parallel the mother’s death.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“When the Somalians were merely another hungry third world people, we sent them guns. Now that they are falling down dead from starvation, we send them troops. Some may see in this a tidy metaphor for the entire relationship between north and south. But it would make a whole lot more sense nutritionally—as well as providing infinitely more vivid viewing—if the Somalians could be persuaded to eat the troops.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)