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How do I figure out my Latitude and Longitude?

I'm inspired by the tattoo that Angelina Jolie got recently that has the latitude and longitude of where each of her four babies was born. That's cool. How do I figure out the lat/long of the hospital where my own baby was born so I can do the same thing?

Dave's Answer:

I saw an article about that a few weeks ago and also thought it was a pretty cool idea. Definitely demonstrates a level of commitment to her children (not that every other Mom doesn't also sacrifice and contribute her proverbial "pound of flesh" (and more) for her children!)

Now you could say "why bother publicizing celebrities like Jolie when there are so many regular gals who do more for people?" but my response would be that they're cool too, I just don't have pictures of their tattoos hanging around in my image archives.

There are probably a million different ways to map a specific latitude and longitude (oh, and by the way, it's not spelled "longtitude", though that's a very common misspelling) but the way I'll demonstrate is with Google Maps.

Oh, first, here are two pictures of Angelina's tattoo:

Actor Angelina Jolie's left bicep tattoo of the latitude and longitude of the birthplaces of her four children

Actor Angelina Jolie's left bicep tattoo of the latitude and longitude of the birthplaces of her four children: Closeup

If you go to Google Maps and type in an address, you'll find that the "shortcut" link shown will actually include the lat/long of that particular address.

We didn't have our first baby at Sequoia Community Hospital in Redwood City, California, but we can still use it as a handy example. A quick Google search reveals that the hospital is located at "170 Alameda De Las Pulgas, Redwood City, CA", so that's what I'll enter into Google Maps:

Figuring Out Your Latitude and Longitude with Google Maps

Notice the little "Link to this page" on the top right? Click on it. Now you'll be on the same page, but your displayed URL in the Address Bar will actually contain the exact lat/long of that address. It's a bit tricky to extricate, however. Here's the URL:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=170+Alameda+De+Las+Pulgas,+Redwood+City,+CA&
sll=37.482878,-122.258563&sspn=0.00676,0.008197&ie=UTF8&ll=37.482725,-122.253864&
spn=0.00676,0.008197&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1

The field you want is labeled "ll", and in this case it's:

ll=37.482725,-122.253864

That's the data you want.

If you want to display it in the same manner that Angelina has on her arm, then do another search on Google Maps, but this time just enter the lat/long information it's given you and nothing else (e.g., "37.482725,-122.253864"). The results will show you the converted latitude and longitude values:

Calculating latitude and longitude for a specific point on a map

As you can see, your tattoo, if you had your baby at Sequoia Hospital, would show N37 28' 57" W122 15' 13" (tip: positive latitude is "N" of the equator, negative is "S", and positive longitude is "E" of the Greenwich Meridian (in England) while negative is "W"). As a fun trick, try switching "N" to "S" and "W" to "E" to see what's exactly on the other side of the Earth. You'll find that a spot in the ocean southeast of Perth, Australia is the furthest possible point on the Earth from Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, California!

You can also enter the lat/long information from Angelina Jolie's tattoo and find out that her babies were born in Cambodia (N11 33' 0" E104 51' 00"), Addis Abeba, Ethiopia (N09 02' 00" E038 45' 00"), Swakopmund, Namibia (S22 40' 26" E014 31' 40") and Vietnam (N10 40' 00" E106 41' 40"). Quite a global bunch of kids she's adopted, eh? According to what I've dug up, they're Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh, and Pax Thien, in order.

Good luck with your tattoo, and please add a link to your tattoo photo here as a comment when you have it done!

Many thanks to Chuck Eglinton of Auction Zip Code for his handy tip on using Google Maps to find lat/long.

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Categorized: d) None of the Above (Article 7412)
Tagged: angelina jolie, latitude, longitude, maps, tattoos
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Comments

I live in Australia. I typed in "Chifley Square, Sydney Australia". I got an appropriate map. I clicked on "Link to this page". That gave me: "ll=37.0625,-95.677068". I pasted "37.0625,-95.677068" in as as a new search. That got me a place in Kansas!
Can you tell me what's gone wrong? Does your trick only work in America?
(Sydney's longitude and latitude are about 151 degrees East and 34 degrees South.)

Thanks for reading this,

Leslie

Posted by: Leslie Katz at June 5, 2007 3:25 AM

Dave, dig the subject of your article, but your "other side of the world" algorithm is incorrect (assuming that you define "other side of the world" as where you would reach if you drilled through the center of the Earth). You got the latitude correct - simply flipping the sign works fine for that. But you can't just flip the sign for the longitude. As an extreme example why, that would put the other side of Greenwich England in the South Atlantic, not the South Pacific.

You need to "flip" the longitude 180 degrees. So, if you are negative (West) longitude, you add 180. Positive (East), and you subtract 180.

Check out the results of both methods here:

http://tinyurl.com/2ggd9a

I used your Sequoia Community Hospital example and also the airport at Dakar, Senegal because it is close to the Prime Meridian and makes the error more obvious. Your method calculates the other side of the Earth from Dakar to be somewhere in Angola. The other side from
Dakar is really in the Coral Sea about 270 miles West of Espiritu Santo (in Vanuatu).

Yeah, I spend way too much time playing in Google Earth and making Google MyMaps.

Posted by: Steve at June 6, 2007 10:32 PM

Leslie,

When I do that search, I get this link from Google:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&q=Chifley+Square,+Sydney+Australia&ll=-33.86516,151.211743&spn=0.007733,0.015707&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1

I can't imagine why you got a different Lat/Lon. Maybe you can post the link you got and someone can try to help decode what went wrong.

Phil

Posted by: Phil Hord at June 9, 2007 6:40 PM

This does not work anymore. They changed the 'link to this page' so that now it creates a mini pop-up that doesn't have the URL the way it used to be. Now it is just a URL that repeats the query.

Posted by: Tom at July 9, 2007 3:44 PM

People,
It appears the issue seems to be related to the individual Google 'Country' URLs.
Example... go to www.google.co.nz and then do the "Chifley" map from there. With Google NZ you dont even get anything that is close to LAT/LONG. It would seem that Google has a bug in their code for Google sites outside of Nth America. regards Alan

Posted by: Alan at September 26, 2008 4:48 AM

ok, that's lame. angelina jolie, i mean, not this post, which was much the opposite. how is that commitment to her children? it's actually just exploiting their third-world birthplaces to literally wear on her arm how much of a f'ing humanitarian she thinks she is. white privilege yuppie bullshit.

Posted by: jane at December 9, 2008 1:16 PM

Oh wow, anyone who uses this post to bag out Angelina Jolie in a comment is quite obviously jealous of her- anyone who has seen an interview with her or picture of her with her children can tell that she loves them deeply- whatever other problems you may have with her, this is still very apparent. She's not exploiting them, she's expressing her love for them in an individual and creative way.

Anyway, in regards to this post- I had recently decided to get a tattoo like this of my birthplace on my lower back and this article was very helpful! I will post a photo when I get it done in 3 weeks.

Posted by: Olivia at February 18, 2009 12:26 AM

hi there , well I tryed this out & it was full on successful (: * if it wasn`t for this website I wouldn`t have done it without your help thank you (: *

Posted by: Sammy at March 3, 2009 9:56 PM

That is all good and fun but:
I plan to build a cabin at top of a good size peak in southwest Jalisco and want to find the specific longitude latitude and altitude, how do I get that?
There are no bench marks that I know off within 100 mile radius
Please help

Posted by: Alfredo Vargas at May 18, 2009 9:47 AM

Hi there i`m trying to work out the longitude and latitude of sandringham hospital victoria, and royal hobart hospital tasmania, i can`t seem to figure out the version of them angelina has as this is the one i want. if you could see if you can find it and email to me i would really appreciate. cheers bianca...

Posted by: bianca at July 28, 2009 10:30 PM

I have a question on Latitude Longitude:
I am trying to get latitude and longitude values using Java with google Map.
Is it possible to get latitute and longitude for different addresses at single request using google Map. Please suggest.

Posted by: Karuna at August 12, 2009 7:43 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

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I do have a comment, now that you mention it!