•  In 1517, when Spanish explorer Francisco Fernandez de Cordoba arrived in what is now known as Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, he asked the Mayan Indians what they called their land. The Mayans replied “Yucatan,” which means “What do you want?”

• In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, having crossed the Pacific Ocean without encountering a storm, called it Mar Pacifico, meaning “peaceful sea.” In reality, the Pacific Ocean is home to some of the most destructive storms, tidal waves, and typhoons on earth.

• In 1770, English explorer Captain James Cook landed in Australia and asked the aborigines what they called the large marsupials indigenous to the continent. He was told “kangaroo,” which, unbeknownst to Cook, is an aboriginal word for “I don’t know.”

• In 1796, a city in Ohio was named after its founder, Moses Cleaveland, a surveyor for the Connecticut Land Company. In 1831, a newspaper misspelled the city’s name as Cleveland. The city’s name has been incorrectly spelled Cleveland ever since.

•  The name Nome was wrongly copied from a British map of Alaska drawn around 1850. The original map maker had written “? Name” to mark the town.

•  In the 1880s, two surveyors worked together to map the western border of South Dakota along the same meridian. One surveyor walked south, the second surveyor walked north. The surveyor walking south accidentally started out a mile west of the surveyor walking north, so the western border of South Dakota jumps one mile east-west where it hits the southern border of Montana.