According to the Daily Mail, an earthquake happened at the Padang

We must all have missed out on this important part of our history: belonging to Indonesia.

Jeanette Tan| March 04, 02:00 PM

The first thing we should say about this is that an earthquake did happen in Indonesia, in the waters off Padang, the capital of West Sumatra.

Thankfully, according to reports from The Jakarta Post and The Jakarta Globe, there were no initial signs of injury or damage, apart from panicked residents fleeing to higher ground. A tsunami alert was also lifted soon afterward for several locations along the coastline.

Several of us in Singapore would be aware of this earthquake too, as tremors were felt in various parts of our island, triggering multiple police advisories like this one:

UPDATE:'>
ADVISORY ON TREMORS REPORTED IN SINGAPORE The Meteorological Services has confirmed that an earthquake had...

Posted by Singapore Police Force on Wednesday, 2 March 2016

But back to the point of this story — notoriously unreliable British news website Daily Mail has educated us on an incredible revelation: At least one part of Singapore, in this case, the Padang, is part of Indonesia.

Here's a screenshot of the first part of their story showing the proof of this:

Screenshot from Daily Mail article. Click for full story. Screenshot from Daily Mail article. Click for full story.

Now, let's not even get into the fact that they erroneously reported that people died from the earthquake — both Reuters and the Sydney Morning Herald said otherwise, with the SMH even quoting the fellow who was named in the Daily Mail report:

Screenshot from Sydney Morning Herald story Screenshot from Sydney Morning Herald story

Since it's Friday, we now contemplate the thought process of the Daily Mail editor who added this photograph to the story:

"Ok, we need some pictures of Padang."

(searches Google for "Padang". Turns up photo of The Padang.)

"Oh, here's one! Looks sunny enough, should be Asian. Should be it."

(posts wantonly with copy-pasted caption from part of the story that has nothing to do with the picture.)

Just for your information, by the way, here is Padang, the one near where the earthquake happened (the area in red below):

Screenshot from Google Maps Screenshot from Google Maps

And see over there, near the top right-hand corner of the map? That's Singapore.

And this, by the way, is where that "Padang" picture is from:

Screenshot from Google Maps Screenshot from Google Maps

And that concludes your geography lesson for the day. Thank you, Daily Mail, for teaching us that all of us were wrong all along. Including Google Maps.

 

Top image: screenshot from Daily Mail article.

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