The 33rd parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 33 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Africa, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America and the Atlantic Ocean.
In Iraq, the parallel defined the limit of the southern no-fly zone from 4 September 1996 to 30 August 2003. (Before this time it had been set at the 32nd parallel north.) This airspace was controlled by Operation Southern Watch.
In the United States it approximately forms the border between Arkansas in the north and Louisiana on the south. (The border is actually a couple of kilometres north of the parallel.) The Louisiana Territory was that part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase which lay north of the 33rd parallel.
The parallel is part of the horse latitudes.
At this latitude the sun is visible for 14 hours, 20 minutes during the summer solstice and 9 hours, 58 minutes during the winter solstice.
Read more about 33rd Parallel North: Around The World
Famous quotes containing the words parallel and/or north:
“There is a parallel between the twos and the tens. Tens are trying to test their abilities again, sizing up and experimenting to discover how to fit in. They don’t mean everything they do and say. They are just testing. . . . Take a good deal of your daughter’s behavior with a grain of salt. Try to handle the really outrageous as matter-of-factly as you would a mistake in grammar or spelling.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)