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:
“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“A brush had left a crooked stroke
Of what was either cloud or smoke
From north to south across the blue;
A piercing little star was through.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)