Why Does Longitude 0 Pass Through Greenwich?

Longitudes are like imaginary lines that help us find places around the world, and Greenwich is where one of those lines, Longitude 0, starts.

Imagine you're playing a game of tag with your friends in a big park. You all agree on a spot in the middle to be the starting line. That’s like how people decided where Longitude 0 would be, they picked a place that was important and easy to use for measuring positions around the world.

Greenwich is a town near London, and it has a special clock tower called the Royal Observatory. Long ago, scientists chose this spot because it had clear skies and good maps, making it perfect for figuring out time and place. That’s why Longitude 0 passes through Greenwich, it was like choosing the best starting line in the tag game.

Now, whenever people on opposite sides of the world want to know how far apart they are, they use that special line as a reference, just like you would use the middle of the park to count how many steps you ran.