It looks like a similar thing happened with the USA, except worse because whatever Pacific territories it included got attached to the east side, making it take the long way around.
Ah yes, I believe it is the Aleutians. It's hard to really see it well, but it looks like the blob on the right side is at the same latitude as the end of the chain on the left side. I assume the "edge of the world" for this purpose was the 180th meridian, which would leave some of them on the "wrong side."
Looking again, I see that Russia and Fiji also suffer from this problem, and those are the other two countries divided by that line.
which are these? as far as I understood (I lived in Sint Maarten for a couple of years once) the Netherlands Antilles are colonies only, unlike the French islands (Martinique and Guadeloupe mainly, but St Barts and St Martin too) which are overseas departments of France, and also considered part of EU.
The kingdom of the Netherlands consists of 4 countries: Aruba, Curaçao, St Maarten, and the Netherlands.
In name, they are each other's equal within the kingdom, but there is a 'slight' difference in size.
Also, 3 other islands in the Caribean are part of the Netherlands, the country: Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba (but, if I have to believe Wikipedia, those 3 are not in the euro zone; the US dollar is legal tender in (part of) the country of the Netherlands)
St Barts and St Martin are not overseas departments of France. They used to be part of the Guadeloupe overseas department, but seceded to be a "collectivite d'outremer" (overseas collectivity), which is different status than overseas department or overseas territory (France also has a few of those). St Barts (really "Saint Barthelemy") and St Martin not collect income tax locally and it goes to their budget (I think they wanted to stop shipping all their monies to the French state and/or Guadeloupe).
