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Twitter users are in a state of shock after discovering Edinburgh is situated west of Bristol.

The fact that the Scottish capital, which is located on Scotland’s east coast, is more westerly than Bristol appears to have dumbfounded people on the social media site.

It all started with a tweet from Channel 4 presenter Alex Thomson, who dropped the geographical bombshell on January 2 – much to the shock of his 96,000 followers.

The revelation prompted responses from shocked MPs to stunned authors, as Twitter users struggled to come to terms with it.

Among those was Laura, who posted: “Mind boggling! I’ve had to look at Google maps to get my head around the Edinburgh/Bristol thing. This needs a hashtag: #tomofacts .”

Kevin Trebell wrote: “Blimey. I had to check that here in west Cornwall. It’s west of both. It is. Really surprised by this one though.

Reg asked: “What madness is this!?”

While Paul M put simply: “Mind blown.”

The longitude – which is used to determine the east-west position of a point on Earth - of Edinburgh is 3.18 degrees, while Bristol’s is 2.58 degrees.

That is the technical proof supporting Alex’s claim, though an even more technical map created by the Bristol Post suggests Edinburgh may in fact lie west of Liverpool and Cardiff, too.

Rhodri Marsden posted: “The fact that Edinburgh lies further west than Bristol has caused me to run around my house shrieking.”

Tom Nightingale said: “I have just learnt that Edinburgh is west of Bristol, and now I don't know what to believe.”

And Twitter user Ste added: “For me, the Edinburgh-Bristol fact is up there with the Hamburg being further north than Liverpool one.”

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