[dbatten]

Anecdotes from the US:

1) When I moved a couple of years ago, I discovered that the deed to our house had a typo. It defined the property we owned by referencing a map, which was on file with the County Register of Deeds. Except, when the deed cited the map, it mis-typed the page number the map was supposed to be on such that it referenced the map for a totally different property. The prior owner's deed had the same typo, back a couple of generations. The sale nearly fell through as the buyer's lawyer argued that it would be risky for them to buy the property given the typo and that a title insurance company might even refuse to insure the sale over the issue (not sure how much of that was real vs. theatrics). In the end, our lawyer tracked down an owner several generations prior in another part of the state, and sent a paralegal to his current house to have him sign new paperwork clearing the matter up.

2) A while back, I got a little too interested in the history of a local state park, which was a farming community before it was a park. I found some of the original deeds where the property was sold from the original farmers to the US Federal Government, and then to the State. The deeds defined the property by saying things like "beginning at a holly bush on the bank of Crabtree Creek, and extending for 500 yards north to a rock." A holly bush? Which holly bush? What about when it dies or somebody cuts it down? Which rock? The woods are full of rocks! In a world of Google Maps and GPS, it's wild to think that land used to be bought and sold this way, which apparently worked well enough for the time.

[btowngar]

GPS has its own shortcomings as well due to continental drift!

"The Australian continent, perched on the planet’s fastest moving tectonic plate, is drifting at about seven centimetres a year to the northeast."

https://theconversation.com/australia-on-the-move-how-gps-ke...