It was always just a line on the map, the Equator. It was just that south of that point they called hurricanes something else. Later I heard a draining sink swirls to the left down there, but come on, really?

There are certain laws of nature that just ARE, aren't there? Water swirls to the right, days are longer in summer, temperatures are colder in winter--isn't that what we've believed all our lives?
As we remember what our guide said, in 1792 French scientists tried to determine the exact location of the equator. They saw it crossed seven countries and since the most civilized was Ecuador they marked the spot here at Quito, the highest point at which it crossed the earth. 

 They came really close. Now that we have GPS, we can see they were only off by less than a mile. In commemoration of the 200th anniversary of that scientific find, the monument most people are familiar with was built.
 
The real equator doesn't have a grand monument to photograph, but it has an awesome museum with displays of indigenous artifacts and cool experiments that debunk our treasured beliefs that water swirls to the right, that eggs can't stand on their ends and that our watches really know what time it is.
 
Actually, when water drains down a sink at the exact point of the equator it doesn't swirl at all. It goes straight down the hole. You float a leaf on the water and it goes straight down--it doesn't swirl around.
 
Go ahead. Flush your toilet and watch it swirl. Which way does it go? We moved our little experiment 6' to the north and it swirled right. We moved 6' to the south of the equator and it swirled to the left. Wow. Okay, okay, I know it was just a trick to illustrate a point and that the equator is really about 5 meters wide, but the physical reality is that water truly swirls backwards when you're at opposites sides of the equator.
 
Anyone who knows Bob knows how time obsessed he is. So when our guide showed him the sundial exactly on the equator that said 5 to 11 and his watch said 11:15, she asked: which one do you think is right? This stick with a shadow or your mechanical watch? He stammers something like--well my watch has always BEEN right... But he didn't sound real certain anymore. He'd just seen the trick with the water and the egg.

And then she explained. Remember leap year? We, with all our vaulted technology, have to add a whole freaking day every four years just because our watches are so far off.
 
And the egg? On the equator it's possible, actually possible to stand an egg on a nail. Because there's no swirl, the liquid yolk drops directly to the bottom. It's possible to balance an egg on a nail anywhere I suppose, but you'll break a lot more eggs.