One thing I have always been curious about, but never got around to investigating, is how hard is it to see that the Lambert Equal-Area Projection of a sphere onto a cylinder in fact preserves areas? This 2012 essay attempts to provide an answer. The essay was recently updated to provide a link to the fabulous Youtube site by Grant Sanderson at 3blue1brown. He shows a different way of looking at the problem also without explicitly resorting to calculus. All his videos are spectacular and provide unparalleled insights into mathematics. What I wouldn’t give to have had such videos available when I was studying math. How much more quickly would I have been able to learn. See Lambert Equal Area Projection.