You’re reading my newsletter, Terra Nullius, on the weird and interesting intricacies of the countries and places that make up our world. It currently goes out to around 1,000 people every week. You can subscribe here: There is only one bit of solid ground in the world neither claimed nor governed by anyone. It’s called Bir Tawil and it’s an 800 square mile piece of desert between Sudan and Egypt.
Are you familiar with the history of The Debatable Land? It was a little patch of ground on the Scottish/English border distinguished by the fact that for several centuries the two realms agreed that it belonged to neither. Only when it had been overrun by bandits did they agree to split it between them.
One of my earliest memories is of President Johnson and the President of Mexico pushing buttons to set off explosives to reroute the Rio Grande River to return an island to Mexican sovereignty in 1964:
Are you familiar with the history of The Debatable Land? It was a little patch of ground on the Scottish/English border distinguished by the fact that for several centuries the two realms agreed that it belonged to neither. Only when it had been overrun by bandits did they agree to split it between them.
One of my earliest memories is of President Johnson and the President of Mexico pushing buttons to set off explosives to reroute the Rio Grande River to return an island to Mexican sovereignty in 1964:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamizal_dispute