The Principality of Sealand is an odd case, it is an old World War II floating fort 10km off the coast of Suffolk, England. In 1956 the fort was abandoned, then in 1967 Major Paddy Roy Bates, along with his family and some associates occupied the fort, claiming it to be a new and separate principality. The Principality Of Sealand. Originally it was set up for the British Mr Bates to broadcast his pirate radio station. However it soon became more.
He crowned himself king. In 1968 some British workmen came to service a navigational buoy nearby. Paddy Bates claimed the waters to be part of his territory and his son Michal Bates, shot a rifle to scare them off. Then they went to court on firearms charges. The case could not proceed. A that time anything within 5km of the shore was part of the United Kingdom, and the fort fell just outside of that jurisdiction. It was in international waters and exempt from the rules. Read the rest of this entry »
East of Papua New Guinea one can find the exotic Solomon Islands, this small landmass collective happens to be a near perfect for the growing of coconuts.
These days the coconuts are still vital, both as an export as well as the many services that are afforded by the useful trees So important are they in fact that there are nine words dedicated purely to describing the different stages of growth that the coconut goes through.
Stranger still, their language has no actual word for the coconut itself. Leaving coconuts well described but unnamed by the Pijin language. Yet another example of how truly different cultures can be.
This is one of the many things that did not happen
1648, the Scilly Isles just off of South East England. Some Royalists were causing a problem. they were fighting in the Second English Civil War, a war extremely lacking in civility I note. The problem they were causing was this, they had a navy and were fighting Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians, they also attacked his allies. Namely the Dutch.
The Dutch knew what they were doing, they were aligning themselves with what they thought(correctly) was the winning side of the civil war. Unfortunately they suffered heavy losses and had both ships stolen and goods purloined. So in 1651 they went over to the Isles of Scilly and asked for reparation, essentially a form of apology, which form? Money. Read the rest of this entry »
FACT: Giant Tortoises, nice creatures, wise and a bit wrinkly. Wonderful.
As you well may know they are common in the Galapagos Islands. In fact each island tends to have its own species of tortoise, and that’s great because one can never have too many tortoises, you can however, have too much of something else.
Goats specifically.
Now we certainly know what goats are in this case; they are invaders. They were aggressive and competitive, their nimble feet and height meant that they were very effective at eating everything the tortoises wanted to eat. This was a problem on 3 of the islands, Isabela Island, Santiago Island and Pinta Island.
The Tortoise were facing extinction; goats ran rife throughout an area over 400,000 Hectares in size and the ecosystems were being decimated. Radical action was required to stop these fiends. That action was Project Isabela. It was an initiative run from 1997 until 2006, a nine-year commitment a minor goat apocalypse.
Using a combination of helicopter-borne snipers and ground crews they set about slowly hacking at the annoyingly alive goat population. Despite the ethical qualms with killing thousands upon thousands of goats, it is seen as being worth it. By, lets say, ‘losing’ the goats there was suddenly no more overgrazing, ecosystems snapped back into place and resumed their business, tortoises did tortoise things and trees became green again and did their typical photosynthesizing thing.
That was why the Galapagos hates and murders goats.Below i footage of some helicopter goat sniping in the Galapagos.
The Principality of Sealand is an odd case, it is an old World War II floating fort 10km off the coast of Suffolk, England. In 1956 the fort was abandoned, then in 1967 Major Paddy Roy Bates, along with his family and some associates occupied the fort, claiming it to be a new and separate principality. The Principality Of Sealand. Originally it was set up for the British Mr Bates to broadcast his pirate radio station. However it soon became more.
Most Odd - Facts of Interest 