Undiscovered Land

When you were a little kid, did you ever wonder if there was any undiscovered land left in the world? Perhaps if there was a small island that all the explorers had missed, you could lay claim to it, and be the king of your own little country. You could live by your own laws, and you would never have to pay taxes ever again!

I believe that this is an almost universal childhood fantasy. It was roughly the premise of one of my favorite episodes of Family Guy, where Peter creates his own microstate called Petoria and declares independence from the United States.

But as we slowly grow older and wiser, it dawns on us that there is no undiscovered land left at all. If the police can find a few marijuana plants growing in a cornfield using satellites, then surely no one could have missed a decent-sized island for this long. For most of us, this realization is enough to shut down our Regal ambitions for good. But not for Mr. Oliver. Mr. Oliver had a plan, you see.

According to Wikipedia, Michael Oliver is a Lithuanian immigrant to the United States of Jewish descent. He is also a self-made Las Vegas real-estate millionaire and political activist. Mr. Oliver is a staunch Libertarian, and as such believes in totally unregulated open-market economies, free from the scourge of government intervention. Like Peter Griffin, he was sick and tired of paying taxes, and having the goverment telling him how to run his life. One day in 1971, Michael Oliver decided that he had had enough. He was going to start his own country.

The greatest problem was that there was no undiscovered land left upon which to forge his young nation. However, this did not discourage the resourceful Mr. Oliver. Like I said before, Mr. Oliver had a plan. As our story goes, our boy Michael travelled to Australia with a few million dollars' worth of venture capital. He then rented a large barge. Yes, a large barge. He also bought a metric shitload of sand (roughly 2.54 imperial shitloads). Yes, sand. Mr. Oliver then set sail toward a remote area of the South Pacific Ocean known as the Minerva Reef.

The Minerva Reef is peculiar because it is a very shallow reef. It can be seen from the surface, yet it is not close to any other islands. Michael Oliver's plan was this: if thre was no undiscovered land left, he was going to MAKE some undiscovered land. He would then promptly discover it, and then claim it. And that's exactly what Michael Oliver did. He sailed his large barge out to the Minerva reef, and dumped a metric shitload of sand onto the reef. After a lot of shovelling, Michael Oliver succeeded in dumping enough sand onto the reef that a small island emerged from the sea.

Once he had built an island of a few square meters, Mr. Oliver erected a flagpole and a small tower. This new island he christened the Republic of Minerva. He applied to the United Nations for recognition and a vote in the General Assembly. His calls were never returned. It was when he tried to initiate bilateral relations with the surrounding nations that he finally got a response.

About a month after Michael Oliver mailed his declaration of independence to the surrounding states, Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji, Nauru, Western Samoa, and the Cook Islands sent low-level diplomatic representatives to a small meeting to decide what to do about it. President Oliver was not invited. Eventually, it was decided that Tonga would try to invade the island and take it by force. This actually happened. You can't make stuff like this up.

On June 21, 1972, the entire armed forces of Tonga arrived at the newly created island, accompanied by King Tupou and a brass band playing the Tongan national anthem. They took down the Minervan flag and replaced it with the Tongan flag, and pushed over the small tower. Michael Oliver was not present at the time.

So ended any hope for the most successful microstate in the history of the world.

There is an interesting urban legend that the soldiers that took part in the Minerva War were actually a few dozen unarmed convicts from Tonga. During the brief occupation of Minerva, two of these men apparently got into a serious fistfight, resulting in the death of one of the inmates. This would make the Republic of Minerva the only country in the world to have a murder rate higher than its population. However, it is unlikely that this legend is true since Tonga did have a professional armed forces at the time.