Six Things, Volume 81
Micronations | Wild Things | Cricket | Weather | Aurora | Birdle
Quite a long one this week, what with one thing and another – if it’s too big for your email and doesn’t fully load, you can click through to read it on the website.
Thing 1 – Micronations
Which of us hasn’t, at one time or another, felt the urge to declare our independence from the world and set ourselves up in an autonomous nation, perhaps in the shed at the bottom of our garden?
No? Well, me neither in fact. But there’s no shortage of people around the world who have. The concept of micronations isn’t new. One of the earliest examples (albeit retroactively designated) was the Islands of Refreshment, a collection of islands in the South Atlantic, the largest of which (and the only inhabitable one) is now known as Tristan da Cunha (as indeed it was before the brief interregnum). The islands were claimed in 1811 by Captain Jonathan Lambert, who not unreasonably assumed that because nobody else had snaffled them there was nothing to stop him from declaring himself their sovereign and sole possessor. The story of his brief occupancy (along with three others) is quite remarkable.
Incidentally, one of the Islands of Refreshment is Inacessible Island, home of the Inaccessible Island Rail, the worlds’ smallest flightless bird.
But I digress.
Micronations underwent a boom in the aftermath of World War II, and in particular from the mid-1960s onwards, when protest, utopian ideals, and general anti-establishment feelings manifested themselves in these often highly eccentric forms of rebellion. That eccentricity, though, is nothing compared to the levels of strangeness (and often, frankly, delusion) associated with the rush of micronations formed in the age of the internet. Now there are hundreds of the blighters, a lot of them parodic in nature (eg Alanland – population: 3, capital: Bedia), and often apparently formed by people with a fondness for designing flags, coinage and stamps.
Some micronations seem to be set up as a way of avoiding pesky things like taxes and local bylaws. Others are little more than a childish whim. But while genuine protest is often their inspiration, others are blatant scams. Some, most notably Christiania, become thriving tourist attractions.
One of the early micronations was formed in 1964 by Ernest Hemingway’s younger brother Leicester. He dragged a bamboo raft six miles off the coast of Jamaica, moored it, and called it New Atlantis, invoking the obscure Guano Islands Act to do so. New Atlantis was tiny, and one of Hemingway’s goals was to make it big enough to ‘maybe entertain some people for lunch’. But it had a monetary unit (the scruple) and postage stamps, and he even wrote a constitution. Well, I say ‘wrote’. What he did was type out the US constitution and replace all occurrences of the words ‘United States’ with ‘New Atlantis’, a strategy that inevitably calls to mind this sketch.
Also catching the eye in this brief survey was the bizarre story of Rüterberg, a small village on the Elbe which was completely enclosed by river and wall in 1967. The situation for the village’s 150 inhabitants was pretty unbearable – entrance to the village was strictly controlled by border guards and visitors weren’t permitted – and they eventually rose up and declared independence from the GDR. They did this on November 8th 1989. History buffs might find that date vaguely familiar – it was the day before the Berlin Wall came down. We can only hope they made the most of their 24 hours of independence before the jackboot of independence stamped on them.
If you haven’t already had enough, the story of Westarctica is also rather beguiling.
The life of a micronation can be fleeting and precarious, and they themselves are not immune to rebellion: the existence of nanonations (micronations which have declared independence from their parent micronation) presumably opens up the possibility of piconations, femtonations and even attonations.
You can find out more about Westarctica (and plenty of others) on Encyclopedia Westarctica. And for those with an insatiable thirst for micronation arcana and trivia, there is also MicroWiki.
A foray into the world of micronations leaves you feeling slightly disorientated: are they truth, parody, performance art, or the deranged (if, admittedly, rigorously indexed) ramblings of troubled minds? It’s sometimes impossible to tell.
Thing 2 – Wild Things
“Everything has a relationship with something else, and we do too. I think we sometimes forget that.”
This is enchanting. It’s called Here The Wild Things Are, and it’s a short documentary, made in New Zealand by Kelly Gilbride, about the City Nature Challenge – an international effort for people to find and document plants and wildlife in cities across the globe. It’s been going since 2019 – the 2024 edition saw over 83,000 people log 65,000 species.
All the past results are here, so you can see how your city did (or if it even participated at all). La Paz, Cape Town and Dallas-Fort Worth seem to be the big hitters.
The next City Nature Challenge will take place in late April 2025. Learn more here.
Thing 3 – Cricket
Cricket happened. Records were broken. It was all frankly rather astonishing.
If you’re interested in cricket you’ll probably already know all about England’s recent victory over Pakistan, and if you’re not you’ll already have moved on to Thing 4, so I shan’t detain you much longer. (Interested parties will find much to enjoy in this analysis by Jarrod Kimber.)
BUT. STOP.
You do not need to be interested in cricket to find this footage of a Test match in 1905 fascinating as a historical document. Moustaches! Hats! Pipes!
And this marvellous moment where an Australian player flicks a jocular ‘V’ sign at one of his teammates.
The match itself was rather a damp squib, the final day being rained off. The teams included several all-time notables of the Golden Age of cricket, including the peerless Victor Trumper, Warwick ‘The Big Ship’ Armstrong (England’s nemesis over several decades, and famous for reading a newspaper while fielding) and C B Fry, who represented England at football and cricket, equalled the world long jump record, and whose party trick was to jump backwards from the floor up onto a mantelpiece. Oh, and he reputedly turned down the throne of Albania.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
Thing 4 – Weather Birthday
Weather Birthday is a fun resource through which you can find out what the weather was like on the day you were born. We have no way of verifying the accuracy, of course, but it’ll pass an idle minute, if you’re in the market for a bit of idle-minute-passing.
Thing 5 – Aurora
The last 24 hours have been all about the aurora. Even Londoners were treated to extraordinary views, although I wasn’t among them – I’m fine, no really it’s fine.
Fake despair aside, it was terrific to see so many people getting so excited about this remarkable natural phenomenon, even if I did rather feel like Charlie Brown to everyone else’s Linus when I went to post a photograph of a pretty leaf I’d seen.
I realise the aurora horse has just bolted, but with solar maximum in the offing (or perhaps already under way) there may well be more . So it’s all eyes to the excellent Space Weather , Space Weather Live, Aurora Watch and Aurora Reach to see if I can get ahead of the game for the next one.
Thing 6 – Birdle
I’ll be the first to admit that last week’s addition to the game roster didn’t meet with universal approval. Let’s hope this week’s offering, Birdle – as you might expect, it concerns itself with birds – proves more popular.
Obviously if you know something about birds it’ll be easier, but if you don’t it’s a fun way to learn a bit more about them – not least some of the frankly ridiculous noises they make. This Great Bustard, for example.
There are three versions of Birdle you can play: World, UK, South Africa. And if you become addicted, you might want to download the app, available for iPhone or Google Play.
I love it, but I am undeniably their target audience.
I once went on a date with someone who didn't so much as crack a smile upon hearing the noise a great bustard makes.
There was, of course, no second date. I mean, honestly. 🙄
The aurora hubbub invariably brings to mind Day of the Triffids for me, maybe so I can comfort myself about missing it.