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Monday, July 11, 2005

Petoria and Other Made Up Places

From an msn.com article by Matt Crenson
"By those criteria, the most successful made-up nation would have to be Sealand. Englishman Roy Bates founded Sealand in 1967 by occupying an abandoned World War II artillery platform 7 miles off the coast of Britain. He proclaimed it an independent state and named himself Prince Roy of Sealand.

Soon after, Bates tested his country's sovereignty by firing warning shots at a Royal Navy buoy tender passing nearby. He was brought before an English court, but a judge refused to hear the case on the basis that Sealand lay beyond British territorial waters. Since then Britain has extended its territorial waters to a distance of 12 miles from the coast but so has Sealand, insisting that the waters between the two countries be split down the middle.

About a decade after the shooting incident, three associates of Bates landed on Sealand with the intention of discussing a business proposition. Bates was not there, but his son Michael the Prince Regent was. A disagreement ensued, and the men ended up imprisoning the prince in Sealand's kitchen.


...Does this remind anyone else of that episode of Family Guy where he claims the land around his house is Petoria?

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