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Conquest via Bird Poop: One Island at a Time · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: It's time for the show. Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors.
0:28
Speaker 1: I am Ben Bulan, and I am super proud of
0:31
Speaker 1: both of us for not starting with a fart joke today.
0:34
Speaker 1: Was that on the table. It's always on the table.
0:36
Speaker 1: But so far we've managed to be our best selves.
0:41
Speaker 1: I think with the farthest we've ventured into that kind
0:44
Speaker 1: of blue territory was unicorn farts, Angel angel farts. You know,
0:49
Speaker 1: there was that, and then there was also the episode
0:52
Speaker 1: about scientists hiding under college kids beds. But that wasn't
0:56
Speaker 1: our fault. No, No, that was that was a historical fact.
1:00
Speaker 1: It's true. I'm no, by the way, and this is
1:01
Speaker 1: ridiculous history. And here we are, here we are. So
1:05
Speaker 1: you may be asking yourselves, Bennal superproducer Casey Pegram, why
1:11
Speaker 1: did you feel the need to point out that you
1:14
Speaker 1: aren't starting with a fart joke? Well, because, Ben, we're
1:17
Speaker 1: talking about poo poo today. We are, we are, and
1:21
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about excrement. We're talking about a
1:26
Speaker 1: very important sort of excrement, white gold my man guano yep,
1:32
Speaker 1: the island inget known as bird poop or guano. And
1:37
Speaker 1: we're also talking about geopolitics. We're talking about the great
1:42
Speaker 1: game that all nations play. Yeah, what could be better?
1:45
Speaker 1: Poo poo and geo politics? Right, aren't you glad you
1:49
Speaker 1: tuned in today? So I would propose that we, as
1:54
Speaker 1: the Mad Hatter said, start at the beginning. Ish, I
1:58
Speaker 1: think that's the smart way to go about this, all right,
2:00
Speaker 1: and then we'll probably go to the middle and sort
2:02
Speaker 1: of a chronological way. I like it. Let's travel the
2:07
Speaker 1: old to the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. What
2:12
Speaker 1: the heck is that? Yeah? So it's today thousand square
2:16
Speaker 1: nautical miles of protected islands that stretch from uh the
2:21
Speaker 1: Wake a Toll which is in the northwest, to Jarvis
2:24
Speaker 1: Island in the southeast. And it's basically a cluster of
2:28
Speaker 1: small islands UM that is protected under the National Wildlife
2:33
Speaker 1: Refuge System. And just to list them all off, there's
2:36
Speaker 1: King and Reef, Palmyra Atoll, Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island,
2:41
Speaker 1: and then those are the ones under the National Wildlife
2:43
Speaker 1: Refuge System. They also include two um others, Johnston a
2:47
Speaker 1: Toll and Wake Island. And these islands are home to
2:52
Speaker 1: tremendous levels of bio diversity. This is also where we
2:57
Speaker 1: discovered some amazingly s lee and Dr. Susian bird names.
3:03
Speaker 1: Also side note, yes, we are aware that the correct
3:06
Speaker 1: pronunciations Dr. Soyce like the ham fisted booby, the sooty
3:10
Speaker 1: turn I made up ham fisted Booby. I mean, the
3:12
Speaker 1: booby is real, but the city turn is totally legit.
3:15
Speaker 1: And you know what, I totally said, ham fisted booby.
3:18
Speaker 1: I I thought, sure, yeah, why not? Yes? Is it
3:21
Speaker 1: anymore or less ridiculous than the rest of them? Like
3:24
Speaker 1: the wandering tattler. I also have a lovely laundry list
3:27
Speaker 1: of endangered or depleted species that do quite well in
3:32
Speaker 1: the Pacific remote Islands, and they include, but are not
3:34
Speaker 1: limited to, the green and hawks, bill turtle, the pearl oyster,
3:38
Speaker 1: giant clams, reef sharks, coconut crabs, groupers, hump head and
3:43
Speaker 1: napoleon rasses. What's a rass w r A s S.
3:47
Speaker 1: I don't know what that one is, and my personal favorite,
3:50
Speaker 1: the ever Dr. Seussian bump head parrot fish. Bump head
3:54
Speaker 1: parrot fish. Yes of Dr. Susi and fame. Also, specifically,
3:59
Speaker 1: the palm myra atoll and Kingman reef have the highest
4:03
Speaker 1: coral diversity levels of any other atoll or reef island
4:08
Speaker 1: in the entire Central Pacific. Oh and uh Arras is
4:13
Speaker 1: a type of civit which is a really cute looking
4:16
Speaker 1: tiny mammal, a civet civet, a civet with a V
4:20
Speaker 1: like victory or vendetta. Interesting. So it's we're saying that
4:24
Speaker 1: I think it's really important for us to establish these
4:26
Speaker 1: are not just the homes of some hilariously named birds,
4:32
Speaker 1: but for the purpose of today's episode, we are very
4:35
Speaker 1: much focusing on those birds because if you have a
4:39
Speaker 1: lot of birds in a small area, what else do
4:42
Speaker 1: you have a lot of You got a lot of
4:44
Speaker 1: bird poop, and bird poop is the key ingredient of
4:48
Speaker 1: today's episode. Also, this reminds me thanks to everybody who
4:52
Speaker 1: wrote to us and demystified vinegar pie. Yeah, yeah, we've
4:56
Speaker 1: moved on now to recipes exclusively in aolving bird droppings
5:02
Speaker 1: and it's but it's not just bird droppings for fun, because,
5:07
Speaker 1: as it turns out, these piles of of white poop
5:13
Speaker 1: were very important in uh the United States establishment of
5:18
Speaker 1: imperialist laws. It turns out that if you discover at
5:25
Speaker 1: island and you say, you know what, I want this
5:29
Speaker 1: island to belong to the United States. All you have
5:34
Speaker 1: to do is tell them, essentially that you're going to
5:40
Speaker 1: mind bird poop on that island and then give it
5:42
Speaker 1: to the US. There's poop in them hills. And that's
5:44
Speaker 1: all because of the Guano Islands Act of efty six,
5:47
Speaker 1: which says that if a U. S citizens finds some
5:51
Speaker 1: bird dukie on any rock, island or key, and that
5:55
Speaker 1: location isn't already under the control of another government, can
6:00
Speaker 1: consider it as quote appertaining to the United States. A
6:05
Speaker 1: quite spurious and interesting legal term that we will dive
6:09
Speaker 1: into a little later. Right. Yes, absolutely, Uh. The Guando
6:13
Speaker 1: Island Act of eighteen fifty six is still on the
6:16
Speaker 1: books today. It's forty eight US Code, Chapter eight and uh. Specifically,
6:22
Speaker 1: we've got the language here. Whenever any citizen of the
6:25
Speaker 1: United States discovers a deposit of guando on any island,
6:28
Speaker 1: rock worky not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government,
6:31
Speaker 1: and not occupied by the citizens of any other government,
6:35
Speaker 1: deep breath, and takes peaceful possession thereof, and occupies the
6:38
Speaker 1: same such island rock work, He may, at the discretion
6:40
Speaker 1: of the president be considered as appertaining to the United States,
6:45
Speaker 1: so it has to be a legit deserted islands. But
6:49
Speaker 1: why do this? Ben why right, such a convoluted and
6:53
Speaker 1: seemingly silly sounding code um that allows people to, you know,
6:59
Speaker 1: basically squat on uninhabited islands and dig for pooh. That's
7:05
Speaker 1: that's a great question. And uh, it turns out that
7:09
Speaker 1: guano was much more than just a fun thing at
7:15
Speaker 1: the time. In the eighteen forties and even before, guano
7:19
Speaker 1: became a very very powerful and precious commodity because it
7:25
Speaker 1: was a source of saltpeter for gunpowder and was also
7:28
Speaker 1: a very useful fertilizer. The US began importing guano in
7:33
Speaker 1: eighteen forty three, and the UK was also importing it.
7:37
Speaker 1: By the early eighteen fifties, US imports were more than
7:42
Speaker 1: or around I guess it's fair to say, uh, seven
7:45
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand tons. And one of the big
7:49
Speaker 1: sources of this came from Peruvian sea birds, and farmers
7:53
Speaker 1: were claiming in the eighteen forties that using this fertilizer
7:56
Speaker 1: could increase a crop yield threefold because as these small
8:00
Speaker 1: Peruvian islands had little rainfall, intense sunlight and ultimately the perfect, perfect,
8:07
Speaker 1: perfect conditions to allow this guano to dry out informed
8:11
Speaker 1: deposits that could then be mined like any other natural resource. Right, Yes,
8:16
Speaker 1: so we have a guando boom, actually a guano mania,
8:20
Speaker 1: as some people were coining it. At historian by the
8:22
Speaker 1: name of Richard Wines called it a perfect mania because
8:25
Speaker 1: of guano's potency as a fertilizer. In eighteen fifty, it
8:29
Speaker 1: was seventy six dollars a pound or a hundred and
8:32
Speaker 1: sixty seven dollars a kilogram, which is, according to an
8:35
Speaker 1: article from Dan Vergano in National Geographic, a quarter of
8:39
Speaker 1: the price of actual gold. And I wasn't joking at
8:42
Speaker 1: the top when I said white gold. I mean this
8:44
Speaker 1: was a very valuable material that was quite sought after
8:49
Speaker 1: because it was before the invention of synthetic fertilizers which
8:54
Speaker 1: were made of ammonia, and that didn't happen until the
8:57
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, right so at the time. Now you
9:01
Speaker 1: can find a really great interview with Columbia law professor
9:04
Speaker 1: Christina Duffy Burnett where she provides some historical context to
9:09
Speaker 1: this and talks about the genuine crisis the mania the boom,
9:15
Speaker 1: because this wasn't sort of a a a useless or
9:19
Speaker 1: cosmetic boom like beanie babies. No, it turned out the
9:23
Speaker 1: fertilizer was actually really good, or rather the guano made
9:27
Speaker 1: for a bang up fertilizer because it was very rich
9:30
Speaker 1: in both phosphorus and nitrogen. It led to a very
9:34
Speaker 1: strange market. There were guando counterfeiters, totally fake guano flooding
9:40
Speaker 1: the market, which makes me think somebody's going, Dad, why
9:43
Speaker 1: won't you tell me what you do for a living?
9:45
Speaker 1: It's like the quiet son, get me more of this
9:47
Speaker 1: off white paint. I don't know what what do you
9:51
Speaker 1: cut guanna with? Yeah, like I don't know baby laxative? Right?
9:54
Speaker 1: Did they did they have that at the time? No, No, No,
9:57
Speaker 1: it's it's unclear, Ben, it's unclear the history. He is
10:00
Speaker 1: murky in that department. Different episode, right for another day.
10:04
Speaker 1: But what we what we do find is that this
10:07
Speaker 1: led to pretty intense diplomatic disputes. From the piece that
10:12
Speaker 1: you quoted earlier, Noel, courtesy of Richard wines Uh, the
10:16
Speaker 1: United States did find itself in some pretty like corporate
10:21
Speaker 1: America would call healthy conversations absolutely, which in the real
10:25
Speaker 1: world is a euphemism for intense arguments, because this all
10:31
Speaker 1: came to a tipping point Malcolm Gladwell style, when people
10:35
Speaker 1: began fighting over a Caribbean island called Avis. It's an isolated,
10:40
Speaker 1: uninhabited dot at the time, about three fifty miles off
10:44
Speaker 1: the coast of Venezuela. In eighteen fifty four, Americans landed
10:49
Speaker 1: on this island and they wanted to claim it as
10:54
Speaker 1: US territory. They erected get this, a liberty poll on
10:58
Speaker 1: the island to make things officials like a barber pole,
11:02
Speaker 1: and they called it a liberty pole. But when they
11:06
Speaker 1: left and returned with guano mining gear, they found the
11:10
Speaker 1: employees of a British firm already there with the gear
11:15
Speaker 1: mining that sweet sweet juanna. Did they have a scrap? Well,
11:18
Speaker 1: at first they divided it up between them, and somebody said,
11:22
Speaker 1: all right, we you know, we were here first, but
11:24
Speaker 1: there's enough bird poop for everyone. And the British said,
11:27
Speaker 1: very well, tally ho, whatever you know slang they chose
11:30
Speaker 1: to use at that time, and they thought, Pip, pip,
11:34
Speaker 1: there we go. And they thought that they would, you know,
11:37
Speaker 1: live in peace and harmony. However, Venezuela considered the island
11:42
Speaker 1: to be Venezuelan territory, and they were not impressed by
11:46
Speaker 1: this liberty pole. They were not impressed by this guana.
11:49
Speaker 1: They were not impressed that the British and the Americans
11:51
Speaker 1: were getting along. So then the scrap took place. Yes, yes, yes, uh.
11:56
Speaker 1: A Venezuelan warship came several months later and kicked everybody out,
12:01
Speaker 1: and then there was a dispute that lasted for decades.
12:04
Speaker 1: Even though long story short, it turned out that the
12:07
Speaker 1: guano on this island was kind of well, I was
12:11
Speaker 1: going to say crappy as a manure, but maybe a
12:14
Speaker 1: better word would be substandard. So a little more time passes,
12:17
Speaker 1: and obviously this is not a sustainable model, right, so
12:20
Speaker 1: the US farmers start really pushing the farm lobby to
12:25
Speaker 1: pressure Congress to get in the mix and pass some
12:29
Speaker 1: kind of legal ease that would allow for basically what
12:34
Speaker 1: we're talking about, claiming these uninhabited islands that potentially could
12:38
Speaker 1: be sites for guano deposits under what ultimately became the
12:44
Speaker 1: Guano Islands Act. And we've read portions of that, and
12:48
Speaker 1: I just want to read one more little snippet because
12:50
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty instructive. Um, the discoverer shall, as
12:53
Speaker 1: soon as practical, give notice, verified by affidavit, to the
12:57
Speaker 1: Department of State, of such discovery, occupation, and possession, describing
13:01
Speaker 1: the island Rock or Key, and the latitude and longitude thereof,
13:04
Speaker 1: as near as maybe, and showing that such possession was
13:07
Speaker 1: taken in the name of the United States, and shall
13:10
Speaker 1: furnish satisfactory evidence to the State Department that such island
13:13
Speaker 1: Rock or Key was not at the time of discovery thereof,
13:16
Speaker 1: or of the taking possession and occupation thereof by the
13:18
Speaker 1: claimants in the possession or occupation of any other government,
13:22
Speaker 1: or of the citizens of any other government before the
13:24
Speaker 1: same shall be considered as appertaining to the United States.
13:29
Speaker 1: Appertaining do you want to get into appertaining? Okay, so yes, good.
13:35
Speaker 1: I I keep going back to this, uh, this excellent
13:38
Speaker 1: interview in Cabinet Magazine appertaining just the strict definition is
13:45
Speaker 1: to relate to to concern, to be appropriate or applicable.
13:49
Speaker 1: And in this interview titled Islands in the Law with
13:54
Speaker 1: again with Christina Duffy Burnett of Columbia University of Columbia
13:59
Speaker 1: University face him absolutely right. There's this this concept. Okay,
14:04
Speaker 1: what is it's not? It's almost like a friends with
14:07
Speaker 1: benefits thing. I've been thinking about this for a while.
14:10
Speaker 1: It's it's all of the girlfriend and boyfriend, but the
14:13
Speaker 1: fun times, but really none of the obligation protection. Right.
14:19
Speaker 1: So in this interview, and you can read this in
14:22
Speaker 1: full online, Folks Cabinet Magazine asked Professor Burnett, what does
14:27
Speaker 1: appertaining mean legally speaking? And the professor says, that's the
14:32
Speaker 1: beauty of it. Nothing, or rather, no one had any idea.
14:36
Speaker 1: It was a vague way of saying, it's like ours
14:40
Speaker 1: pretty much kind of sort of. And there was no
14:43
Speaker 1: previous usage of appertaining in this context anywhere anywhere, capital a, anywhere, italicized, underline, highlighted, anywhere.
14:53
Speaker 1: There was nothing in English about this. It originated in
14:57
Speaker 1: property law as a way of talking about off that
15:00
Speaker 1: came attached to something else. So like you would, you know,
15:04
Speaker 1: buy property on an estate and there would be language
15:07
Speaker 1: in there about the waters appertaining to the estate, you know,
15:10
Speaker 1: a little pond or a creek, or the railway sidings
15:14
Speaker 1: appertained to a railway. It basically means we got DIBs yeah. Yeah,
15:20
Speaker 1: So it's a way of taking places possessions while being
15:24
Speaker 1: careful not to call them territories, because if there's a
15:27
Speaker 1: territory that the US owns legally, there are obligations that
15:32
Speaker 1: come along with that and constitutional entanglements. So it's a
15:37
Speaker 1: way of taking places without taking responsibility for them in
15:40
Speaker 1: a federal sense. Yeah. The final section of the Code
15:43
Speaker 1: is even entitled Right to Abandon Islands. Nothing in this
15:46
Speaker 1: chapter contained shall be construed as obliging the United States
15:49
Speaker 1: to retain possession of the islands. Rocks are keys after
15:52
Speaker 1: the Guanos shall have been removed from the same So
15:56
Speaker 1: we swoop in, we take the poop, and then we're
15:59
Speaker 1: out right. It's like a heist. It's like a very um,
16:04
Speaker 1: a very slow heist, very slow heist. There's not a
16:07
Speaker 1: montage for it yet. So you know, this whole thing um,
16:17
Speaker 1: this collection of islands that we talked about at the
16:19
Speaker 1: top of the show, including the Palmyra atoll um in total,
16:24
Speaker 1: referred to as the Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The
16:29
Speaker 1: way we secured those in the first place was as
16:33
Speaker 1: a direct result of this Guano Act. But turns out
16:39
Speaker 1: there wasn't a whole lot of guano in these islands. Yes,
16:42
Speaker 1: as a country, the United States was so desperate to
16:45
Speaker 1: get ahold of that sweet sweet guano that they started
16:50
Speaker 1: just going for places that they thought might have it
16:53
Speaker 1: because they were, you know, tiny islands that were not
16:57
Speaker 1: inhabited by humans. So logically, right, if there were no
17:02
Speaker 1: you know, large mammals on most of these islands, the
17:05
Speaker 1: birds would be free to fly and poop as they will.
17:08
Speaker 1: But you need a little more than that. Still, it
17:10
Speaker 1: didn't stop us because counting those five islands, there were
17:14
Speaker 1: about seventy islands seven zero islands claimed based on this law.
17:20
Speaker 1: And back to that fantastic article with Professor Burnett, she
17:24
Speaker 1: describes this time um as being rampant with wildcatters and
17:30
Speaker 1: roughneckers who were just plopping down on these islands and
17:34
Speaker 1: throwing up their freedom polls and going to town. And
17:37
Speaker 1: you know, there would be some kind of shifty elements
17:40
Speaker 1: in all of this because it was kind of the
17:42
Speaker 1: wild West. I mean, there is a provision in the
17:44
Speaker 1: Guano Act that says, you know, laws broken while on
17:48
Speaker 1: these islands follow the same laws as governed the High Seas.
17:52
Speaker 1: If you're on like a merchant vessel, for example, and
17:54
Speaker 1: you're on the high season international waters. You still are
17:58
Speaker 1: held accountable to American laws, such as the case here.
18:02
Speaker 1: But even still, it's sort of like that episode we
18:04
Speaker 1: did on Antarctica where you're so isolated and like out
18:08
Speaker 1: of the view of the eyes of the law of
18:11
Speaker 1: your home country that who knows what could happen. I
18:14
Speaker 1: want to dig a little deeper and see if there
18:16
Speaker 1: were any crazy guana related murders. Oh man, there are.
18:21
Speaker 1: There are so many strange anecdotes about life on remote islands.
18:26
Speaker 1: I do want to recommend, by the way, one of
18:28
Speaker 1: my favorite books for anybody interested in reading anecdotes about
18:31
Speaker 1: remote islands. It's The Atlas of Remote Islands by an
18:36
Speaker 1: author named Judith Shlansky. And oh, I can't say enough
18:40
Speaker 1: about it, but there are a couple of Guando anecdotes
18:43
Speaker 1: in there, if I recall correctly, And Nol is absolutely
18:46
Speaker 1: accurate in that description, because there were freelancers who wanted
18:51
Speaker 1: to be despots, you know, and say like I'm the
18:54
Speaker 1: King of bird poop. Guano, by the way, can also
18:58
Speaker 1: describe bat poop, but in the case of the Guano Act,
19:02
Speaker 1: it's it's more specifically talking about birds. There were also
19:06
Speaker 1: legitimate pirate types, you know, cowboys with ships, Professor Burnett Coulson.
19:12
Speaker 1: And one of the tricky things about this is that
19:16
Speaker 1: the process for acquiring new territory in the history of
19:21
Speaker 1: the United States, it's never really been a straightforward process,
19:26
Speaker 1: and often you will see that there were differences in
19:31
Speaker 1: the kind of territory or land acquired, like is it
19:35
Speaker 1: incorporated unincorporated? What does that even mean? Right? So, this
19:39
Speaker 1: Act actually was introduced in eighteen fifty six by William
19:44
Speaker 1: Henry Seward, who was a Senator at the time and
19:46
Speaker 1: you may know him as actually the person who bought
19:49
Speaker 1: Alaska when he was the Secretary of State UH during
19:52
Speaker 1: the Andrew Johnson administration, famously referred to as Seward's folly.
19:56
Speaker 1: Why because people thought it was a bad idea. Oh,
19:59
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But as it turns out, despite what
20:03
Speaker 1: this act could potentially have done for US farmers, there
20:06
Speaker 1: was a lot of controversy surrounding it, and it specifically
20:09
Speaker 1: was about the language. And in the original version the
20:14
Speaker 1: term that was used were territory and sovereignty and things
20:18
Speaker 1: like that. But people had issues with this because it
20:22
Speaker 1: was much more specifically imperialist, and that was felt a
20:28
Speaker 1: little too English perhaps, and I think people that kind
20:31
Speaker 1: of freaked people out a little bit, so that stuff
20:33
Speaker 1: kind of got the acts. And that's where that appertain
20:37
Speaker 1: word came in, that very legally just vague term that,
20:41
Speaker 1: according to Professor Burnett, pretty much means absolutely nothing. But
20:47
Speaker 1: this whole idea of claiming islands really set the tone
20:51
Speaker 1: for US imperialism abroad. Um, and that's where the terms
20:58
Speaker 1: incorporated and uninc oporated territories originated. Incorporated territories means that
21:05
Speaker 1: they are on the road to becoming a proper state,
21:09
Speaker 1: like we're going to make an honest territory of you
21:12
Speaker 1: and um, you know, tie the knot. And it seems
21:15
Speaker 1: to me like a prerequisite for something being considered in
21:20
Speaker 1: this light would be that it had a decent amount
21:23
Speaker 1: of people already living there that we could identify with. Yeah,
21:29
Speaker 1: well you be in the u S at the time, Okay,
21:33
Speaker 1: we should just say it. They probably wanted a healthy
21:37
Speaker 1: population or a large population of white people or people
21:41
Speaker 1: descended from European ancestry, right due to the prevalent racism
21:47
Speaker 1: at the time. What it unincorporated mean though, Yeah, unincorporated
21:51
Speaker 1: was the fun one because that basically gave the US
21:55
Speaker 1: the leeway to say, you know what we're ues is
22:00
Speaker 1: a part of the US, but it's not of the US.
22:03
Speaker 1: It's not in the US. It's not a state. We
22:06
Speaker 1: don't claim it, but we are going to occupy it
22:08
Speaker 1: in the same way we would occupy like a Iraq
22:11
Speaker 1: for example, where we stuck around like we don't want
22:13
Speaker 1: to be here, but we've got to be here to
22:14
Speaker 1: keep the peace. And sometimes that gets complicated over time, right,
22:18
Speaker 1: but this language allows for those cases. Yeah, And in
22:22
Speaker 1: this case it's it's not a state, but we have
22:27
Speaker 1: to be here to keep the bird poop piece. It's
22:29
Speaker 1: more of a state of mind. It's more of a
22:31
Speaker 1: state of mind. Well put, so, one of the big
22:34
Speaker 1: questions now in the present day would be is this
22:38
Speaker 1: still going on? Does the United States still have things
22:43
Speaker 1: like this? And the answer is yes, yes, it absolutely does.
22:47
Speaker 1: I mean things like the bird poop block. Yeah, that's
22:50
Speaker 1: still on the books. Uh. And then there's also the
22:53
Speaker 1: Palmyra a toll and this is almost south of the
22:59
Speaker 1: Hawaii and Islands. It's about third of the way between
23:02
Speaker 1: Hawaii and American Samoa. The nearest continent is thirty four
23:09
Speaker 1: thousand miles away in the northeast, and it's well, technically
23:14
Speaker 1: it's an archipelago, but they're pretty it's pretty sparsely populated
23:20
Speaker 1: caretaker biologists. And it has one of the distinctions of
23:24
Speaker 1: being a unique incorporated territory. And all that means is
23:29
Speaker 1: that it is not a state, nor is it part
23:32
Speaker 1: of a state, but it is part of the United States,
23:35
Speaker 1: but doesn't. But I thought, I thought the incorporated was
23:37
Speaker 1: the one where we have the intention of making you
23:40
Speaker 1: a state. Is that language probably shifted over time? I know,
23:43
Speaker 1: the stuff can be somewhat malleable, right, right, And Burnett
23:47
Speaker 1: addresses this too and says, you know, there's been a
23:50
Speaker 1: lot of controversy and discussion about what this means legally speaking,
23:55
Speaker 1: and in some cases this is a very very divisive issue. Uh.
24:00
Speaker 1: And she points this out as well that in the
24:04
Speaker 1: case of palm Ira, this sounds strange, right because didn't
24:07
Speaker 1: we just say that incorporated is meant to imply that
24:11
Speaker 1: this area, whatever this piece of land is, is on
24:14
Speaker 1: the way to statehood, to being the fifty first state
24:18
Speaker 1: or something. Actually found somebody in a message board just
24:20
Speaker 1: now putting it pretty well when saying that it is
24:23
Speaker 1: considered an integral part of the United States that in
24:26
Speaker 1: some way very much matters to our identity and possibly
24:31
Speaker 1: commerce in in any number of ways. But Palmyra in
24:34
Speaker 1: particular is interesting because it was only just bought by
24:39
Speaker 1: the Nature Conservancy in two thousand. It was bought from
24:43
Speaker 1: the fuller Leo family and they actually had recently turned
24:48
Speaker 1: down an offer to turn it into a nuclear waste
24:51
Speaker 1: site and the casino. Sure if they mean at the
24:54
Speaker 1: same time or those are two separate offers, but that'd
24:58
Speaker 1: be it'd be interesting. But I'm kind of glad that
25:00
Speaker 1: it ended up where where where it's because it's beautiful.
25:03
Speaker 1: You can look up pictures of it, and I think
25:05
Speaker 1: you can visit it. Oh yeah, you can visit a
25:07
Speaker 1: lot of these places. They're just so remote and in
25:10
Speaker 1: many cases don't have too much of an infrastructure. But
25:13
Speaker 1: you know what I like about a nuclear waste casino combo.
25:16
Speaker 1: You're gambling either way. So here's another example of how
25:27
Speaker 1: this applies to the present day. There is an island
25:30
Speaker 1: called Navasa, and its ownership is still disputed between the
25:34
Speaker 1: US and Haiti. In one case, historically, workers on the
25:39
Speaker 1: island rioted and killed five supervisors to protest horrendous working conditions,
25:45
Speaker 1: you know, uh, ultra high prices at a company store,
25:49
Speaker 1: which we could talk about in the future episode Doctor Pay,
25:53
Speaker 1: long hours and Federal juries. Convicted forty participants in the
25:58
Speaker 1: crimes anywhere for murder to rioting. Three were convicted of murder,
26:03
Speaker 1: sentenced to die. And the problem is that this case
26:08
Speaker 1: had really strong racial overtones. The managers were all white,
26:11
Speaker 1: the workers were universally black people. The three people convicted
26:15
Speaker 1: of death George Key, Edward Smith, Henry Jones. They appealed.
26:19
Speaker 1: They got all the way to the Supreme Court, and
26:21
Speaker 1: they didn't dispute the facts of the case, like the
26:24
Speaker 1: murder of the rioting all that, but they claimed that
26:27
Speaker 1: the Guando Island Act was unconstitutional. It didn't jibe with
26:33
Speaker 1: the international law standard of territorial acquisition, and Haiti had
26:38
Speaker 1: not seeded possession of the island. And so the court
26:42
Speaker 1: ruled against them, saying it was constitutional, but they didn't
26:45
Speaker 1: state whether or not the island actually belonged to the US,
26:50
Speaker 1: just that there was jurisdiction over it. So they kind
26:54
Speaker 1: of again tabled and dodged this question. And then more
26:59
Speaker 1: legal case has come up. In nine the US versus.
27:02
Speaker 1: Warren confirmed that NAVASA has appertained to the U S
27:08
Speaker 1: since eighteen fifty seven and the country has never given
27:11
Speaker 1: it up. So this is still real and relevant stuff.
27:15
Speaker 1: And should you find yourself on a desert island, check
27:19
Speaker 1: check for guando. Yeah, I wanted to end on some advice.
27:23
Speaker 1: Did you know what ambergris is? Yeah, it's from the
27:27
Speaker 1: bellies of Oh no, it's it's from Wales, right. They
27:30
Speaker 1: poop it out of like I think it's like it's
27:32
Speaker 1: formed in their digestive track and they poop it out
27:34
Speaker 1: and it's like really really really valuable. I think it's
27:37
Speaker 1: used to make perfume perfume stuff. But if you find
27:41
Speaker 1: bird poop or ambergrides on your deserted island, give us
27:45
Speaker 1: a call. Let's let's talk. We'll just we'll do some business.
27:47
Speaker 1: I know a guy, you know, I know a guy
27:49
Speaker 1: who can move poop and ambergris. You know a guy
27:52
Speaker 1: in ambergris associated. We also do want to point out
27:55
Speaker 1: another reason that this stuff matters is that guano mining
27:59
Speaker 1: can be tremendous lead damaging to an environment. Well, he's
28:03
Speaker 1: gotta handles it down. That's not it's important. I know.
28:06
Speaker 1: It just you know, raping and pillaging. Uh yeah. And
28:12
Speaker 1: one big case of this would be uh the island
28:15
Speaker 1: of Naru, which is the world's smallest, most isolated public
28:20
Speaker 1: It's about eight square miles the entire place, and as
28:24
Speaker 1: as it turns out, neighboring island uh Zanna do Yeah
28:28
Speaker 1: yeah yeah from the from the roller skating movie. Right. So,
28:33
Speaker 1: so the neighboring island of Zanna do as we assure you,
28:36
Speaker 1: this is a completely slash, mostly true fact. Their primary
28:40
Speaker 1: export is uh films about roller skating, and the rus
28:44
Speaker 1: primary export for a long time was guano. But we
28:47
Speaker 1: all know that it is unsustainable to pin an entire
28:50
Speaker 1: nation's economy on a single export. So should you find
28:55
Speaker 1: yourself in uh in possession of a desert island, and
28:59
Speaker 1: you want call Noel and I for legal advice, we
29:04
Speaker 1: will gladly inform you that we are not lawyers, but
29:07
Speaker 1: we'd love to visit you. Hit us up at Ridiculous
29:09
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. You can also find
29:11
Speaker 1: us on social media via Facebook, uh, Instagram. We've got
29:17
Speaker 1: a old friends your page from the early two thousands
29:20
Speaker 1: that's still kicking. We've got a ello yeah hello, yeah,
29:24
Speaker 1: I had one of those and uh and we do too.
29:28
Speaker 1: Ello dot ridiculous dot never mind. Did you mess with Ello? Yeah, yeah,
29:33
Speaker 1: briefly because it was like the low the low maintenance
29:36
Speaker 1: social network. Yeah, it was this low maintenance social network.
29:40
Speaker 1: And it turned out that, uh, it became very low
29:43
Speaker 1: maintenance because no one uses it. Well, that's not around anymore.
29:46
Speaker 1: We do have Facebook, we have Instagram. We're still you know,
29:48
Speaker 1: dicking around with our Pinterest board. We go back and forth,
29:51
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, should we get a Pinterest board,
29:54
Speaker 1: should just get a wee to board? Yeah? You need
29:56
Speaker 1: some kind of board though in our social media entourage. Um.
30:00
Speaker 1: But most importantly, we'll be back soon next week. Maybe
30:04
Speaker 1: it's just one more day. I'm not sure where this
30:06
Speaker 1: episode falls, but there will be more ridiculous history coming
30:09
Speaker 1: your way and we hope that you will join us there. Casey,
30:13
Speaker 1: could we have a little Island music imp