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

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