End of Year Geography Quiz, Question 26:

[gh]

26. In 1948, Russel Arundel, an executive with Pepsi-Cola, founded the principality of Outer Baldonia on a 4-acre island. Somehow it was invited to join the nascent United Nations - until the humor-impaired Soviet Union put its foot down. Where was the principality of Outer Baldonia?

[dukehjsteve]

A SWAG at Purchase, NY, purely because that is/was Pepsi's HQ.

[mcgato]

I have to admit that I got a good laugh out of the wikipedia page on it. Never heard of it, though.

[Double R Bar]

I think I've read this one. Is it near Nova Scotia, Canada?

[gh]

First of the questions that was a complete cipher to me.

[bambam]

I have to admit that I got a good laugh out of the wikipedia page on it. Never heard of it, though.

A great story. Loved reading it. If you haven't gone to Wikipedia to look at Outer Baldonia, you should just to read about the war they had with the USSR.

[richxx87]

Another hilarious article in SI vault

...In a confidential letter in 1951 he revealed that all representatives of the Soviet Union and Red China had been fed to the tuna. ... the Russians sensed a new menace in the North Atlantic and in 1952 the otherwise staid Moscow Literary Gazette attacked Outer Baldonia as an imperialislic [sic] stronghold...

AND...

... United States and Canada got into the act, each issuing a White Paper "with its tongue embedded deeply in its cheek." The United States ridiculed Russia ... Not that any of this impressed the Prince. "We didn't ask the United States to recognize our independence. We haven't recognized their independence."

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/ ... /index.htm

[gh]

Here's a great story on wacky regimes (and doesn't even include Lundy, whose stamps--which came in demoniations of puffins--I collected in elementary school):

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/1 ... dlands.php

[gh]

26. Off Nova Scotia. Arundel eventually sold it for one Canadian dollar to the Nova Scotia Bird Society, which owns it today.