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Start Your Own Country Day

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Today is Start Your Own Country Day. According to legend, it was introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City to honor “those free-spirited souls who dared to hope and believe in a better world where they too could declare any land their own.”

start your own country

We’ve been unable to confirm that account. No matter its origin, Start Your Own Country Day promotes awareness that, within certain parameters, it is possible to form a micronation.

That might sound appealing to anyone who is unhappy about the outcome of, say, a recent election, but doesn’t want to move to Canada because it’s too cold up there, and packing is a miserable task.

But there is more involved than not paying taxes and designing a fun yet meaningful flag. The new nation must provide and maintain roads, power, emergency services, sewage treatment, waterworks, telecommunications infrastructure, and Internet service.

The 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States declared that a nation requires four things to exist: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Let’s take a look at two people who’ve pursued their dreams of telling the whole world, “You’re not the boss of me!”

The Republic of Kugelmugel

start your own country day

The lack of building permits for the construction of a spherical house turned Edwin Lipburger from an artist into a dissident and the president of his one-person nation, bordered on all sides by Vienna, Austria, yet independent of it. The house itself contained the country of Kugelmugel and its sole inhabitant.

Lipburger was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison for refusing to pay taxes and, among other things, for printing his own stamps. Public sympathy for the artist persuaded the Austrian president to pardon him and halt the demolition of his house.

Lipburger now lives in exile in Vienna, while his structure has been relocated to the nearby Wiener Prater amusement park, where it has become a tourist attraction. Though barbed wire surrounds the Republic of Kugelmugel, it is still possible to get a glimpse of the spherical nation by looking through the fence.

The Principality of Hutt River

start your own country

Prince Leonard Casley seceded from Australia on April 21st, 1970, founding the Principality of Hutt River as part of an agricultural protest. The sovereign state claimed to pay no taxes but donated an equivalent sum to the Australian government each year, which apparently didn’t care what Leonard wrote in the memo line as long as it got the check. The kingdom lasted 50 years.

Like the Republic of Kugelmugel, the Principality of Hutt River issued its own stamps. It also minted coins, printed banknotes, and sold commemorative teaspoons, cufflinks, postcards, magnets, tie clips, letter openers, and other items, many of which can still be found online on eBay and CoinsNB.

What this nation had going for it was its size. Situated 595 kilometers north of Perth, it covered about 75 square kilometers — 18,500 acres — of land, roughly the size of Hong Kong. Even if the UN didn’t recognize the country’s presence, Google did. The Principality of Hutt River was one of the few micronations to appear on Google Maps. (As of this writing, it still does. Shh, don’t tell Google!)

Visitors paid a small fee and had their passports stamped upon arrival. Prince Leonard said he hosted thousands of tourists each year. Reviewers described Hutt River’s campground accommodations as “rustic.” Despite its closure, TripAdvisor still rates it “#620 of 2,913 things to do in Western Australia,” which doesn’t seem like a ringing endorsement for tourism in the area. Luckily, nearby Kalbarri offers river cruises and whale watching as a balm for adventurers who’ve driven 30 kilometers on a dusty road in search of a micronation only to arrive at a locked gate and dirt as far as the eye can see.

The story of the realm’s end is a sad one. Leonard abdicated the throne in favor of his son Graeme in 2017 and passed away in 2019 at the age of 93. Eighteen months later, Graeme dissolved the principality. Per its official website:

In June 2017, the West Australian Supreme Court ruled against Prince Leonard following litigation initiated by the Australian Taxation Office, which asserted that Prince Leonard owed a substantial sum. After Prince Leonard’s passing, it became evident that the ATO intended to foreclose and sell the land to recover the claimed debt.

In August 2020, HRH Prince Graeme declared that, after consulting with the Casley Royal Family, due to the prevailing circumstances all Principality staff and assets would be relocated, and the land returned to agricultural use in Western Australia.

Kugelmugel and Hutt River aside, many micronations still exist. Before you pack your bags, check out Wikivoyage, Atlas Obscura, or NomadMania, but be warned: these sites will take you down an hours-long rabbit hole if you let them. Still married to ink on paper? Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations is the only printed travel guide of its kind. It was published in 2006, so it pays to call ahead for current travel information before you trek to a country like Molossia, which has been at war with East Germany since 1983 and pegs its currency to the value of Pillsbury cookie dough.

If you’re feeling inspired, check out this handy online guide to starting a micronation, complete with Model Constitutional Code. Whether you choose to celebrate today by creating a new country, traveling to one, or just relaxing at home, have a happy Start Your Own Country Day!

Update: A year after we first posted about this holiday in 2017, we were cited as a source in The Times Herald [paywall-free link here]. We know a “micromention” isn’t as cool as a micronation, but we’ll take it!

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World Hello Day

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world hello day

November 21st is World Hello Day, also known as Greet Ten People for Peace. It was founded in 1973 by brothers Brian and Michael McCormack, university students at the time,  in response to the Yom Kippur War.

“We wanted to do something to celebrate the importance of personal communication to preserving peace,” Michael McCormack later explained. They wrote to world leaders, asking them to support the new holiday. To date, they have received 83 letters of support from world leaders, Nobel Prize winners, authors and entertainers. Citizens in 180 countries have taken part in World Hello Day.

world hello day

Kofi Annan

Anyone can participate in World Hello Day. The McCormack brothers’ goal was that everyone say hello to ten strangers to encourage dialogue, understanding and friendship between people of diverse backgrounds.

world hello day

Gene Roddenberry

Around the globe, people use World Hello Day as an opportunity to express their desire for unity and peace.  With a simple greeting, they send a message to leaders, encouraging them to use diplomacy rather than force to settle conflicts. The occasion helps each person realize he or she is an instrument of change and can contribute to creating a more inclusive society.

Each time you say hello to a stranger, your heart acknowledges over and over again that we are all family. — Suzy Kassem

Happy World Hello Day! Get out there and say hi to some friends you haven’t met yet.

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International Accounting Day

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international accounting day pacioliWhat’s so exciting about International Accounting Day? On November 10, 1494, Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli published “Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita” (Everything About Arithmetic, Geometry and Proportion).

It included a detailed description of double-entry bookkeeping, called the Method of Venice. Although this technique had been practiced for centuries, Pacioli’s treatise was the first of its kind in print and earned him the title of “Father of Modern Accounting.”

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Many in modern times have followed in Pacioli’s footsteps, with varying degrees of success.

Chuck Liddell is a former UFC Light-Heavyweight Champion whose fighting skills have helped make mixed martial arts a mainstream sport. He is also a trained accountant, with a BA in Business and Accounting from California Polytechnic University. No one will be making any “boring bean counter” jokes to him.

Kenny G. is a world-famous saxophonist whose smooth jazz sounds have sold more than 75 million records worldwide. He also graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington with a degree in accounting, which he credits with helping him manage his finances early on in his career and paving the way for future success.

John Grisham earned a degree in accounting, intending to become a tax attorney. Instead, he decided to pursue a career in criminal law. His first novel, A Time to Kill, was based on evidence he observed at trial. He has written 47 books, 10 of which have been made into movies, and has sold over 300 million copies in print. (Fun fact: Grisham wrote a comedic novel, Skipping Christmas, which was made into the movie Christmas with the Kranks!)

In 1962, Mick Jagger was studying accounting and finance — on scholarship — at the London School of Economics when he formed the Rolling Stones with Keith Richards and Brian Jones. We think you’ll agree that it worked out for the best.

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Need more proof that accounting is cool? Click here to apply for a job at the FBI! According to FBI.gov:

The Forensic Accountant (FoA) role is one of the most vital and sought-after careers
in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Forensic accountants use their accounting
skills, auditing, and investigative techniques to research and follow the systems through
which money may be funneled or laundered by terrorists, spies, and criminals involved in
financial wrongdoing.

How many are there, exactly? We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you. (Not really; we just don’t know.)

Happy International Accounting Day!

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International Tongue Twister Day

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Today is International Tongue Twister Day. Celebrate with these doozies chosen for their fun and difficulty. Will they leave you speechless? Read aloud and repeat, if you dare.

international tongue twister day twisted tongueIn 2013, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) tripped up volunteers with the following word combination, which they declared the most difficult tongue twister in the English language.

Pad kid poured curd pulled cod.

It was judged to be even harder to say than a longstanding favorite introduced in 1990 by American expert (and MIT graduate) William Poundstone:

The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us.

Guinness World Records stopped monitoring the category after 1974, when it gave the following sentence its highest marks:

The sixth sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick.

What are the elements of a tongue twister? Our brains can handle words that sound identical, like “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.” It’s the same story with words that sound very different from each other, such as “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

At a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Francisco, CA, the MIT team presented findings that different types of tongue twisters have distinct effects on our brains, lips, tongues, and throats as we produce speech errors.

Our brains get drawn up short when we attempt to jump between two nearly identical sounds, confusing one sound with the other. “She sells seashells on the seashore” twists the tongue because the sss and shh sounds are similar but not exactly the same. Speech errors also occur when we try to repeat certain words or phrases quickly. For instance,  “toy boat” several times in a row turns into “toy boyt,” while “top cop” becomes “cop cop.”

Insight into such slip-ups may help researchers understand how humans process and plan speech. As we speak, we must coordinate movements of the lips, tongue, jaw, and larynx. Our brains may sort sounds by which muscles need to move to produce them, such as front-of-the-tongue sounds (sss), back-of-the-tongue sounds (ga), and lip sounds (ma).

“This implies that tongue twisters are hard because the representations in the brain greatly overlap,” Edward Chang, a neuroscientist at the University of California, told Nature.

Invite some people over for an International Tongue Twister Day party and have fun trying to say some of these whoppers.

Rubber baby buggy bumpers
I saw a kitten eating chicken in the kitchen.
Lesser leather never weathered wetter weather better.

Here’s a little tongue twister trivia to amaze your friends.

We all know this Mother Goose nursery rhyme:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

But did you know that it was inspired by the life of one-armed Frenchman Pierre Poivre? An 18th-century horticulturist and pirate, Poivre raided spice stores and smuggled the seeds back to France. Poivre often stole nutmeg seeds, which were nicknamed “peppers.”

Another famous tongue twister was taken from a song written in 1908.

She sells seashells by the seashore;
The shells she sells are seashells, I’m sure.
So if she sells seashells by the seashore,
I’m sure she sells seashore shells.

Terry Sullivan’s ditty paid tribute to Mary Anning, whose father taught her to find and dig fossils from the cliffs of Lyme Regis in Dorset, England. As an adult, she famously unearthed a previously unknown type of dinosaur, later named Plesiosaurus.

Which do you like? Which one is the hardest to say? Should a nonsense phrase like “pad kid poured curd pulled cod” be considered a tongue twister, or is it cheating? What do you think?

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