Trapezium Nullis

If you want to start your own country, it's tough to find any land to lay claim to.  The entire map is painted one color or another, so unless you want to try your luck in the frigid wastes of Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica, or look for an abandoned ocean platform like Sealand, the prospects look pretty grim.

However, thanks to the wonders of international politics and border disputes, there is one patch of land that no one seems to want.  As with all border issues, the problem can be traced back to the British.   At the end of the 19th century, the British had control over the area, and they decided that the border between the region administered from Cairo and the region administered from Khartoum should be a straight line.  Any third world country which has a straight-line border drawn by a British cartographer has probably run into issues with it, and in this case the British themselves found a problem.  There's a triangle of land along the coast of the Red Sea which is closer to Khartoum and to Cairo, but was North of their line.

So, 3 years later, they drew a new line, this one dipped a bit below the old line, and then rose back above it to place that triangle under Khartoum's authority.  The area in that little dip is called the Bir Tawil Triangle (despite being roughly a trapezoid).  Fast forward to today, and both countries want the valuable Red Sea coast line, and couldn't care less about Bir Tawil.  Egypt claims the original straight line border, which places the coast line on their side, and gives Bir Tawil to Sudan, while Sudan claims the revised border, which does the opposite.  Both sides vehemently insist that Bir Tawil does not belong to them (as accepting it would mean ceding the much more valuable territory), and it is therefore essentially the last unclaimed habitable territory in the world.

Pen Pals

In 1246, Europe was pretty scared.  The Mongol horde had appeared out of the steppes of Asia, and seemed to be an unstoppable military force bent on destruction and conquest.  The Russian states had already fallen, and the armies of Eastern Europe were facing defeat.  Things were not looking good, and there seemed to be no hope of stopping the Mongolians from marching all the way to the shores of the Atlantic (and then, presumably, turning around and killing everyone a second time on their way back home).

Pope Innocent IV, being the leader of Catholic Europe, decided it was time for action.  Given that beating the Mongol armies back with force didn't seem to be working, he turned to the only other tactic available: a sternly-worded letter.  Innocent penned a letter to the Great Khan (Genghis was dead at this point, as was his son Ögedei, so his grandson Güyük was next in line), in which he took the opportunity to "...express in strong terms our amazement that you, as we have heard, have invaded many countries belonging both to Christians and to others and are laying them waste in a horrible desolation..."  He then proceeded to kindly ask the Mongols to cut the crap, saying, that he "...admonish, beg and earnestly beseech all of you that for the future you desist entirely from assaults of this kind..."

The Pope then gave the letter to a friar named Giovanni and sent him off to deliver it, which required travelling all the way from Rome to actual Mongolia - a trek of 3,000 miles which took them over 100 days, all for a letter which, for all they knew, may well have gotten them executed.

Güyük, as the two umlauts in his name would generally indicate, was not a man to be messed with.  The Pope's stern tone did not, as it turned out, convince him or his people to stop their conquering spree (which at this point had been going strong for 40 years), or to apologize for any feelings they may have hurt along the way.  Instead, Güyük sent the emissaries back with a letter of his own (the original copy of which is still in the Vatican archives), in which he interpreted the Pope's letter as an offer of submission, and demanded that the Pope and all the kings of Christendom personally travel to Mongolia so that they could bow before him.  The letter ended with a pretty clear threat: "If you fail to act in accordance therewith, how can we foresee what will happen to you? Heaven alone knows."

Güyük died only two years later, before he could make good on this threat.  Although the Mongols continued to menace Eastern Europe, they never returned with the same unstoppable force as they previously possessed.  Europe was spared, and the Pope never had to share the fate of the Islamic Caliph Al-Musta'sim whose similarly disobedient attitude resulted in him being wrapped in a rug and trampled to death by Mongol cavalry.

The Air Bud Doctrine

In 1370, King Louis I of Hungary also obtained the crown of Poland, thereby binding the titles together in personal union.  He wanted to produce a son who could inherit both kingdoms and thereby keep them united.  His only child, a daughter, had died as an infant back in 1365, and, as Louis was already approaching 50, there was concern that he may not be able to produce an heir at all.  Luckily, having an additional crown seems to have improved his confidence in the bedroom, and his wife Elizabeth had three quick children - Catherine in 1370, Mary in 1371 and Hedwig in 1374.  All daughters.

Louis set about negotiating an agreement with the nobility that would allow a daughter to inherit his titles should he die without a son.  They came to a deal by which one of his three daughters, to be chosen by him, his wife, or his mother, would be the new monarch on his death.

This made the three girls the most sought-after brides in Europe.  At the age of four, Catherine was promised to the son of the King of France.  Also at age four, Hedwig was betrothed to the Habsburg family heir.  Mary got the worst end of the deal, and was engaged to her first cousin when she was one year old.  This was pretty weird even for the time period, and required Papal approval.  Figuring that if God had such a problem with this then maybe He should have given Louis a son in the first place, the Pope decided to give them the go-ahead.

After Catherine died in 1378 and Louis in 1382, Mary and Hedwig were left to inherit.  Initially their mother Elizabeth wanted Mary to rule over both countries, but the Polish nobles didn't want to remain in union with Hungary.  After much negotiation and a splash of civil war, it was agreed that Mary would rule in Hungary while the Polish crown would pass to Hedwig.

There was just one little problem.  The laws of Poland required a king - there were no provisions for a queen to rule.  Luckily, just as there is no rule saying a dog can't play basketball, there was no rule saying a ten-year-old girl couldn't be king.  So, on October 16, 1384, Hedwig was crowned King of Poland.

After reaching adulthood, Hedwig excelled at being king.  She personally led two successful military campaigns to recover lost Polish territory, handled diplomatic negotiations with the neighboring Teutonic Order, and restored the university in Krakow.  She spoke at least six languages and was known for her knowledge of the arts and sciences.

King Hedwig died during childbirth at the age of 25, but continued to be revered by the people of Poland.  She was later canonized as a Catholic saint, and is considered, ironically, the patron saint of queens.

An Army of One

If there's one thing the British Empire was good at, it was invading countries - and they had lots of practice.  In fact, the significant majority of the world has been invaded by British forces at some point or another, with only a few scattered areas including the Marshall Islands, Monaco, Burundi and Paraguay remaining before Britain collects them all.

In the late 1830's, Britain was worried that the new ruler of Afghanistan might be getting a bit too friendly with the Russian Empire and decided to fix it.  By invading, of course.  Initially, things went quite well.  Dost Mohammad Khan was deposed and exiled to India, the old, pro-British ruler Shah Shujah was restored, and the British set up camp just outside Kabul.  Although the area seemed peaceful on the surface, the son of the former ruler, Akbar Khan, was out gathering support from the rural tribes, who preferred his father to Shah Shujah.

In 1842, things turned ugly.  The low-level guerrilla warfare in the distant areas transformed into open revolt in Kabul.  In early November, an angry mob stormed the residence of one of the British officers, and murdered him and his staff.  A few days later, they looted a supply fort.  The man in charge of British forces in the area, Sir William Elphinstone, took little action, apparently hoping this would all blow over.

It didn't.  By late November, the Afghans had set up gun positions on the hill above the British position and began bombardment.  With winter closing in, and no reinforcements on the way, the British soon realized they would have to negotiate a safe retreat.  Akbar Khan, using the Brits' greatest weakness against them, invited some of the officers to tea to discuss a peaceful solution.  As soon as they stepped off their horses, the British delegation was killed.

Elphinstone, again, decided to let that slide.  In early January, he agreed to Akbar Khan's terms of surrendering the British gunpowder and many of their weapons in exchange for a guarantee of safe passage.   As one might expect given the story thus far, as soon as the 16,500 troops and other personnel got on their way, the Afghans opened fire and pursued.  Akbar Khan was still rather angry about the whole "invaded and deposed by father" situation, it turned out.

The next day, Elphinstone met with Akbar Khan again, who explained that the British had left sooner than expected, and he had not had time to negotiate their safe passage with the tribesmen.  Elphinstone, being the most gullible man in history, agreed to wait.  Again, they were betrayed, and Akbar used the time to set up additional ambushes in the mountain passes ahead.  Akbar Khan was not only still angry, but also a bit of a jerk.

By the fourth day, well over 3,000 people had been killed.  As the journey continued, many attempted to turn back under promises of protection from Akbar.  I'm sure we can all guess how that turned out.  Ultimately, out of the 16,500 people who set out from Kabul, only a single man, William Brydon made it back to Jalalabad.  When asked where the army was, he is reported to have replied, "I am the army".  In any other context, that answer would have been incredibly badass.

Pop Goes the William!

You know you've done well in life when you start out as "the Bastard" and end up as "the Conqueror".  This is exactly the moniker improvement that William of Normandy obtained when he became William I of England after winning the famous Battle of Hastings in 1066.  Unfortunately, just because you win one famous battle doesn't mean everyone immediately accepts you as King.

In fact, William had to spend the next several years brutally suppressing the Saxon population over whom he now ruled.   He burnt villages, slaughtered the inhabitants, destroyed farmlands and reduced the entirety of Northern England to smoldering rubble, barren fields and piles of corpses.

As any genocidal maniac will tell you, wreaking such utter havoc on a populace is hard work.  After such exhausting effort, William seems to have decided to treat himself to more than a few lavish feasts in later years, and his svelte figure depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry gave way to more of a Jabba the Hutt style mixture of cruelty and morbid obesity.

When William died in September of 1087, his nobles went off to attend to their affairs in light of his death, and the body was left with the local clergy.  After a few days, it was sent to Caen, a city in Normandy where William had wished to be buried.  At the funeral, William's taste for crumpets caught up with him, as his bloated corpse wouldn't fit into the stone sarcophagus that had been built for him.  One of the priests made the worst possible decision in this scenario and decided to attempt to manually force the corpse (which, remember, had been sitting out in the early September heat for a few days) into the coffin.  Williams stomach promptly burst open, spewing fluids over the priest, and filling the church with the terrible stench of rotten flesh.  If he were not already an unbelievably cruel mass-murderer, this would almost certainly have been a stain on his legacy.  Instead it was just a stain on the church floor.

Cabbage Patch Emperors

One of the best parts of being a king is that you get an awesome nickname, like the "the Wise", "the Strong" or "the Great" (which usually requires making friends with the guy in charge of picking the nicknames).  Sometimes, though, you get stuck with one of the crappier names, like Louis the Stammerer of France, or Ethelred the Unready of England.

But one monarch in particular showed up way late to nickname assignment day, and really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel:  Emperor Ivaylo the Cabbage of Bulgaria.  In 1277, things were not going well for the Bulgarians.  Mongols were raiding from the North, the Byzantines were eyeing an easy conquest from the South, the economy was in shambles, and the peasants were, of course, getting uppity.  Ivaylo at the time was a lowly swine herder, but he would soon turn out to be perhaps the most uppity peasant of all time.

Ivaylo decided it was time for action, and styled himself as savior of the Bulgarian people, anointed by God to drive out the Mongol invaders.  Given that the crumbling government had driven out exactly zero Mongols, the people were pretty much willing to give anything a try and rallied behind him.  Ivaylo's newly formed peasant army was soon able to push back bands of Mongol raiders.  The Bulgarian Emperor, Constantine I, didn't like a lowly peasant showing him up, so he gathered his army, attacked, and was decisively defeated.  Constantine was killed in battle, leaving his 7-year-old son Michael Asen as the heir to the throne.  Ivaylo, however, married the widowed empress, and had himself crowned emperor.  This was presumably because if you're going to steal a child's crown, you might as well also bone his mother.

Unfortunately, both the Mongols and Byzantines soon grew tired of his antics, and when the full force of the Mongol army was arrayed against him, Ivaylo's mix of serf moxie and swine-herding skills was not enough.  He was driven back to his capital and besieged by the Mongolians.  After three months, he was able to break through the Mongol lines and resumed his string of improbable victories.  He even defeated two armies sent by the Byzantines who presumably didn't want their peasants getting any wise ideas.  In the meantime, though, the nobility of Bulgaria had gathered their forces together, and Ivaylo's army was too beleaguered to fight a third enemy.  He tried seeking refuge with the Mongols, but was assassinated by the khan.  Historians regard this as being a rookie mistake.

Despite his eventual defeat, Ivaylo holds the world record for most successful peasant uprising in European history.  Unlike every other attempt, he actually managed to be recognized as emperor, and led his armies to victories over two of the most powerful nations in history - the Mongol hordes and the Byzantine Empire.  Normally such a feat would earn one of the cool titles like "the Great" or "the Really Great", but the Bulgarians instead named him Ivaylo the Cabbage, because that's way funnier.

Rube Goldberg Political Machine

In the 12th century, the Republic of Venice had a problem.  The office of the Doge (sort of like an elected duke) was always in danger of becoming a hereditary office, as the Doges came from powerful families and sought to pass the title to their sons.

Normally, you could solve this with a simple election, to ensure that everyone had a say in the matter and no one family could monopolize the title.  But Venice was full of wealthy, scheming bastards who were more than willing to place a few bribes to get the right man on the throne.  To combat this, they came up with a slightly complicated system to make sure it was difficult to buy your way to the top.

Starting in 1172, a new Doge would be elected as follows.  First, four members of the Great Council (sort of like congress) would be selected at random.  These four would then agree on a committee of forty (late increased to 41 after a vote ended in a tie) who would then vote for the Doge.  This way, it was difficult to know in advance who you needed to bribe.  Problem solved, right?

Wrong.  This plan severely underestimated the lengths to which the Venetian families would go in order to game the system.  So they did the only sensible thing and made it way more complicated.  Starting in 1268, the new system worked like this:  First, draw lots to select thirty random members of the Great Council.  Next, a second drawing of lots reduced the group to nine.  These nine were then tasked with agreeing on a group of forty.  In order for a group to be approved, seven of the nine had to agree on it.  After that, the chosen forty drew lots and were reduced to twelve.

At this point, you might think it'd be time to have a vote for Doge.  You'd be wrong.  The twelve then selected a group of twenty-five.   This time nine of the twelve had to agree for the twenty-five to be approved.  Once they had that, the twenty-five again drew lots to reduce the group back to nine.  This new group of nine would have to agree on a group of forty-five, requiring the approval of seven of the nine.  At this point, presumably, it'd be time for nap.

After a good long nap, the forty-five would draw some more lots (of course), and be reduced to eleven.  These eleven would then have to come up with a new group of forty-one, requiring nine of the eleven to agree on it.  Finally, these forty-one would actually vote on who the next Doge should be, with a super-majority of twenty-five out of forty-one being required to win.  By then, of course, everyone had completely lost interest in the whole process, and were quite happy just to have it over with.

And Every One Was A Henry (Henry!)

Louis XVIII of France, Alfosno XIII of Spain, Carl XVI of Sweden, once a particular monarch name becomes more popular than the others, the regnal numbering can get a bit cumbersome.  The Papacy even skipped Pope John XX and moved right on to Pope John XXI because they lost track of just how many Pope Johns there had been.

But one family decided to take things even further.  For 800 years the Reuss family ruled an oddly shaped patch of land in central Germany (as pictured).  At the end of the 12th century, Emperor Henry VI (Heinrich in German) did them a solid and granted them a few minor titles.  The family decided to repay him by naming their son Heinrich in his honor, which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

It quickly transitioned into unreasonable territory, however, when they decided that naming one son Heinrich was not enough to show just how thankful they were for their new titles.  In order to show the true extent of their gratitude, they started naming every male child Heinrich.  And they kept doing it. For hundreds and hundreds of years.

To tell all the Heinrichs apart, each one got a number, and unlike normal regnal numbering, they numbered the ones who never got to be Count of Reuss.  So you'd have, say, Heinrich VII, and his younger brothers Heinrich VIII and Heinrich IX.  An endless stream of numerically increasing Heinrichs.  But the Reuss family wasn't crazy, of course.  They weren't going to let these numbers just grow out of control.  They decided that after they reached 100 (Heinrich C, I suppose), they'd reset back to Heinrich I.  Another branch of the family decided to start resetting at the turn of each century.

The current head of the family is Heinrich XIV, son of Heinrich IV, son of Heinrich XXXIX, son of Heinrich XXIV, son Heinrich IV, son of Heinrich LXIII, and so on and so on, stretching back through centuries and centuries of absurdly numbered Heinrichs.  All because the Emperor granted them some piddly honors way back when.

Saqaliba

You've been kidnapped from your fishing village by pirate raiders, sold into slavery, castrated, and forced to work in the court of the Caliph.  One day, the country starts falling apart around you.  What do you do? This is the situation that faced the court slaves, or saqaliba, of Cordoba in 1010 AD.

For years, the Caliph had been reduced to a powerless figurehead while his viziers ruled the empire, but the pathetic tenure of Caliph Hisham II took the situation to a new level.  He (nominally) took the throne at age 10, dressed himself in a veil and makeup, and kept an all-male harem.  As one could imagine, this set of traits did not make for an imposing supreme ruler in eleventh century Iberia.  The actual power was all in the hands of his chancellor and general, Al-Mansur, who wouldn't even let Hisham leave his palace.

Al-Mansur was quite happy to keep the weird gay shut-in on the throne, but when he died his sons Abd al-Malik and Abd ur-Rahman didn't realize what a good thing he had going.  They wanted the title as well as the power, because what's the point in running a massive empire if you can't tell the ladies that you're Caliph?  After a series of uprisings, assassinations and other various and sundry court intrigue, they brought the Caliphate crashing down around them.

This put the saqaliba, Slavs who had been captured in raids or in battle, and brought to court to serve as eunuch slaves and advisers, in a tricky position.  Should they try to make it back to their homeland?  Keep their heads down and hope no one thinks they look like ripe assassination targets?  Those would probably be the sensible answers, but Mujahid al-Siqlabi (they apparently got spiffy new Arabic names in exchange for having their junk chopped off) had a better answer: get yourself a make-shift crown and a map, draw yourself a nice looking swath of territory and proclaim yourself a newly-minted petty king.  Then start duking it out with the other slaves who'd done the same thing.

Mujahid's Taifa of Denia somehow managed to get control of a nice patch of land along the Eastern coast of Spain, while other former slaves, generals and court dignitaries carved up the rest of Muslim Iberia among themselves.  This provided a lot of work for map-makers as the various kingdoms routinely attacked and absorbed one another until the Almoravids from Morocco arrived a few decades later to gobble the whole mess up.

Makhnovia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RPAU_flag.svg

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, a band of revolutionaries lead by Nestor Makhno established an anarchic society in Southeastern Ukraine.  This wasn't your normal podunk commune of a few dozen unwashed hippies.  The Free Territory had 7 million residents, a military over 15,000 and possibly the most badass flag in history which featured a skull and the motto "Death to all who stand in the way of freedom for a working people!"  In other words, they took this shit serious.

In fact, they took things a little too seriously for the liking of the Russian Red Army.  Makhno's territory banned all political parties, including the Bolsheviks (who were more accustomed to doing the banning), and forbade any participation in Soviet militias, police, or any other authoritarian force.  This did not go over well.

Deciding that Makhno was too communist for his own good, the Bolsheviks branded him a bandit warlord.  After a few years of attacks, they succeeded in destroying his army, occupying the territory, and sending Makhno into exile in Paris.  He would later work as a stage hand for the Paris opera, because what other job are you going to get with "leader of a revolutionary anarchic army" on your resume?

The Republic of Bou Regreg

This sounds like something out of history mad-libs: In 1627, a Dutch convert to Islam lead a group of Moroccan pirates from his personal city state to the shores of Iceland to seek plunder and slaves.

The man in question is Jan Janszoon.  He started his career as a privateer, authorized by the Dutch crown to attack Spanish shipping.  After being captured by North African pirates in 1618, he converted to Islam (possibly at gunpoint, or possibly because the pirate crew made some very insightful theological arguments) and joined their crew.  After his captain was killed in battle the next year, he took control of the city of Salé on the Moroccan coast.  Although nominally under the control of the Sultan of Morocco, the city was essentially a self-governing pirate lair.  Jan (by then called Murat Reis) was elected their Grand Admiral, a position more commonly known as "Pirate King".  

Using the Republic of Salé (also known as the Republic of Bou Regreg, a way better name) as his base of operations, he raided the shipping throughout the Mediterranean, as well as up the Atlantic Coast to England and Ireland.   In 1627, he took a captured Danish sailor as his guide to Iceland, where he and his band of Moroccan pirates came upon the peaceful fishing village of Grindavík.  As it turns out, peaceful Icelandic fishing villages are not rich with plunder, so the pirates decided to abscond with a few local families instead.  

The Icelanders were sold into slavery back in North Africa, but a few of them were eventually rescued and returned to Iceland.  For his part, Jan was eventually captured by the Knights of Malta, and imprisoned and tortured in their dungeons for five years.  After his rescue by Tunisian corsairs, he returned to Morocco to a hero's welcome, and was granted governorship of a lavish fortress.

The Münster Rebellion

In the early 1500s, Germany was a mess of small counties, bishoprics and free cities.  As the Protestant Reformation got under way, it was not uncommon for these miniature states to come under new religious administration.  One of the most extreme examples was the city of Münster in 1534.

Jan Matthys and Jan Bockelson were converts to the new sect of Anaptism.  Unlike the the modern Anabaptists who pretty much mind their own business (such as the Amish and the Mennonites), the Jans added something of a violent-expansion twist to their version.  They overthrew the government of Münster and proclaimed it the New Jerusalem of biblical prophecy.

As usually happens when a place is declared the New Jerusalem of biblical prophecy, shit quickly proceeded to get a little rapey.  Private property was abolished, trade or barter for profit was outlawed and a system pretty similar to communism was implemented.  The leaders of the movement soon declared polygamy legal, and took many wives - Jan Bockelson is accused of publicly executing a woman for refusing to be his wife/sex slave.  Things were not good.

Meanwhile, the deposed bishop of the city gathered his forces and laid siege.  Matthys, deciding that he was the unstoppable avatar of God's wrath, rode out with only 30 men to meet the army.  His plan was to lay waste to them and then proceed to conquer the rest of the world in God's name.

He was quickly killed, of course, his head placed on a pike outside the walls and his genitals nailed to the town gates, because that was apparently a thing to do back then.  Despite the impressive defense mustered by the fanatics, the city eventually fell to the siege.  The leaders of the movement were captured, tortured and brutally executed.  Their corpses were then hung in cages from the city cathedral.  Although the remains have since been removed, the cages can still be seen hanging from the steeple.

Knights of the Caribbean

The Knights Hospitaller were founded way back in 1099 to run a hospital (thus the name) in Jerusalem to provide medical care for pilgrims.  As is true in both video games and real life, being the medic all the time gets boring, so they started providing armed escorts for pilgrims as well.  They distinguished themselves in battle, and built a bunch of pretty badass castles throughout the Holy Land.

After the crusades turned for the worse, and the Holy Land was lost, they retreated to Cyprus, and then took the island of Rhodes from the Byzantines in 1309.  They held out in Rhodes even after the Ottomans had conquered the region including Constantinople, but were eventually flushed out by a an invasion of hundreds of thousands of Ottoman soldiers - and even then it took the Ottomans half a year to dislodge the 7,000 knights.

They then moved on to Malta (apparently they had a thing for island fortresses), where they started protecting Christian shipping in the Mediterranean from the Muslims.  Protecting soon turned to plundering, and the Knights started capturing and looting Muslim trade ships.  This practice brought in huge amounts of money to the otherwise struggling order.

In the mid 1600s, the Knights of Malta became one of the most unlikely colonial powers when they acquired a set of islands in the Caribbean.  Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy arrived in St. Kitts in 1638 under the pretense of governing on behalf of the French crown.  He quickly decided that he wasn't nobodies bitch, and started governing under his own authority, as well as capturing other islands in the area.  He took Tortuga (a small island off the coast of Haiti) as well as St. Croix, St. Bart, and St. Martin.

In addition to his other duties of establishing personal island kingdoms, de Poincy was also a high-ranking member of the Knights.  He persuaded them to purchase some of his islands for 120,000 livres (which is a lot, apparently).  The French were willing to accept the governance of the Knights, on the grounds that they should use the islands as a base to protect Christian shipping, and work for the "conversion of the savages".

The possessions of the Knights didn't last long, as they were quickly gobbled up by the likes of Spain and Britain.  Even so, the Knights earned the right to count themselves among the great European colonial powers.