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floor 32
there are thousands and thousands of
islands scattered across the world's
oceans
some are gigantic like Greenland while
others are tiny like this one that the
British still decided to claim and build
something on anyway but out of all of
these thousands of islands in the ocean
only 16 of them have a border across
them because there's only 16 that are
actually shared by more than just a
single country and despite there only
being 16 of them a lot of these borders
are pretty wacky so let's start with the
biggest island in the world that has a
border across it New Guinea it's divided
roughly in half between the independent
state of Papua New Guinea in the east
and Indonesia in the West despite there
being only two countries that exist on
the island though New Guinea is probably
the most diverse location on the entire
planet
there are around 1000 different and
unique tribes that are scattered across
the island and just as many different
languages spoken by each of them if each
of these tribes and languages have their
own independent country for themselves
New Guinea would end up looking
something a lot like this but as it
stands today there are only two
countries on the island and the line
that divides them separates a lot of
these tribal areas and languages in half
which you could probably guess as a
lasting legacy from the time of Dutch
and British colonialism on the islands
next up though is Borneo the third
largest island in the world and the only
one on this list to be politically
divided between three different
countries there's the Indonesian side
the Malaysian side and the tiny country
of Brunei located inside of the
Malaysian side but Brunei gets weirder
the closer you look at it you see it's
cut in half by territory that belongs to
Malaysia meaning that if people in
Brunei want to get to the other side of
their country without passing through
Malaysia their only options are either
by boat or by air the next biggest
divided island is one of the most
controversial in the world
Ireland 5/6 of the island belongs to the
Republic of Ireland while the remaining
1/6 in the northeast corner
to Northern Ireland's which is a part of
the United Kingdom however despite being
called Northern Ireland the Republic of
Ireland actually extends further to the
north which you can see when I draw this
line from the northern tip out over so
called Northern Ireland next up is the
island of Hispaniola the second largest
island in the Caribbean and one of the
strangest on this list it's strange
because the island is divided right down
the middle between two countries that
couldn't be any more different Haiti in
the West and the Dominican Republic in
the East Haiti is the poorest country in
the Western Hemisphere
while the Dominican Republic is
substantially better off with an economy
and incomes that are nearly ten times
higher Spanish is spoken on the
dominican side while French and Haitian
Creole are spoken on the Haitian side
the Dominican Republic is 73% mestizo
and 16% wipes while the Haitian side is
95% black Haiti has significantly less
natural resources and has a far higher
population density as well all of these
enormous differences between the two
halves of the same island make the
border across it one of the starkest and
the most obvious in the entire world but
there's definitely other islands that
have a lot weirder borders if you're a
big fan of border Gore from games like
crusader kings or europa universalis
then you're gonna love taking a look at
Cyprus it's not really that big of an
island it's over 80 times smaller than
Borneo and yet it's vastly more
controversial and has even more
political entities and drama on it
there's the Republic of Cyprus which
takes up most of the southern half of
the island and is widely internationally
recognized as legitimate
then there's the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus that's very surprisingly
in the north of Cyprus and is only
recognised internationally by Turkey
there's a few left over
british-controlled relics of the Empire
still remaining about and then there's
the neutral UN occupied border barrier
that stretches across the entire island
basically there's four different
governmental administration's that all
exist wedge together on a relatively
small island and it makes for some
pretty wacky situations for example the
Republic of Cyprus is an EU Member State
in the
you considers the entire island to the
EU territory despite the Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus definitively
not being in the EU and the UK military
outposts definitively not being either
post brexit the Eastern British
territory of Dhekelia is particularly
confusing though for multiple reasons
let's zoom into this part of the
territory first this part is Cyprus
which is completely surrounded by
British land and this part is also
Cyprus surrounded by mostly British land
they're divided by a British road that
cuts between them and this part is only
home to a Cyprus controlled and staffed
power station that for some reason
exclusively provides electricity and
power for the British territory and not
the Cyprus territory then there's these
other two weird exclaves of Cyprus
inside of the British zone which
citizens of Cyprus can only get to by
going through the British land and then
the British control this narrow long
long road that stretches all the way out
to even more British land because the
British apparently didn't want to deal
with any exclave situations like Cyprus
does on their own Island for our next
weird island we're going over to Western
Europe it may not look like it from here
but France and the Netherlands actually
do share a land border with one another
it just isn't in Europe it's on this
random island on the other side of the
world here in the Caribbean called st.
Martin the southern side belongs to the
Netherlands and the northern side
belongs to France the French side is in
the European Union and uses the euro
while the Dutch side for some reason
isn't and uses the netherlands antilles
Kildare the main airport is located over
on the Dutch side of the island so even
most French people who visit the French
side have to fly into the Dutch side
first and since the island technically
isn't in the European Union's Schengen
area despite the French side actually
being in the European Union there are
actually border checks and custom
stations on the only land border between
France and the Netherlands that citizens
crossing over must pass through most of
the politically divided islands in the
world are the fault of Europeans at some
point or another so it's only fair that
a few would actually be located in
Europe it's
and most of them are all located in the
Baltic like you Saddam here that's
divided between Germany and Poland
Kataya
that's just narrowly divided between
Finland and Sweden and Co eluate oh
that's cut between Finland and Russia
but by far the wackiest divided island
in the Baltic and perhaps even the world
is Merck hats with these janky borders
divided evenly between Finland and
Sweden it's a completely uninhabited
Rock that only has a single building on
it a lighthouse that was constructed by
Finland over here so the reason why this
catastrophe of a border exists is
because way back in 1809 Sweden and
Finland which was then controlled by
Russia agreed upon their mutual maritime
border that stretched through the Baltic
unfortunately the border passed right
over this rock and nobody at the time
really cared or noticed because it was
an uninhabited crappy Little Rock but
almost eighty years later however in
1885 the Finns just up and decided one
day that they were gonna build a
lighthouse on it and they naturally
built it on the tallest part of the
islands
unfortunately that part was over on the
Swedish side of the island but the Finns
didn't really care and did it anyway
the Swedes thought oh my god how dare
they build that on this rock we didn't
even really know existed until now and
so they began loudly protesting to
Finland about it for literally the next
100 years neither side would budge on
the issue even after the Finns made the
lighthouse fully automated in 1979
eventually though a hundred years after
they built that damn lighthouse over in
what was technically Sweden the Finnish
and Swedish governments finally managed
to come to an arrangement they made them
both happy in 1985 they simply pulled up
the map adjusted the border to the
zig-zag pattern that you can see today
which placed the stupid lighthouse over
on the Finnish side and gave Sweden some
rocky compensation on the eastern side
the border adjustment was carried out
strategically so that neither side lost
any territory so their national pride
could stay intact and their coast lines
on the island were also left unchanged
so that their fishing rights would not
be interfered with and apparently
they've both been pretty happy ever
after that so figuring out how to
equally divide a useless and rocky
island is probably not the best way to
spend time
productively but neither is just
endlessly watching videos on YouTube or
Netflix if you're still stuck at home
right now but you want to spend your
free time learning more useful and
productive skills that'll help you out
in life then you should go and check out
Skillshare next they have a class that
I've been taking myself by my friend
Thomas Frank called real productivity
how to build habits that last it's
taught me how to stay more organized and
productive while staying at home and
making these videos on the channel and
it will help you learn the same helpful
habits too that you can apply to your
own hobbies to school or to work but
even if you're already outrageously
productive Skillshare will definitely
have something else for you too they've
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people to improve their skills in every
subject from animation to coding to
painting to music to marketing and so
much more
there's plenty of options for you to
take at any skill level and the classes
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plush real life lor 32 or by clicking
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always thank you for watching