Listing to Port

1. Owing to a bug in the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh, there exists an infinitely recursive enclave 30km South of Cooch Behar: i.e., an area of Indian territory surrounding an area of Bangladeshi territory surrounding an area of Indian territory surrounding an area of Bangladeshi territory et cetera. The central few metres of this area have been repurposed to provide a temporary refuge for people who have been declared stateless, including a small centre for international law advice.
2. A 1888 attempt to stimulate patriotism by redrawing the boundaries of British counties so that each more closely resembled the letters in the phrase ‘God save the Queen’ was, surprisingly, only defeated in parliament by a single vote. This unusual happening has been attributed by historians to the flash outbreak of a food-borne fungal infection. Embarrassed legislators subsequently struck the episode from official records, although some reference to it can still be found in the newspapers of the era.
3. Portugal has never given up its claim to the entire continent of Antarctica, which dates back to the report by Henry the Navigator of having have been gifted a land in the far South by Prester John. In order that this claim not be invalidated under Portugal’s 1976 constitution, the state defines the municipality of Rio Prateado, a theoretical microcity with zero population in Adelie land. The exact location of Rio Prateado is highly classified, to avoid anyone else sticking a flag in it.
4. Under a 1630 law that has never been repealed, the summit region of any English or Welsh mountain is assumed to be part of the high seas for legal purposes. This led to the practice of holding duels on mountaintops, a practice that was still current in 1925 when Aleister Crowley was killed in a duel at the summit of Cader Idris and subsequently had to be resurrected by his Thelemite seconds. In order to perform the resurrection, they were obliged to offer Crowley’s digestive system as a home for lost ghosts, leaving him plagued with supernatural indigestion for the rest of his days.
5. As part of an abandoned weapons program in the mid-1980s, the entire island of Saint Helena was fitted with rockets, enabling it to take off from the South Atlantic, fly North and East, and land on Moscow, should the need arise. These rockets were never removed. Owing to the danger of accidental firings resulting from loud noises or strong vibration, every resident of Saint Helena is required to sign an agreement prohibiting them from playing music above a given volume. This is also the real reason that the recently constructed airport has been indefinitely put out of use.

*because they are not true

1. The Boredom Isles, Central Pacific. Although nominally claimed by the United Kingdom, the Boredom Isles have struggled to be occupied by all but the world’s most rapacious colonists. The Boredom Isles are so dull that a lighthouse constructed there in 1826 fell asleep, ejecting its entire crew into the sea where they voluntarily stayed for three days, struck by the relative interestingness of the local marine life. Based on a 1956 census of flags on the shore, the isles are believed to have been discovered but then forgotten about at least twelve times.
2. Saint Genesius, Southern Ocean. Of fifteen people who have stood on the inhospitable shores of Saint Genesius, fully twelve have been injured by flying elephant seals. It appears that the island’s unexplored rocky interior contains a number of large, tilted slabs on which the seals like to sun themselves but which, under the right circumstances, become uncomfortably slippery. The right circumstances appear to include when the seals are alarmed or curious at the entrance of humans into the island’s only narrow bay. A series of unfortunate geological features ensures that slipping seals are funnelled directly towards any incomers.
3. Incitatus and Bucephalus, Southern Atlantic Ocean. These obscure twin islands, several thousand kilometres south of the Azores, were discovered by Henry the Navigator in 1437 and claimed for Portugal. Twenty years later, the mutinous crew of the Cruzado, a private mercantile exploration vessel, were put ashore there and abandoned. The advent of a human population spurred the islands’ resident population of crabs, who did not think of themselves as particularly Portuguese, to mutate into a vast interlocking multi-crab intelligence. Little is known of the fate of the Cruzado’s crew. The lest known expedition to the islands, in 1465, noted the presence of a half-built raft, some cooking artifacts, and a fifty metre tall crab monster with hundreds of oddly human eyes. Since then, even satellites have tended to look in the other direction.
4. Warlock Shoals, North Pacific. Warlock shoals has only existed as an island since 1955, when an earthquake raised the seamount on which it stands by a few metres. Initially it was claimed by the United States of America, who subsequently obliterated the island by carrying out a nuclear test on it. A further earthquake raised the remains of the island above sea level again for six months in 1958. During this time, the island was claimed as a new territory by the Soviet Union, who carried out a further nuclear test which once again obliterated it. In 2014, yet another earthquake raised the shoals above sea level. Although as yet unclaimed, they are believed to have been visited by a delegation from the North Korean army. Warlock Shoals is possibly the world’s most pissed-off island.
5. Frigate Mount, Southern Indian Ocean. Frigate Mount from a distance is one of the ocean’s more unusual sights. This smooth, white island is shaped exactly like an enormous egg, standing on one end on the surface of the sea. A rocky base is sometimes visible in rough seas. The main body of the island is believed to be the result of thousands of years of guano deposits from pelagic seabirds. It is difficult to see how its unusual shape could have come about other than by a deliberate attempt at sculpture by the resident bird population. The island’s inhabitants do seem to be unusually solemn and devotional as seabirds go, leading some to speculate that it is some kind of avian religious site. Another theory runs that the island is in reality a giant egg and its guano covering functions mainly as insulation and disguise.  
6. La Baleine Island, France. Unusually for an isolated island, La Baleine is situated slightly South of Central Paris. It is perhaps the only entirely landlocked island in the world, without a single sea border. As such, most visitors to La Baleine are completely unaware that they have stepped foot on one of the world’s least-known islands. Interestingly, La Baleine’s unusual nature means it has been independently discovered at least fifty times. It has been claimed by at least fourteen countries, including an ill-fated period as an independent republic which ended when French special forces were smuggled over the border in a tree on wheels.