35 Interesting Facts about Borders

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1 Fort Blunder

Fort Blunder

In 1810s, the USA spent 2 years building a fort to protect from Canadian invasion, but it was accidentally built in Canada. They abandoned construction and called it Fort Blunder.


2. In 2010, an American man named Gary Brooks Faulkner was arrested near the border of Afghanistan. He was trying to hunt down Osama bin Laden with a sword.


3. On the California side of the US-Mexico border, there’s a town called Calexico, and on the opposite side, there’s a town called Mexicali.


4. When North Korea sank a South Korean Warship in 2010, South Korea responded by blasting the hit K-Pop song “Hit your heart” across the border using large military loudspeakers.


5. Residents of the US, particularly those living near the Mexican border, now routinely cross the border into Mexico for medical care. Mexican dentists often charge 20 to 25 percent of U.S. prices, while other procedures typically cost a third what they would cost in the US.


6 Voltaire

Voltaire

Later in his life, Voltaire developed the habit of living near borders so he could more easily escape the authorities if his writings angered them.


7. 7 members of an isolated Indian tribe emerged from the Amazon and made contact with people in a village near the Peruvian border because “violent attacks” by outsiders had driven them from the forest. Later, details emerged that their elder relatives were massacred and their houses set on fire.


8. In September 2006, Chinese Border Patrol guards opened fire on a group of Tibetan pilgrims moving slowly in deep snow, killing a 17-year-old girl. The incident is only known in the West because a Romanian mountain climber secretly recorded it


9. After the town of Naco was split in two by border patrol, the residents of Naco, Arizona, and Naco, Mexico started an annual tradition of having a volleyball match over the dividing fence.


10. The Jay Treaty, signed in 1794, provides that American Indians may travel freely across the Canadian-US border. Native Indians born in Canada are entitled to freely enter the United States for the purpose of employment, study, retirement, investing, and/or immigration.


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11 Nebraska

Nebraska

Nebraska is a triply landlocked state: it touches no ocean, the states it borders touch no ocean, and the states they border touch no ocean.


12. A Mexican amusement park (Parque EcoAlberto) offers a fake US-Mexico border crossing attraction, complete with fake smugglers and fake border patrol agents. The aim is to dissuade would-be migrants from making the trip. For 3 hours, tourists endure sirens, chases, and the fake border patrol yelling threats.


13. In Denmark, during the World War 2, border guards would screen homecoming Danes by making them say the name of a dessert called rødgrød med fløde. Due to its difficulty in pronunciation, German infiltrators could not pass the test.


14. Al Gore’s father once proposed, in Congress, “something cataclysmic” be done to end the Korean War. His suggestion involved creating a radiation belt on the 38th parallel using atomic bombs to turn the border of North and South Korea into a permanent toxic wasteland.


15. Canada and USA share the longest border and most mutually beneficial international relationship in the world.


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16 US-Mexico border wall

US-Mexico border wall

The Golden State Fence Company, hired to build part of the US-Mexico border wall, was fined $5 million for hiring illegal immigrant workers.


17. The U.S. does not use bills over $100 because President Nixon wanted to make it harder to move large amounts of money across borders for drug trading.


18. Most of the Middle East’s borders were drawn up by a pair of English and French aristocrats in 1916.


19. The US government has a law enforcement unit consisting entirely of Native Americans who use indigenous tracking/ranging methods to catch drug smugglers on the US-Mexican border. Their unit is called “The Shadow Wolves.”


20. Colorado is not a perfect rectangle. Along the western border with Utah, it goes at a slight angle and then continues straight again due to surveyors making a mistake.


15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History


21 Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was torn down by mistakenly-empowered citizens after an East German spokesman misspoke at a press conference and mentioned immediate border crossing privileges for every citizen.


22. North and South Korean armies choose their physically toughest looking soldiers to have a constant ongoing “stare down” across the Korean border to determine who is more powerful.


23. A war between Greece and Bulgaria that killed a total of 171 people, began when a Greek soldier accidentally crossed the border chasing his runaway dog.


24. The militarized border between North and South Korea, with practically no human inhabitants, has become a refuge for multiple endangered species.


25. France and Netherlands share a land border. It’s in the Caribbean on Saint Martin. It is the smallest inhabited island divided between two countries.


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1 COMMENT

  1. On the French side of Saint Martin a phone call to Paris, France is a local call, but a call down the road to the Dutch side, is an international call.

    1045

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