March 21, 2023 • 32 mins
If you land on a deserted island, you might be tempted to search for the basic stuff first -- food, water, shelter, and so on -- but don't forget to keep an eye out for guano! Why, you ask? Well, due to a relatively obscure law, the presence of guano on a deserted island may allow you to declare it property of the United States! Sort of. Tune into today's classic episode learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. We are on the
road this week, right uh road again? Yeah yeah right,
not necessarily right now, We're actually coming to you from
our traditional home bases. But by the time you hear this,
we will be in the wind. As they say, yes,
yes so uh so your pals here, super producer Max
(00:21):
Williams and Noel Brown and yours truly, we wanted to
share some of our favorite classic episodes this week. Remember, Noel,
you and I were both pretty astonished, I think, when
we learned that the United States used bat poop as
(00:45):
a reason to invade another country. It's it's what, I mean,
what other reason do you need? Man? There's there's hill,
there's hills in them their goals. Now that's not how
it goes. There's poop in them their hills. And it
turns out that wan bird poop also bat poop. You know,
the white stuff? Remember that was that was that voice?
(01:06):
No not boys? Was New Kids on the Block? Or
was it Milli Vanille, Milli Vanilli white? The right stuff,
the white stuff that comes out of bird's butts is
actually really really good for fertilizer and also for making explosives.
M and we were collectively stunned by this, along with
our pal good friend of the show, Casey pegram So nol,
(01:30):
you and I and Casey, we looked into what really happened.
How could you use guano as a pretext to invade
a sovereign land? And that's this episode that sure is
specifically you the United States that you were referring to,
(01:53):
and this is the thing that happens. So let's jump
right in. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. It's
(02:25):
time for the show. Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors.
I am Ben Bullin, and I am super proud of
both of us for not starting with a fart joke today.
Was that on the table. It's always on the table.
But so far we've managed to be our best selves,
I think with the farthest we've ventured into that kind
of blue territory was unicorn farts, Angel Angel farts. You know,
(02:49):
there was that, and then there was also the episode
about scientist hiding under college kids beds. But that wasn't
our fault, No, no, that was that was a historic fact.
It's true. I'm Noel, by the way, and this is
Ridiculous History. And here we are, here we are. So
you may be asking yourselves, Bennuel superproducer Casey Pegram, why
(03:11):
did you feel the need to point out that you
aren't starting with a fart joke. Well, because, Ben, we're
talking about poop poo today. We are, we are, and
we're not just talking about excrement. We're talking about a
very important sort of excrements, white gold, my man guano yep,
(03:33):
the island ingot known as bird poop Island or guano.
And we are also talking about geopolitics. We're talking about
the great game that all nations play. Yeah, what could
be better? Poopoo and geopolitics? Right? Aren't you glad you
tuned in today? So I would propose that we, as
(03:55):
the Mad Hatter said, start at the beginning. Ish, I
think that's the smart way to go about this, all right,
and then we'll probably go to the middle and sort
of a chronological way. I like it. Let's travel no
Old to the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. What
the heck is that? Yeah? So it's today three seventy
(04:16):
thousand square nautical miles of protected islands that stretch from
the wake Atoll, which is in the northwest to Jarvis
Island in the southeast, and it's basically a cluster of
small islands that is protected under the National Wildlife Refuge System.
And just to list them all off, there's Kingman Reef,
(04:38):
Palmyra Atoll, Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island and then
those are the ones under the National Wildlife Refuge System,
but they also include two others Johnston Atoll and Wake Island,
and these islands are home to tremendous levels of biodiversity.
This is also where we discovered some amazing sly silly
(05:01):
and doctors Susian bird names. Also side note, yes, we
are aware that the correct pronunciations doctor soyce, like the
ham fisted boobie, the sooty turn I made up ham
fisted boobie. I mean, the booby is real, but the
sooty turn is totally legit. And you know what, I
totally said, ham fisted boobie. I thought, sure, yeah, why not? Yes?
(05:21):
And is it anymore or less ridiculous than the rest
of them? Like the wandering tattler. I also have a
lovely laundry list of endangered or depleted species that do
quite well in the Pacific remote islands, and they include,
but are not limited to, the green and hawksbill turtle,
the pearl oyster, giant clams, reef sharks, coconut crabs, groupers,
(05:43):
hump head and Napoleon rasses. What's a rass? W r ass?
Don't know what that one is? And my personal favorite
the ever Doctor Susian bump head parrot fish. Bump head
parrot fish, yes of Doctors Susian fame. Also, typically, the
Palmyra atol and Kingman Reef have the highest coral diversity
(06:05):
levels of any other atoll or reef island in the
entire Central Pacific. Oh and ras is a type of
civet which is a really cute looking tiny mammal, A
civt civet a civet with a V like victory or vendetta. Interesting. Okay,
so it's we're saying that I think it's really important
(06:26):
for us to establish these are not just the homes
of some hilariously named birds, but for the purpose of
today's episode, we are very much focusing on those birds.
Because if you have a lot of birds in a
small area, what else do you have a lot of?
You got a lot of bird poop and bird poop
(06:47):
is the key ingredient of today's episode. Also, this reminds
me thanks to everybody who wrote to us and demystified
vinegar pie. Yeah yeah, we've moved on now to recipes
exclusively involving bird droppings and it's but it's not just
bird droppings for fun, because, as it turns out, these
(07:10):
piles of white poop were very important in the United
States establishment of imperialist laws. It turns out that if
you discover an island and you say, you know what,
I want this island to belong to the United States,
(07:35):
all you have to do is tell them, essentially that
you're going to mind bird poop on that island and
then give it to the US. There's poop in them hills.
And that's all because of the Guano Islands Act of
eighteen fifty six, which says that if a US citizens
finds some bird dukie on any rock, island or key,
(07:55):
and that location isn't already under the control of another government,
you can consider it as quote appertaining to the United States.
Quite spurious and interesting legal term that we will dive
into a little later. Right. Yes, absolutely, the Guano Island
Act of eighteen fifty six is still on the books today.
(08:18):
It's forty eight US Code, Chapter eight, and specifically, we've
got the language here. Whenever any citizen of the United
States discovers a deposit of guando on any island, rock,
or key not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government,
and not occupied by the citizens of any other government,
deep breath, and takes peaceful possession thereof, and occupies the
(08:39):
same such island rock work, he may, at the discretion
of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.
So it has to be a legit deserted islands. But
why do this, ben Why write such a convoluted and
seemingly silly sounding code that allows people to, you know,
(09:00):
basically squat on uninhabited islands and dig for pooh. That's
a great question. And it turns out that guano was
much more than just a fun thing at the time.
In the eighteen forties and even before, guano became a
(09:21):
very very powerful and precious commodity because it was a
source of saltpeter for gunpowder and was also a very
useful fertilizer. The US began importing guano in eighteen forty three,
and the UK was also importing it. By the early
eighteen fifties, US imports were more than or around I
(09:43):
guess it's fair to say seven hundred and sixty thousand tons,
and one of the big sources of this came from
Peruvian seabirds, and farmers were claiming in the eighteen forties
that using this fertilizer could increase a crop yield threefold. Right,
because these small Peruvian islands had little rainfall, intense sunlight,
(10:05):
and ultimately the perfect, perfect perfect conditions to allow this
guano to dry out in form deposits that could then
be mined like any other natural resource. Right, Yes, so
we have a guano boom, actually a guano mania, as
some people were coining it. At historian by the name
of Richard Wines called it a perfect mania because of
(10:26):
guano's potency as a fertilizer. In eighteen fifty it was
seventy six dollars a pound or one hundred and sixty
seven dollars a kilogram, which is, according to an article
from Dan Vergano in National Geographic, a quarter of the
price of actual gold. And I wasn't joking at the
top when I said white gold, I mean this was
a very valuable material that was quite sought after because
(10:50):
it was before the invention of synthetic fertilizers, which were
made of ammonia, and that didn't happen until the early
twentieth century, right, so the time Now you can find
a really great interview with Columbia law professor Christina Duffy
Burnett where she provides some historical context to this and
(11:10):
talks about the genuine crisis, the mania the boom, because
this wasn't sort of a a useless or cosmetic boom
like beanie babies. No, it turned out the fertilizer was
actually really good, or rather the guano made for a
bang up fertilizer because it was very rich in both
(11:31):
phosphorus and nitrogen. It led to a very strange market.
There were guano counterfeiters, totally fake guano flooding the market,
which makes me think somebody's going, dad, why won't you
tell me what you do for a living. It's like
the quiet son, get me more of this off white paint.
I don't know what what do you cut guano with? Yeah, like,
(11:53):
I don't know, baby laxative, Right, did they did they
have that at the time. No, no, No, it's unclear, Ben,
It's clear. The history is murky in that department. Different episode,
right for another day. But what we do find is
that this led to pretty intense diplomatic disputes. From the
piece that you quoted earlier, Knell courtesy of Richard Wines,
(12:17):
the United States did find itself in some pretty corporate
America would call healthy conversations absolutely, which in the real
world is a euphemism for intense arguments. Because this all
came to a tipping point Malcolm Gladwell style, when people
began fighting over a Caribbean island called Aves. It's an isolated,
(12:41):
uninhabited dot at the time, about three hundred and fifty
miles off the coast of Venezuela. In eighteen fifty four,
Americans landed on this island and they wanted to claim
it as US territory. They erected get this, a liberty
poll on the island to make things official, like a
(13:02):
barber pole, and they called it a liberty pole. But
when they left and returned with guano mining gear, they
found the employees of a British firm already there with
the gear mining that sweet sweet guanna. Did they have
a scrap? Well, at first they divided it up between them,
and somebody said, all right, we you know, we were
(13:24):
here first, but there's enough bird poop for everyone. And
the British said, very well, tally ho whatever you know
slang they chose to use at that time, and they thought,
pip pip, there we go, and they thought that they
would you live in peace and harmony. However, Venezuela considered
the island to be Venezuelan territory, and they were not
(13:46):
impressed by this liberty pole. They were not impressed by
this guanna. They were not impressed that the British and
the Americans were getting along. So then the scrap took place. Yes, yes, yes,
a Venezuelan warship came several months later and kicked everybody out,
and then there was a dispute that lasted for decades.
Even though long story short, it turned out that the
(14:08):
guano on this island was kind of well, I was
going to say crappy as a manure, but maybe a
better word would be substandard. So a little more time passes,
and obviously this is not a sustainable model, right, So
the US farmers start really pushing the farm lobby to
pressure Congress to get in the mix and pass some
(14:30):
kind of legal ease that would allow for basically what
we're talking about, claiming these uninhabited islands that potentially could
be sites for guano deposits under what ultimately became the
Guano Islands Act. And we've read portions of that, and
I just want to read one more little snippet because
(14:51):
I think it's pretty instructive. The discoverer shall, as soon
as practical, give notice, verified by affidavit, to the Department
of State, of such disgus very occupation and possession, describing
the island Rock or Key, and the latitude and longitude thereof,
as near as maybe, and showing that such possession was
taken in the name of the United States, and shall
furnish satisfactory evidence to the State Department that such island
(15:14):
Rock or Key was not the time the discovery thereof,
or of the taking, possession and occupation thereof by the claimants,
in the possession or occupation of any other government or
of the citizens of any other government before the same
shall be considered as appertaining to the United States, appertaining
do you want to get into appertaining? Okay, so, yes,
(15:36):
a good. I keep going back to this excellent interview
in Cabinet Magazine. Appertaining just the strict definition is to
relate to to concern, to be appropriate or applicable. And
in this interview titled Islands in the Law with again
with Christina Duffy Burnett of Columbia University of Columbia University
(16:00):
aim absolutely right, there's this concept. Okay, what is It's
not It's almost like a friends with benefits thing. I've
been thinking about this for a while. It's it's all
of the girlfriend and boyfriend, but the fun times, but
really none of the obligation protections, right right. So in
(16:20):
this interview, and you can read this in full online, folks,
Cabinet Magazine asked Professor Burnett, what does appertaining mean legally speaking?
And the professor says, that's the beauty of it. Nothing,
or rather, no one had any idea. It was a
vague way of saying, it's like ours pretty much kind
(16:41):
of sort of, And there was no previous usage of
appertaining in this context. Anywhere anywhere capital a anywhere italicized
underline highlighted anywhere. There was nothing in English about this.
It originated in property law as a way of talking
about stuff that came attached to something else. So like
(17:03):
you would you buy property on an estate and there
would be language in there about the waters appertaining to
the estate, you know, a little pond or a creek,
or the railway sidings that appertained to a railway. It
basically means we got DIBs. Yeah. Yeah, So it's a
way of taking place as possessions while being careful not
(17:25):
to call them territories, because if there's a territory that
the US owns legally, there are obligations that come along
with that and constitutional entanglements. So it's a way of
taking places without taking responsibility for them in a federal sense. Yeah.
The final section of the Code is even entitled Right
to Abandon Islands. Nothing in this chapter contained shall be
(17:48):
construed as obliging the United States to retain possession of
the islands, rocks, or keys after the guanos shall have
been removed from the same So we swoop in, we
take the poop, and then we're out right. It's like
a heist. It's like a very very slow heist. It's
very slow heist. There's not a montage for it yet.
(18:15):
So you know, this whole thing, this collection of islands
that we talked about at the top of the show,
including the Palmyra Atoll in total, referred to as the
Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The way we secured those
in the first place was as a direct result of
(18:35):
this Guano Act. But turns out there wasn't a whole
lot of guano in these islands. Yes, as a country,
the United States was so desperate to get a hold
of that sweet, sweet guano that they started just going
for places that they thought might have it because they were,
you know, tiny islands that were not inhabited by humans.
(18:59):
So logically, right, if there were no large mammals on
most of these islands, then birds would be free to
fly and poop as they will. But you need a
little more than that. Still, it didn't stop us because
counting those five islands, there were about seventy islands seven
zero islands claimed based on this law. And back to
(19:20):
that fantastic article with Professor Burnett, she describes this time
as being rampant with wildcatters and roughneckers who were just
plopping down on these islands and throwing up their freedom
polls and going to town. And you know there would
be some kind of shifty elements in all of this
(19:41):
because it was kind of the wild West. I mean,
there is a provision in the Guano Act that says,
you know, laws broken while on these islands follow the
same laws as governed the high seas. If you're on
like a merchant vessel, for example, and you're on the
high season international waters, you still are held accountable to
American laws, such as the case here. But even still,
(20:04):
it's sort of like that episode we did on Antarctica
where you're so isolated and like out of the view
of the eyes of the law of your home country
that who knows what could happen. I want to dig
a little deeper and see if there were any crazy
guano related murders. Oh man, there are. There are so
many strange anecdotes about life on remote islands. I do
(20:26):
want to recommend, by the way, one of my favorite
books for anybody interested in reading anecdotes about remote islands.
It's The Atlas of Remote Islands by an author named
Judith Schlansky. And oh, I can't say enough about it,
but there are a couple of guano anecdotes in there,
if I recall correctly, and Nol is absolutely accurate in
(20:47):
that description, because there were freelancers who wanted to be despots,
you know, and say like, I'm the King of bird poop. Guano,
by the way, can also describe bat poop, but in
the case of the Guano Act, it's more specifically talking
about birds. There were also legitimate pirate types, you know,
(21:09):
cowboys with ships, Professor Burnett calls them. And one of
the tricky things about this is that the process for
acquiring new territory in the history of the United States,
it's never really been a straightforward process, and often you
will see that there were differences in the kind of
(21:32):
territory or land acquired, like is it incorporated unincorporated? What
does that even mean? Right? So, this Act actually was
introduced in eighteen fifty six by William Henry Seward, who
was a senator at the time, and you may know
him as actually the person who bought Alaska when he
was the Secretary of State during the Andrew Johnson administration,
(21:54):
famously referred to as Seward's folly. Why because people thought
it was a bad idea oh, that makes sense. But
as it turns out, despite what this act could potentially
have done for US farmers, there was a lot of
controversy surrounding it, and it specifically was about the language.
And in the original version the term that was used
(22:15):
were territory and sovereignty and things like that. But people
had issues with this because it was much more specifically
imperialist and that was felt a little too English perhaps,
and I think people that kind of freaked people out
a little bit. So that stuff kind of got the acts,
and that's where that appertain word came in, that very
(22:38):
legally just vague term that, according to Professor Burnett, pretty
much means absolutely nothing. But this whole idea of claiming
islands really set the tone for US imperialism abroad, and
that's where the terms incorporated and unincorporate rated territories originated.
(23:03):
Incorporated territories means that they are on the road to
becoming a proper state, like we're going to make an
honest territory of you, and you know, tie the knot.
And it seems to me like a prerequisite for something
being considered in this light would be that it had
a decent amount of people already living there that we
(23:25):
could identify with. Oh right, yeah, we be in the
US at the time. Okay, we should just say it.
They probably wanted a healthy population or a large population
of white people or people descended from European ancestry, right,
(23:45):
due to the prevalent racism at the time. What it
unincorporated mean though, Yeah, unincorporated was the fun one because
that basically gave the US the leeway to say, you
know what, we're as a part of the US, but
it's not of the US. It's not in the US.
It's not a state. We don't claim it, but we
(24:05):
are going to occupy it in the same way we
would occupy like in Iraq, for example, where we stuck
around like we don't want to be here, but we've
got to be here to keep the peace. And sometimes
that gets complicated over time, right, but as language allows
for those cases. Yeah, and in this case it's it's
not a state, but we have to be here to
(24:26):
keep the bird poop piece. It's more of a state
of mind. It's more of a state of mind. Well
put so, one of the big questions now when the
present day would be is this still going on? Does
the United States still have things like this, and the
answer is yes, yes, it absolutely does. I mean things
(24:46):
like the bird poop lack. Yeah, that's still on the books.
And then there's also the Palmyra a toll and this
is almost south of the Hawaiian Islands, about third the
way between Hawaii and American Samoa. The nearest continent is
thirty four thousand miles away in the northeast, and it's well,
(25:12):
technically it's an archipelago, but they're pretty it's pretty sparsely populated,
caretaker biologist. And it has one of the distinctions of
being a unique incorporated territory. And all that means is
that it is not a state, nor is it part
of a state, but it is part of the United
(25:34):
States but doesn't. But I thought I thought the incorporated
was the one where we have the intention of making
you a state. Is that language probably shifted over time?
I know, the stuff can be somewhat malleable, right right,
And Burnett addresses this too and says, you know, there's
been a lot of controversy and discussion about what this
means legally speaking, and in some cases this is a
(25:56):
very very divisive issue, and she points this out as
well that in the case of Palmyra, this sounds strange, right,
because didn't we just say that incorporated is meant to
imply that this area, whatever this piece of land is,
is on the way to statehood, to being the fifty
first state or something. Actually found somebody in a message
(26:17):
board just now putting it pretty well when saying that
it is considered an integral part of the United States
that in some way very much matters to our identity
and possibly commerce in any number of ways. But Palmyra
in particular is interesting because it was only just bought
by the Nature Conservancy in two thousand. It was bought
(26:41):
from the fullered Leo family and they actually had recently
turned down an offer to turn it into a nuclear
waste site and the casino. Oh sure if they mean
at the same time or those are two separate offers,
but that'd be interesting. But I'm kind of glad that
it ended up where where it's because it's beautiful. You
can look up pictures of it, and I think you
(27:03):
can visit it. Oh yeah, you can visit a lot
of these places. They're just so remote and in many
cases don't have too much of an infrastructure. But you know,
what I like about a nuclear waste casino combo. You're
gambling either way exactly. So here's another example of how
(27:25):
this applies to the present day. There is an island
called Navasa and its ownership is still disputed between the
US and Haiti. In one case, historically, workers on the
island rioted and killed five supervisors to protest horrendous working conditions,
you know, ultra high prices at a company store, which
(27:47):
we could talk about in a future episode, docked pay,
long hours, and federal juries. Convicted forty participants in the
crimes anywhere from murder to rioting through you were convicted
of murder, sentenced to die. And the problem is that
this case had really strong racial overtones. The managers were
(28:09):
all white, the workers were universally black people. The three
people convicted of death, George Key, Edward Smith, Henry Jones,
they appealed. They got all the way to the Supreme Court,
and they didn't dispute the facts of the case, like
the murder of the rioting all that, but they claimed
that the Guando Island Act was unconstitutional, it didn't jibe
(28:30):
with the international law standard of territorial acquisition, and Haiti
had not seeded possession of the island, and so the
court ruled against them, saying it was constitutional, but they
didn't state whether or not the island actually belonged to
the US, just that there was jurisdiction over it. So
(28:52):
they kind of again tabled and dodged this question, and
then more legal cases come up. In nineteen ninety seven,
the US versus Warren confirmed that Navasa has appertained to
the US since eighteen fifty seven and the country has
never given it up. So this is still real and
(29:12):
relevant stuff. And should you find yourself on a desert island,
check check for guando. Yeah. I wanted to end on
some advice. Did you know what ambergris is? Yeah, it's
from the bellies of Oh no, it's it's from Wales.
Yeah right. They poop it out it like I think
it's like it's formed in their digestive track and they
poop it out and it's like really really, really valuable.
(29:35):
I think it's used to make a perfume refume stuff.
But if you find bird poop or ambergris on your
deserted island, give us a call. Let's let's talk. Well,
we'll do some business. I know a guy. You know,
I know, a guy who can move poop, and ambergris
you a guy an ambergris associated. We also do want
to point out another reason that this stuff matters is
(29:56):
that guando mining can be tremendously damaging to an environment.
We always gotta handles it to downer. That's I know,
I just you know, raping and pillaging. Uh yeah. And
one big case of this would be, uh the island
of Naru, which is the world's smallest, most isolated public
(30:18):
It's about eight square miles the entire place and as
as it turns out, neighboring island Zanado. Yeah yeah, yeah,
from the from the roller skating movie. Right, So so
the neighboring island of Xanadu. As we assure you this
is a completely slash, mostly true fact. Their primary export
(30:38):
is films about roller skating, and Naru's primary export for
a long time was guano. But we all know that
it is unsustainable to pin an entire nation's economy on
a single export. So should you find yourself in uh
in possession of a desert island, and you want to
call Noel and I for legal advice, we will gladly
(31:02):
inform you that we are not lawyers, but we'd love
to visit you. Hit us up at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com. You can also find us on social media
via Facebook, Instagram. We've got a old Friendster page from
the early two thousands that's still kicking. We've got a
Ello yeah Ello Yeah, yeah, I had one of those. Uh,
(31:24):
and we do too, Ello dot ridiculous dot never mind.
Did you mess with Ello? Yeah? Yeah, briefly because it
was like the low the low maintenance social network. Yeah,
it was this low maintenance social network, and it turned
out that, uh, it became very low maintenance because no
one uses it. Well, that's not around anymore. We do
have Facebook, we have Instagram. We're still you know, dicking
(31:47):
around with our Pinterest board. We go back and forth,
you know, it's like, should we get a Pinterest board?
Should we just get a wee to board? Yeah? We
need some kind of board though in our social media entourage. Um.
But most importantly, we'll be back soon next week. Maybe
it's just one more day. I'm not sure where this
episode falls, but there will be more ridiculous history coming
(32:08):
your way, and we hope that you will join us there.
Casey could we have a little island music. For more
(32:38):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. We are on the
road this week, right uh road again? Yeah yeah right,
not necessarily right now, We're actually coming to you from
our traditional home bases. But by the time you hear this,
we will be in the wind. As they say, yes,
yes so uh so your pals here, super producer Max
(00:21):
Williams and Noel Brown and yours truly, we wanted to
share some of our favorite classic episodes this week. Remember, Noel,
you and I were both pretty astonished, I think, when
we learned that the United States used bat poop as
(00:45):
a reason to invade another country. It's it's what, I mean,
what other reason do you need? Man? There's there's hill,
there's hills in them their goals. Now that's not how
it goes. There's poop in them their hills. And it
turns out that wan bird poop also bat poop. You know,
the white stuff? Remember that was that was that voice?
(01:06):
No not boys? Was New Kids on the Block? Or
was it Milli Vanille, Milli Vanilli white? The right stuff,
the white stuff that comes out of bird's butts is
actually really really good for fertilizer and also for making explosives.
M and we were collectively stunned by this, along with
our pal good friend of the show, Casey pegram So nol,
(01:30):
you and I and Casey, we looked into what really happened.
How could you use guano as a pretext to invade
a sovereign land? And that's this episode that sure is
specifically you the United States that you were referring to,
(01:53):
and this is the thing that happens. So let's jump
right in. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. It's
(02:25):
time for the show. Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors.
I am Ben Bullin, and I am super proud of
both of us for not starting with a fart joke today.
Was that on the table. It's always on the table.
But so far we've managed to be our best selves,
I think with the farthest we've ventured into that kind
of blue territory was unicorn farts, Angel Angel farts. You know,
(02:49):
there was that, and then there was also the episode
about scientist hiding under college kids beds. But that wasn't
our fault, No, no, that was that was a historic fact.
It's true. I'm Noel, by the way, and this is
Ridiculous History. And here we are, here we are. So
you may be asking yourselves, Bennuel superproducer Casey Pegram, why
(03:11):
did you feel the need to point out that you
aren't starting with a fart joke. Well, because, Ben, we're
talking about poop poo today. We are, we are, and
we're not just talking about excrement. We're talking about a
very important sort of excrements, white gold, my man guano yep,
(03:33):
the island ingot known as bird poop Island or guano.
And we are also talking about geopolitics. We're talking about
the great game that all nations play. Yeah, what could
be better? Poopoo and geopolitics? Right? Aren't you glad you
tuned in today? So I would propose that we, as
(03:55):
the Mad Hatter said, start at the beginning. Ish, I
think that's the smart way to go about this, all right,
and then we'll probably go to the middle and sort
of a chronological way. I like it. Let's travel no
Old to the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. What
the heck is that? Yeah? So it's today three seventy
(04:16):
thousand square nautical miles of protected islands that stretch from
the wake Atoll, which is in the northwest to Jarvis
Island in the southeast, and it's basically a cluster of
small islands that is protected under the National Wildlife Refuge System.
And just to list them all off, there's Kingman Reef,
(04:38):
Palmyra Atoll, Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island and then
those are the ones under the National Wildlife Refuge System,
but they also include two others Johnston Atoll and Wake Island,
and these islands are home to tremendous levels of biodiversity.
This is also where we discovered some amazing sly silly
(05:01):
and doctors Susian bird names. Also side note, yes, we
are aware that the correct pronunciations doctor soyce, like the
ham fisted boobie, the sooty turn I made up ham
fisted boobie. I mean, the booby is real, but the
sooty turn is totally legit. And you know what, I
totally said, ham fisted boobie. I thought, sure, yeah, why not? Yes?
(05:21):
And is it anymore or less ridiculous than the rest
of them? Like the wandering tattler. I also have a
lovely laundry list of endangered or depleted species that do
quite well in the Pacific remote islands, and they include,
but are not limited to, the green and hawksbill turtle,
the pearl oyster, giant clams, reef sharks, coconut crabs, groupers,
(05:43):
hump head and Napoleon rasses. What's a rass? W r ass?
Don't know what that one is? And my personal favorite
the ever Doctor Susian bump head parrot fish. Bump head
parrot fish, yes of Doctors Susian fame. Also, typically, the
Palmyra atol and Kingman Reef have the highest coral diversity
(06:05):
levels of any other atoll or reef island in the
entire Central Pacific. Oh and ras is a type of
civet which is a really cute looking tiny mammal, A
civt civet a civet with a V like victory or vendetta. Interesting. Okay,
so it's we're saying that I think it's really important
(06:26):
for us to establish these are not just the homes
of some hilariously named birds, but for the purpose of
today's episode, we are very much focusing on those birds.
Because if you have a lot of birds in a
small area, what else do you have a lot of?
You got a lot of bird poop and bird poop
(06:47):
is the key ingredient of today's episode. Also, this reminds
me thanks to everybody who wrote to us and demystified
vinegar pie. Yeah yeah, we've moved on now to recipes
exclusively involving bird droppings and it's but it's not just
bird droppings for fun, because, as it turns out, these
(07:10):
piles of white poop were very important in the United
States establishment of imperialist laws. It turns out that if
you discover an island and you say, you know what,
I want this island to belong to the United States,
(07:35):
all you have to do is tell them, essentially that
you're going to mind bird poop on that island and
then give it to the US. There's poop in them hills.
And that's all because of the Guano Islands Act of
eighteen fifty six, which says that if a US citizens
finds some bird dukie on any rock, island or key,
(07:55):
and that location isn't already under the control of another government,
you can consider it as quote appertaining to the United States.
Quite spurious and interesting legal term that we will dive
into a little later. Right. Yes, absolutely, the Guano Island
Act of eighteen fifty six is still on the books today.
(08:18):
It's forty eight US Code, Chapter eight, and specifically, we've
got the language here. Whenever any citizen of the United
States discovers a deposit of guando on any island, rock,
or key not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government,
and not occupied by the citizens of any other government,
deep breath, and takes peaceful possession thereof, and occupies the
(08:39):
same such island rock work, he may, at the discretion
of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.
So it has to be a legit deserted islands. But
why do this, ben Why write such a convoluted and
seemingly silly sounding code that allows people to, you know,
(09:00):
basically squat on uninhabited islands and dig for pooh. That's
a great question. And it turns out that guano was
much more than just a fun thing at the time.
In the eighteen forties and even before, guano became a
(09:21):
very very powerful and precious commodity because it was a
source of saltpeter for gunpowder and was also a very
useful fertilizer. The US began importing guano in eighteen forty three,
and the UK was also importing it. By the early
eighteen fifties, US imports were more than or around I
(09:43):
guess it's fair to say seven hundred and sixty thousand tons,
and one of the big sources of this came from
Peruvian seabirds, and farmers were claiming in the eighteen forties
that using this fertilizer could increase a crop yield threefold. Right,
because these small Peruvian islands had little rainfall, intense sunlight,
(10:05):
and ultimately the perfect, perfect perfect conditions to allow this
guano to dry out in form deposits that could then
be mined like any other natural resource. Right, Yes, so
we have a guano boom, actually a guano mania, as
some people were coining it. At historian by the name
of Richard Wines called it a perfect mania because of
(10:26):
guano's potency as a fertilizer. In eighteen fifty it was
seventy six dollars a pound or one hundred and sixty
seven dollars a kilogram, which is, according to an article
from Dan Vergano in National Geographic, a quarter of the
price of actual gold. And I wasn't joking at the
top when I said white gold, I mean this was
a very valuable material that was quite sought after because
(10:50):
it was before the invention of synthetic fertilizers, which were
made of ammonia, and that didn't happen until the early
twentieth century, right, so the time Now you can find
a really great interview with Columbia law professor Christina Duffy
Burnett where she provides some historical context to this and
(11:10):
talks about the genuine crisis, the mania the boom, because
this wasn't sort of a a useless or cosmetic boom
like beanie babies. No, it turned out the fertilizer was
actually really good, or rather the guano made for a
bang up fertilizer because it was very rich in both
(11:31):
phosphorus and nitrogen. It led to a very strange market.
There were guano counterfeiters, totally fake guano flooding the market,
which makes me think somebody's going, dad, why won't you
tell me what you do for a living. It's like
the quiet son, get me more of this off white paint.
I don't know what what do you cut guano with? Yeah, like,
(11:53):
I don't know, baby laxative, Right, did they did they
have that at the time. No, no, No, it's unclear, Ben,
It's clear. The history is murky in that department. Different episode,
right for another day. But what we do find is
that this led to pretty intense diplomatic disputes. From the
piece that you quoted earlier, Knell courtesy of Richard Wines,
(12:17):
the United States did find itself in some pretty corporate
America would call healthy conversations absolutely, which in the real
world is a euphemism for intense arguments. Because this all
came to a tipping point Malcolm Gladwell style, when people
began fighting over a Caribbean island called Aves. It's an isolated,
(12:41):
uninhabited dot at the time, about three hundred and fifty
miles off the coast of Venezuela. In eighteen fifty four,
Americans landed on this island and they wanted to claim
it as US territory. They erected get this, a liberty
poll on the island to make things official, like a
(13:02):
barber pole, and they called it a liberty pole. But
when they left and returned with guano mining gear, they
found the employees of a British firm already there with
the gear mining that sweet sweet guanna. Did they have
a scrap? Well, at first they divided it up between them,
and somebody said, all right, we you know, we were
(13:24):
here first, but there's enough bird poop for everyone. And
the British said, very well, tally ho whatever you know
slang they chose to use at that time, and they thought,
pip pip, there we go, and they thought that they
would you live in peace and harmony. However, Venezuela considered
the island to be Venezuelan territory, and they were not
(13:46):
impressed by this liberty pole. They were not impressed by
this guanna. They were not impressed that the British and
the Americans were getting along. So then the scrap took place. Yes, yes, yes,
a Venezuelan warship came several months later and kicked everybody out,
and then there was a dispute that lasted for decades.
Even though long story short, it turned out that the
(14:08):
guano on this island was kind of well, I was
going to say crappy as a manure, but maybe a
better word would be substandard. So a little more time passes,
and obviously this is not a sustainable model, right, So
the US farmers start really pushing the farm lobby to
pressure Congress to get in the mix and pass some
(14:30):
kind of legal ease that would allow for basically what
we're talking about, claiming these uninhabited islands that potentially could
be sites for guano deposits under what ultimately became the
Guano Islands Act. And we've read portions of that, and
I just want to read one more little snippet because
(14:51):
I think it's pretty instructive. The discoverer shall, as soon
as practical, give notice, verified by affidavit, to the Department
of State, of such disgus very occupation and possession, describing
the island Rock or Key, and the latitude and longitude thereof,
as near as maybe, and showing that such possession was
taken in the name of the United States, and shall
furnish satisfactory evidence to the State Department that such island
(15:14):
Rock or Key was not the time the discovery thereof,
or of the taking, possession and occupation thereof by the claimants,
in the possession or occupation of any other government or
of the citizens of any other government before the same
shall be considered as appertaining to the United States, appertaining
do you want to get into appertaining? Okay, so, yes,
(15:36):
a good. I keep going back to this excellent interview
in Cabinet Magazine. Appertaining just the strict definition is to
relate to to concern, to be appropriate or applicable. And
in this interview titled Islands in the Law with again
with Christina Duffy Burnett of Columbia University of Columbia University
(16:00):
aim absolutely right, there's this concept. Okay, what is It's
not It's almost like a friends with benefits thing. I've
been thinking about this for a while. It's it's all
of the girlfriend and boyfriend, but the fun times, but
really none of the obligation protections, right right. So in
(16:20):
this interview, and you can read this in full online, folks,
Cabinet Magazine asked Professor Burnett, what does appertaining mean legally speaking?
And the professor says, that's the beauty of it. Nothing,
or rather, no one had any idea. It was a
vague way of saying, it's like ours pretty much kind
(16:41):
of sort of, And there was no previous usage of
appertaining in this context. Anywhere anywhere capital a anywhere italicized
underline highlighted anywhere. There was nothing in English about this.
It originated in property law as a way of talking
about stuff that came attached to something else. So like
(17:03):
you would you buy property on an estate and there
would be language in there about the waters appertaining to
the estate, you know, a little pond or a creek,
or the railway sidings that appertained to a railway. It
basically means we got DIBs. Yeah. Yeah, So it's a
way of taking place as possessions while being careful not
(17:25):
to call them territories, because if there's a territory that
the US owns legally, there are obligations that come along
with that and constitutional entanglements. So it's a way of
taking places without taking responsibility for them in a federal sense. Yeah.
The final section of the Code is even entitled Right
to Abandon Islands. Nothing in this chapter contained shall be
(17:48):
construed as obliging the United States to retain possession of
the islands, rocks, or keys after the guanos shall have
been removed from the same So we swoop in, we
take the poop, and then we're out right. It's like
a heist. It's like a very very slow heist. It's
very slow heist. There's not a montage for it yet.
(18:15):
So you know, this whole thing, this collection of islands
that we talked about at the top of the show,
including the Palmyra Atoll in total, referred to as the
Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The way we secured those
in the first place was as a direct result of
(18:35):
this Guano Act. But turns out there wasn't a whole
lot of guano in these islands. Yes, as a country,
the United States was so desperate to get a hold
of that sweet, sweet guano that they started just going
for places that they thought might have it because they were,
you know, tiny islands that were not inhabited by humans.
(18:59):
So logically, right, if there were no large mammals on
most of these islands, then birds would be free to
fly and poop as they will. But you need a
little more than that. Still, it didn't stop us because
counting those five islands, there were about seventy islands seven
zero islands claimed based on this law. And back to
(19:20):
that fantastic article with Professor Burnett, she describes this time
as being rampant with wildcatters and roughneckers who were just
plopping down on these islands and throwing up their freedom
polls and going to town. And you know there would
be some kind of shifty elements in all of this
(19:41):
because it was kind of the wild West. I mean,
there is a provision in the Guano Act that says,
you know, laws broken while on these islands follow the
same laws as governed the high seas. If you're on
like a merchant vessel, for example, and you're on the
high season international waters, you still are held accountable to
American laws, such as the case here. But even still,
(20:04):
it's sort of like that episode we did on Antarctica
where you're so isolated and like out of the view
of the eyes of the law of your home country
that who knows what could happen. I want to dig
a little deeper and see if there were any crazy
guano related murders. Oh man, there are. There are so
many strange anecdotes about life on remote islands. I do
(20:26):
want to recommend, by the way, one of my favorite
books for anybody interested in reading anecdotes about remote islands.
It's The Atlas of Remote Islands by an author named
Judith Schlansky. And oh, I can't say enough about it,
but there are a couple of guano anecdotes in there,
if I recall correctly, and Nol is absolutely accurate in
(20:47):
that description, because there were freelancers who wanted to be despots,
you know, and say like, I'm the King of bird poop. Guano,
by the way, can also describe bat poop, but in
the case of the Guano Act, it's more specifically talking
about birds. There were also legitimate pirate types, you know,
(21:09):
cowboys with ships, Professor Burnett calls them. And one of
the tricky things about this is that the process for
acquiring new territory in the history of the United States,
it's never really been a straightforward process, and often you
will see that there were differences in the kind of
(21:32):
territory or land acquired, like is it incorporated unincorporated? What
does that even mean? Right? So, this Act actually was
introduced in eighteen fifty six by William Henry Seward, who
was a senator at the time, and you may know
him as actually the person who bought Alaska when he
was the Secretary of State during the Andrew Johnson administration,
(21:54):
famously referred to as Seward's folly. Why because people thought
it was a bad idea oh, that makes sense. But
as it turns out, despite what this act could potentially
have done for US farmers, there was a lot of
controversy surrounding it, and it specifically was about the language.
And in the original version the term that was used
(22:15):
were territory and sovereignty and things like that. But people
had issues with this because it was much more specifically
imperialist and that was felt a little too English perhaps,
and I think people that kind of freaked people out
a little bit. So that stuff kind of got the acts,
and that's where that appertain word came in, that very
(22:38):
legally just vague term that, according to Professor Burnett, pretty
much means absolutely nothing. But this whole idea of claiming
islands really set the tone for US imperialism abroad, and
that's where the terms incorporated and unincorporate rated territories originated.
(23:03):
Incorporated territories means that they are on the road to
becoming a proper state, like we're going to make an
honest territory of you, and you know, tie the knot.
And it seems to me like a prerequisite for something
being considered in this light would be that it had
a decent amount of people already living there that we
(23:25):
could identify with. Oh right, yeah, we be in the
US at the time. Okay, we should just say it.
They probably wanted a healthy population or a large population
of white people or people descended from European ancestry, right,
(23:45):
due to the prevalent racism at the time. What it
unincorporated mean though, Yeah, unincorporated was the fun one because
that basically gave the US the leeway to say, you
know what, we're as a part of the US, but
it's not of the US. It's not in the US.
It's not a state. We don't claim it, but we
(24:05):
are going to occupy it in the same way we
would occupy like in Iraq, for example, where we stuck
around like we don't want to be here, but we've
got to be here to keep the peace. And sometimes
that gets complicated over time, right, but as language allows
for those cases. Yeah, and in this case it's it's
not a state, but we have to be here to
(24:26):
keep the bird poop piece. It's more of a state
of mind. It's more of a state of mind. Well
put so, one of the big questions now when the
present day would be is this still going on? Does
the United States still have things like this, and the
answer is yes, yes, it absolutely does. I mean things
(24:46):
like the bird poop lack. Yeah, that's still on the books.
And then there's also the Palmyra a toll and this
is almost south of the Hawaiian Islands, about third the
way between Hawaii and American Samoa. The nearest continent is
thirty four thousand miles away in the northeast, and it's well,
(25:12):
technically it's an archipelago, but they're pretty it's pretty sparsely populated,
caretaker biologist. And it has one of the distinctions of
being a unique incorporated territory. And all that means is
that it is not a state, nor is it part
of a state, but it is part of the United
(25:34):
States but doesn't. But I thought I thought the incorporated
was the one where we have the intention of making
you a state. Is that language probably shifted over time?
I know, the stuff can be somewhat malleable, right right,
And Burnett addresses this too and says, you know, there's
been a lot of controversy and discussion about what this
means legally speaking, and in some cases this is a
(25:56):
very very divisive issue, and she points this out as
well that in the case of Palmyra, this sounds strange, right,
because didn't we just say that incorporated is meant to
imply that this area, whatever this piece of land is,
is on the way to statehood, to being the fifty
first state or something. Actually found somebody in a message
(26:17):
board just now putting it pretty well when saying that
it is considered an integral part of the United States
that in some way very much matters to our identity
and possibly commerce in any number of ways. But Palmyra
in particular is interesting because it was only just bought
by the Nature Conservancy in two thousand. It was bought
(26:41):
from the fullered Leo family and they actually had recently
turned down an offer to turn it into a nuclear
waste site and the casino. Oh sure if they mean
at the same time or those are two separate offers,
but that'd be interesting. But I'm kind of glad that
it ended up where where it's because it's beautiful. You
can look up pictures of it, and I think you
(27:03):
can visit it. Oh yeah, you can visit a lot
of these places. They're just so remote and in many
cases don't have too much of an infrastructure. But you know,
what I like about a nuclear waste casino combo. You're
gambling either way exactly. So here's another example of how
(27:25):
this applies to the present day. There is an island
called Navasa and its ownership is still disputed between the
US and Haiti. In one case, historically, workers on the
island rioted and killed five supervisors to protest horrendous working conditions,
you know, ultra high prices at a company store, which
(27:47):
we could talk about in a future episode, docked pay,
long hours, and federal juries. Convicted forty participants in the
crimes anywhere from murder to rioting through you were convicted
of murder, sentenced to die. And the problem is that
this case had really strong racial overtones. The managers were
(28:09):
all white, the workers were universally black people. The three
people convicted of death, George Key, Edward Smith, Henry Jones,
they appealed. They got all the way to the Supreme Court,
and they didn't dispute the facts of the case, like
the murder of the rioting all that, but they claimed
that the Guando Island Act was unconstitutional, it didn't jibe
(28:30):
with the international law standard of territorial acquisition, and Haiti
had not seeded possession of the island, and so the
court ruled against them, saying it was constitutional, but they
didn't state whether or not the island actually belonged to
the US, just that there was jurisdiction over it. So
(28:52):
they kind of again tabled and dodged this question, and
then more legal cases come up. In nineteen ninety seven,
the US versus Warren confirmed that Navasa has appertained to
the US since eighteen fifty seven and the country has
never given it up. So this is still real and
(29:12):
relevant stuff. And should you find yourself on a desert island,
check check for guando. Yeah. I wanted to end on
some advice. Did you know what ambergris is? Yeah, it's
from the bellies of Oh no, it's it's from Wales.
Yeah right. They poop it out it like I think
it's like it's formed in their digestive track and they
poop it out and it's like really really, really valuable.
(29:35):
I think it's used to make a perfume refume stuff.
But if you find bird poop or ambergris on your
deserted island, give us a call. Let's let's talk. Well,
we'll do some business. I know a guy. You know,
I know, a guy who can move poop, and ambergris
you a guy an ambergris associated. We also do want
to point out another reason that this stuff matters is
(29:56):
that guando mining can be tremendously damaging to an environment.
We always gotta handles it to downer. That's I know,
I just you know, raping and pillaging. Uh yeah. And
one big case of this would be, uh the island
of Naru, which is the world's smallest, most isolated public
(30:18):
It's about eight square miles the entire place and as
as it turns out, neighboring island Zanado. Yeah yeah, yeah,
from the from the roller skating movie. Right, So so
the neighboring island of Xanadu. As we assure you this
is a completely slash, mostly true fact. Their primary export
(30:38):
is films about roller skating, and Naru's primary export for
a long time was guano. But we all know that
it is unsustainable to pin an entire nation's economy on
a single export. So should you find yourself in uh
in possession of a desert island, and you want to
call Noel and I for legal advice, we will gladly
(31:02):
inform you that we are not lawyers, but we'd love
to visit you. Hit us up at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com. You can also find us on social media
via Facebook, Instagram. We've got a old Friendster page from
the early two thousands that's still kicking. We've got a
Ello yeah Ello Yeah, yeah, I had one of those. Uh,
(31:24):
and we do too, Ello dot ridiculous dot never mind.
Did you mess with Ello? Yeah? Yeah, briefly because it
was like the low the low maintenance social network. Yeah,
it was this low maintenance social network, and it turned
out that, uh, it became very low maintenance because no
one uses it. Well, that's not around anymore. We do
have Facebook, we have Instagram. We're still you know, dicking
(31:47):
around with our Pinterest board. We go back and forth,
you know, it's like, should we get a Pinterest board?
Should we just get a wee to board? Yeah? We
need some kind of board though in our social media entourage. Um.
But most importantly, we'll be back soon next week. Maybe
it's just one more day. I'm not sure where this
episode falls, but there will be more ridiculous history coming
(32:08):
your way, and we hope that you will join us there.
Casey could we have a little island music. For more
(32:38):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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