December 7, 2017 • 30 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 in to learn more.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
It's time for the show. Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors.
I am Ben Bulan, 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,
(00:49):
there was that, and then there was also the episode
about scientists hiding under college kids beds. But that wasn't
our fault. No, No, that was that was a historical fact.
It's true. I'm no, by the way, and this is
ridiculous history. And here we are, here we are. So
you may be asking yourselves, Bennal superproducer Casey Pegram, why
(01:11):
did you feel the need to point out that you
aren't starting with a fart joke? Well, because, Ben, we're
talking about poo poo today. We are, we are, and
we're not just talking about excrement. We're talking about a
very important sort of excrement, white gold my man guano yep,
(01:32):
the island inget known as bird poop or guano. And
we're also talking about geopolitics. We're talking about the great
game that all nations play. Yeah, what could be better?
Poo poo and geo politics? Right, aren't you glad you
tuned in today? So I would propose that we, as
(01:54):
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 the
old to the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. What
the heck is that? Yeah? So it's today thousand square
(02:16):
nautical miles of protected islands that stretch from uh the
Wake a Toll which is in the northwest, to Jarvis
Island in the southeast. And it's basically a cluster of
small islands UM that is protected under the National Wildlife
Refuge System. And just to list them all off, there's
King and Reef, Palmyra Atoll, Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island,
(02:41):
and then those are the ones under the National Wildlife
Refuge System. They also include two um others, Johnston a
Toll and Wake Island. And these islands are home to
tremendous levels of bio diversity. This is also where we
discovered some amazingly s lee and Dr. Susian bird names.
(03:03):
Also side note, yes, we are aware that the correct
pronunciations Dr. Soyce like the ham fisted booby, the sooty
turn I made up ham fisted Booby. I mean, the
booby is real, but the city turn is totally legit.
And you know what, I totally said, ham fisted booby.
I I thought, sure, yeah, why not? Yes? Is it
anymore or less ridiculous than the rest of them? Like
(03:24):
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 hawks, bill turtle, the pearl oyster,
giant clams, reef sharks, coconut crabs, groupers, hump head and
napoleon rasses. What's a rass w r A s S.
(03:47):
I don't know what that one is, and my personal favorite,
the ever Dr. Seussian bump head parrot fish. Bump head
parrot fish. Yes of Dr. Susi and fame. Also, specifically,
the palm myra atoll and Kingman reef have the highest
coral diversity levels of any other atoll or reef island
(04:08):
in the entire Central Pacific. Oh and uh Arras is
a type of civit which is a really cute looking
tiny mammal, a civet civet, a civet with a V
like victory or vendetta. Interesting. So it's we're saying that
I think it's really important for us to establish these
are not just the homes of some hilariously named birds,
(04:32):
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 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
(04:56):
moved on now to recipes exclusively in aolving bird droppings
and it's but it's not just bird droppings for fun, because,
as it turns out, these piles of of white poop
were very important in uh the United States establishment of
(05:18):
imperialist laws. It turns out that if you discover at
island and you say, you know what, I want this
island to belong to the United States. All you have
to do is tell them, essentially that you're going to
(05:40):
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 efty six,
which says that if a U. S citizens finds some
bird dukie on any rock, island or key, and that
location isn't already under the control of another government, can
(06:00):
consider it as quote appertaining to the United States. A
quite spurious and interesting legal term that we will dive
into a little later. Right. Yes, absolutely, Uh. The Guando
Island Act of eighteen fifty six is still on the
books today. It's forty eight US Code, Chapter eight and uh. Specifically,
(06:22):
we've got the language here. Whenever any citizen of the
United States discovers a deposit of guando on any island,
rock worky 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
same such island rock work, He may, at the discretion
of the president be considered as appertaining to the United States,
(06:45):
so it has to be a legit deserted islands. But
why do this? Ben why right, such a convoluted and
seemingly silly sounding code um that allows people to, you know,
basically squat on uninhabited islands and dig for pooh. That's
(07:05):
that's a great question. And uh, 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 very very powerful and precious commodity because it
was a source of saltpeter for gunpowder and was also
(07:28):
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 guess it's fair to say, uh, seven
hundred and sixty thousand tons. And one of the big
(07:49):
sources of this came from Peruvian sea birds, and farmers
were claiming in the eighteen forties that using this fertilizer
could increase a crop yield threefold because as these small
Peruvian islands had little rainfall, intense sunlight and ultimately the perfect, perfect,
perfect conditions to allow this guano to dry out informed
(08:11):
deposits that could then be mined like any other natural resource. Right, Yes,
so we have a guando 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 guano's potency as a fertilizer. In eighteen fifty, it
was seventy six dollars a pound or a hundred and
(08:32):
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 it was before the invention of synthetic fertilizers which
(08:54):
were made of ammonia, and that didn't happen until the
early twentieth century, right so at 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 talks about the genuine crisis the mania the boom,
(09:15):
because this wasn't sort of a 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 phosphorus and nitrogen. It led to a very
strange market. There were guando counterfeiters, totally fake guano flooding
(09:40):
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 guanna with? Yeah, like I don't know baby laxative? Right?
Did they did they have that at the time? No, No, No,
it's it's unclear, Ben, it's unclear the history. He is
(10:00):
murky in that department. Different episode, right for another day.
But what we what we do find is that this
led to pretty intense diplomatic disputes. From the piece that
you quoted earlier, Noel, courtesy of Richard wines Uh, the
United States did find itself in some pretty like corporate
(10:21):
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 Avis. It's an isolated,
uninhabited dot at the time, about three fifty miles off
(10:44):
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 officials like a barber pole,
and they called it a liberty pole. But when they
(11:06):
left and returned with guano mining gear, they found the
employees of a British firm already there with the gear
mining that sweet sweet juanna. Did they have a scrap? Well,
at first they divided it up between them, and somebody said,
all right, we you know, we were here first, but
there's enough bird poop for everyone. And the British said,
(11:27):
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 know,
live in peace and harmony. However, Venezuela considered the island
to be Venezuelan territory, and they were not impressed by
this liberty pole. They were not impressed by this guana.
(11:49):
They were not impressed that the British and the Americans
were getting along. So then the scrap took place. Yes, yes, yes, uh.
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
guano on this island was kind of well, I was
(12:11):
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
kind of legal ease that would allow for basically what
(12:34):
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
I think it's pretty instructive. Um, the discoverer shall, as
soon as practical, give notice, verified by affidavit, to the
(12:57):
Department of State, of such discovery, 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
Rock or Key was not at the time of discovery thereof,
or of the taking possession and occupation thereof by the
(13:18):
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, good.
I I keep going back to this, uh, this excellent
interview in Cabinet Magazine appertaining just the strict definition is
(13:45):
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 face him absolutely right. There's this this concept. Okay,
what is it's not? It's almost like a friends with
(14:07):
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 protection. Right.
So in this interview, and you can read this in
full online, Folks Cabinet Magazine asked Professor Burnett, what does
(14:27):
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 of sort of. And there was no
previous usage of appertaining in this context anywhere anywhere, capital a, anywhere, italicized, underline, highlighted, anywhere.
(14:53):
There was nothing in English about this. It originated in
property law as a way of talking about off that
came attached to something else. So like you would, you know,
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
(15:14):
appertained to a railway. It basically means we got DIBs yeah. Yeah,
So it's a way of taking places possessions while being
careful not 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
(15:37):
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 construed as obliging the United States
to retain possession of the islands. Rocks are keys after
the Guanos shall have been removed from the same So
we swoop in, we take the poop, and then we're
(15:59):
out right. It's like a heist. It's like a very um,
a very slow heist, very slow heist. There's not a
montage for it yet. So you know, this whole thing um,
this collection of islands that we talked about at the
top of the show, including the Palmyra atoll um in total,
(16:24):
referred to as the Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The
way we secured those in the first place was as
a direct result of 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
(16:45):
get ahold 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. So logically, right, if there were no
you know, large mammals on most of these islands, the
(17:05):
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 that fantastic article with Professor Burnett, she
describes this time um as being rampant with wildcatters and
(17:30):
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 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.
(17:52):
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, 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
(18:14):
want to dig a little deeper and see if there
were any crazy guana related murders. Oh man, there are.
There are so many strange anecdotes about life on remote islands.
I do 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
(18:36):
author named Judith Shlansky. And oh, I can't say enough
about it, but there are a couple of Guando anecdotes
in there, if I recall correctly, And Nol is absolutely
accurate in 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
(18:58):
describe bat poop, but in the case of the Guano Act,
it's it's more specifically talking about birds. There were also
legitimate pirate types, you know, cowboys with ships, Professor Burnett Coulson.
And one of the tricky things about this is that
the process for acquiring new territory in the history of
(19:21):
the United States, it's never really been a straightforward process,
and often you will see that there were differences in
the kind of 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
(19:44):
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 UH during
the Andrew Johnson administration, 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
(20:06):
was a lot of controversy surrounding it, and it specifically
was about the language. And in the original version the
term that was used 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
(20:28):
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 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
(20:51):
for US imperialism abroad. Um, and that's where the terms
incorporated and uninc oporated territories originated. 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
(21:12):
and um, 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 could identify with. Yeah,
well you be in the u S at the time, Okay,
(21:33):
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 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
(21:55):
the leeway to say, you know what we're ues is
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 are going to occupy it
in the same way we would occupy like a 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,
(22:18):
but this language allows for those cases. Yeah, And in
this case it's it's not a state, but we have
to be here to 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 in the present day would be is this
still going on? Does the United States still have things
(22:43):
like this? And the answer is yes, yes, it absolutely does.
I mean things like the bird poop block. Yeah, that's
still on the books. Uh. And then there's also the
Palmyra a toll and this is almost south of the
Hawaii and Islands. It's about third of the way between
Hawaii and American Samoa. The nearest continent is thirty four
(23:09):
thousand miles away in the northeast, and it's well, technically
it's an archipelago, but they're pretty it's pretty sparsely populated
caretaker biologists. And it has one of the distinctions of
being a unique incorporated territory. And all that means is
(23:29):
that it is not a state, nor is it part
of a state, but it is part of the United 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
(23:50):
lot of controversy and discussion about what this means legally speaking,
and in some cases this is a very very divisive issue. Uh.
And she points this out as well that in the
case of palm Ira, this sounds strange, right because didn't
we just say that incorporated is meant to imply that
(24:11):
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 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
(24:31):
commerce in 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 from
the fuller Leo family and they actually had recently turned
down an offer to turn it into a nuclear waste
site and the casino. Sure if they mean at the
(24:54):
same time or those are two separate offers, but that'd
be it'd be interesting. But I'm kind of glad that
it ended up where where where it's because it's beautiful.
You can look up pictures of it, and I think
you 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.
(25:16):
You're gambling either way. So here's another example of how
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
(25:39):
island rioted and killed five supervisors to protest horrendous working conditions,
you know, uh, ultra high prices at a company store,
which we could talk about in the future episode Doctor Pay,
long hours and Federal juries. Convicted forty participants in the
crimes anywhere for murder to rioting. Three were convicted of murder,
(26:03):
sentenced to die. And the problem is that this case
had really strong racial overtones. The managers were 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
(26:24):
murder of the rioting all that, but they claimed that
the Guando Island Act was unconstitutional. It didn't jibe 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
(26:45):
state whether or not the island actually belonged to the US,
just that there was jurisdiction over it. So they kind
of again tabled and dodged this question. And then more
legal case has come up. In nine the US versus.
Warren confirmed that NAVASA has appertained to the U S
(27:08):
since eighteen fifty seven and the country has never given
it up. So this is still real and 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, right. They
(27:30):
poop it out of 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. I think it's
used to make perfume perfume stuff. But if you find
bird poop or ambergrides on your deserted island, give us
a call. Let's let's talk. We'll just we'll do some business.
I know a guy, you know, I know a guy
who can move poop and ambergris. You know a guy
(27:52):
in ambergris associated. We also do want to point out
another reason that this stuff matters is that guano mining
can be tremendous lead damaging to an environment. Well, he's
gotta handles it down. That's not it's important. I know.
It just you know, raping and pillaging. Uh yeah. And
one big case of this would be uh the island
(28:15):
of Naru, which is the world's smallest, most isolated public
It's about eight square miles the entire place, and as
as it turns out, neighboring island uh Zanna do Yeah
yeah yeah from the from the roller skating movie. Right. So,
so the neighboring island of Zanna do as we assure you,
(28:36):
this is a completely slash, mostly true fact. Their primary
export is uh films about roller skating, and the rus
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
(28:59):
you want call Noel and I for legal advice, we
will gladly inform you that we are not lawyers, but
we'd love to visit you. Hit us up at Ridiculous
at how stuff works dot com. You can also find
us on social media via Facebook, uh, Instagram. We've got
a old friends your page from the early two thousands
(29:20):
that's still kicking. We've got a ello yeah hello, yeah,
I had one of those and uh 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
(29:43):
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 around with our Pinterest board. We go back and forth,
you know, it's like, should we get a Pinterest board,
should just get a wee to board? Yeah? You need
some kind of board though in our social media entourage. Um.
But most importantly, we'll be back soon next week. Maybe
(30:04):
it's just one more day. I'm not sure where this
episode falls, but there will be more ridiculous history coming
your way and we hope that you will join us there. Casey,
could we have a little Island music imp
It's time for the show. Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors.
I am Ben Bulan, 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,
(00:49):
there was that, and then there was also the episode
about scientists hiding under college kids beds. But that wasn't
our fault. No, No, that was that was a historical fact.
It's true. I'm no, by the way, and this is
ridiculous history. And here we are, here we are. So
you may be asking yourselves, Bennal superproducer Casey Pegram, why
(01:11):
did you feel the need to point out that you
aren't starting with a fart joke? Well, because, Ben, we're
talking about poo poo today. We are, we are, and
we're not just talking about excrement. We're talking about a
very important sort of excrement, white gold my man guano yep,
(01:32):
the island inget known as bird poop or guano. And
we're also talking about geopolitics. We're talking about the great
game that all nations play. Yeah, what could be better?
Poo poo and geo politics? Right, aren't you glad you
tuned in today? So I would propose that we, as
(01:54):
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 the
old to the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. What
the heck is that? Yeah? So it's today thousand square
(02:16):
nautical miles of protected islands that stretch from uh the
Wake a Toll which is in the northwest, to Jarvis
Island in the southeast. And it's basically a cluster of
small islands UM that is protected under the National Wildlife
Refuge System. And just to list them all off, there's
King and Reef, Palmyra Atoll, Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island,
(02:41):
and then those are the ones under the National Wildlife
Refuge System. They also include two um others, Johnston a
Toll and Wake Island. And these islands are home to
tremendous levels of bio diversity. This is also where we
discovered some amazingly s lee and Dr. Susian bird names.
(03:03):
Also side note, yes, we are aware that the correct
pronunciations Dr. Soyce like the ham fisted booby, the sooty
turn I made up ham fisted Booby. I mean, the
booby is real, but the city turn is totally legit.
And you know what, I totally said, ham fisted booby.
I I thought, sure, yeah, why not? Yes? Is it
anymore or less ridiculous than the rest of them? Like
(03:24):
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 hawks, bill turtle, the pearl oyster,
giant clams, reef sharks, coconut crabs, groupers, hump head and
napoleon rasses. What's a rass w r A s S.
(03:47):
I don't know what that one is, and my personal favorite,
the ever Dr. Seussian bump head parrot fish. Bump head
parrot fish. Yes of Dr. Susi and fame. Also, specifically,
the palm myra atoll and Kingman reef have the highest
coral diversity levels of any other atoll or reef island
(04:08):
in the entire Central Pacific. Oh and uh Arras is
a type of civit which is a really cute looking
tiny mammal, a civet civet, a civet with a V
like victory or vendetta. Interesting. So it's we're saying that
I think it's really important for us to establish these
are not just the homes of some hilariously named birds,
(04:32):
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 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
(04:56):
moved on now to recipes exclusively in aolving bird droppings
and it's but it's not just bird droppings for fun, because,
as it turns out, these piles of of white poop
were very important in uh the United States establishment of
(05:18):
imperialist laws. It turns out that if you discover at
island and you say, you know what, I want this
island to belong to the United States. All you have
to do is tell them, essentially that you're going to
(05:40):
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 efty six,
which says that if a U. S citizens finds some
bird dukie on any rock, island or key, and that
location isn't already under the control of another government, can
(06:00):
consider it as quote appertaining to the United States. A
quite spurious and interesting legal term that we will dive
into a little later. Right. Yes, absolutely, Uh. The Guando
Island Act of eighteen fifty six is still on the
books today. It's forty eight US Code, Chapter eight and uh. Specifically,
(06:22):
we've got the language here. Whenever any citizen of the
United States discovers a deposit of guando on any island,
rock worky 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
same such island rock work, He may, at the discretion
of the president be considered as appertaining to the United States,
(06:45):
so it has to be a legit deserted islands. But
why do this? Ben why right, such a convoluted and
seemingly silly sounding code um that allows people to, you know,
basically squat on uninhabited islands and dig for pooh. That's
(07:05):
that's a great question. And uh, 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 very very powerful and precious commodity because it
was a source of saltpeter for gunpowder and was also
(07:28):
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 guess it's fair to say, uh, seven
hundred and sixty thousand tons. And one of the big
(07:49):
sources of this came from Peruvian sea birds, and farmers
were claiming in the eighteen forties that using this fertilizer
could increase a crop yield threefold because as these small
Peruvian islands had little rainfall, intense sunlight and ultimately the perfect, perfect,
perfect conditions to allow this guano to dry out informed
(08:11):
deposits that could then be mined like any other natural resource. Right, Yes,
so we have a guando 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 guano's potency as a fertilizer. In eighteen fifty, it
was seventy six dollars a pound or a hundred and
(08:32):
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 it was before the invention of synthetic fertilizers which
(08:54):
were made of ammonia, and that didn't happen until the
early twentieth century, right so at 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 talks about the genuine crisis the mania the boom,
(09:15):
because this wasn't sort of a 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 phosphorus and nitrogen. It led to a very
strange market. There were guando counterfeiters, totally fake guano flooding
(09:40):
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 guanna with? Yeah, like I don't know baby laxative? Right?
Did they did they have that at the time? No, No, No,
it's it's unclear, Ben, it's unclear the history. He is
(10:00):
murky in that department. Different episode, right for another day.
But what we what we do find is that this
led to pretty intense diplomatic disputes. From the piece that
you quoted earlier, Noel, courtesy of Richard wines Uh, the
United States did find itself in some pretty like corporate
(10:21):
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 Avis. It's an isolated,
uninhabited dot at the time, about three fifty miles off
(10:44):
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 officials like a barber pole,
and they called it a liberty pole. But when they
(11:06):
left and returned with guano mining gear, they found the
employees of a British firm already there with the gear
mining that sweet sweet juanna. Did they have a scrap? Well,
at first they divided it up between them, and somebody said,
all right, we you know, we were here first, but
there's enough bird poop for everyone. And the British said,
(11:27):
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 know,
live in peace and harmony. However, Venezuela considered the island
to be Venezuelan territory, and they were not impressed by
this liberty pole. They were not impressed by this guana.
(11:49):
They were not impressed that the British and the Americans
were getting along. So then the scrap took place. Yes, yes, yes, uh.
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
guano on this island was kind of well, I was
(12:11):
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
kind of legal ease that would allow for basically what
(12:34):
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
I think it's pretty instructive. Um, the discoverer shall, as
soon as practical, give notice, verified by affidavit, to the
(12:57):
Department of State, of such discovery, 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
Rock or Key was not at the time of discovery thereof,
or of the taking possession and occupation thereof by the
(13:18):
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, good.
I I keep going back to this, uh, this excellent
interview in Cabinet Magazine appertaining just the strict definition is
(13:45):
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 face him absolutely right. There's this this concept. Okay,
what is it's not? It's almost like a friends with
(14:07):
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 protection. Right.
So in this interview, and you can read this in
full online, Folks Cabinet Magazine asked Professor Burnett, what does
(14:27):
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 of sort of. And there was no
previous usage of appertaining in this context anywhere anywhere, capital a, anywhere, italicized, underline, highlighted, anywhere.
(14:53):
There was nothing in English about this. It originated in
property law as a way of talking about off that
came attached to something else. So like you would, you know,
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
(15:14):
appertained to a railway. It basically means we got DIBs yeah. Yeah,
So it's a way of taking places possessions while being
careful not 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
(15:37):
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 construed as obliging the United States
to retain possession of the islands. Rocks are keys after
the Guanos shall have been removed from the same So
we swoop in, we take the poop, and then we're
(15:59):
out right. It's like a heist. It's like a very um,
a very slow heist, very slow heist. There's not a
montage for it yet. So you know, this whole thing um,
this collection of islands that we talked about at the
top of the show, including the Palmyra atoll um in total,
(16:24):
referred to as the Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The
way we secured those in the first place was as
a direct result of 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
(16:45):
get ahold 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. So logically, right, if there were no
you know, large mammals on most of these islands, the
(17:05):
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 that fantastic article with Professor Burnett, she
describes this time um as being rampant with wildcatters and
(17:30):
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 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.
(17:52):
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, 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
(18:14):
want to dig a little deeper and see if there
were any crazy guana related murders. Oh man, there are.
There are so many strange anecdotes about life on remote islands.
I do 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
(18:36):
author named Judith Shlansky. And oh, I can't say enough
about it, but there are a couple of Guando anecdotes
in there, if I recall correctly, And Nol is absolutely
accurate in 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
(18:58):
describe bat poop, but in the case of the Guano Act,
it's it's more specifically talking about birds. There were also
legitimate pirate types, you know, cowboys with ships, Professor Burnett Coulson.
And one of the tricky things about this is that
the process for acquiring new territory in the history of
(19:21):
the United States, it's never really been a straightforward process,
and often you will see that there were differences in
the kind of 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
(19:44):
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 UH during
the Andrew Johnson administration, 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
(20:06):
was a lot of controversy surrounding it, and it specifically
was about the language. And in the original version the
term that was used 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
(20:28):
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 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
(20:51):
for US imperialism abroad. Um, and that's where the terms
incorporated and uninc oporated territories originated. 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
(21:12):
and um, 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 could identify with. Yeah,
well you be in the u S at the time, Okay,
(21:33):
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 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
(21:55):
the leeway to say, you know what we're ues is
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 are going to occupy it
in the same way we would occupy like a 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,
(22:18):
but this language allows for those cases. Yeah, And in
this case it's it's not a state, but we have
to be here to 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 in the present day would be is this
still going on? Does the United States still have things
(22:43):
like this? And the answer is yes, yes, it absolutely does.
I mean things like the bird poop block. Yeah, that's
still on the books. Uh. And then there's also the
Palmyra a toll and this is almost south of the
Hawaii and Islands. It's about third of the way between
Hawaii and American Samoa. The nearest continent is thirty four
(23:09):
thousand miles away in the northeast, and it's well, technically
it's an archipelago, but they're pretty it's pretty sparsely populated
caretaker biologists. And it has one of the distinctions of
being a unique incorporated territory. And all that means is
(23:29):
that it is not a state, nor is it part
of a state, but it is part of the United 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
(23:50):
lot of controversy and discussion about what this means legally speaking,
and in some cases this is a very very divisive issue. Uh.
And she points this out as well that in the
case of palm Ira, this sounds strange, right because didn't
we just say that incorporated is meant to imply that
(24:11):
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 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
(24:31):
commerce in 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 from
the fuller Leo family and they actually had recently turned
down an offer to turn it into a nuclear waste
site and the casino. Sure if they mean at the
(24:54):
same time or those are two separate offers, but that'd
be it'd be interesting. But I'm kind of glad that
it ended up where where where it's because it's beautiful.
You can look up pictures of it, and I think
you 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.
(25:16):
You're gambling either way. So here's another example of how
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
(25:39):
island rioted and killed five supervisors to protest horrendous working conditions,
you know, uh, ultra high prices at a company store,
which we could talk about in the future episode Doctor Pay,
long hours and Federal juries. Convicted forty participants in the
crimes anywhere for murder to rioting. Three were convicted of murder,
(26:03):
sentenced to die. And the problem is that this case
had really strong racial overtones. The managers were 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
(26:24):
murder of the rioting all that, but they claimed that
the Guando Island Act was unconstitutional. It didn't jibe 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
(26:45):
state whether or not the island actually belonged to the US,
just that there was jurisdiction over it. So they kind
of again tabled and dodged this question. And then more
legal case has come up. In nine the US versus.
Warren confirmed that NAVASA has appertained to the U S
(27:08):
since eighteen fifty seven and the country has never given
it up. So this is still real and 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, right. They
(27:30):
poop it out of 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. I think it's
used to make perfume perfume stuff. But if you find
bird poop or ambergrides on your deserted island, give us
a call. Let's let's talk. We'll just we'll do some business.
I know a guy, you know, I know a guy
who can move poop and ambergris. You know a guy
(27:52):
in ambergris associated. We also do want to point out
another reason that this stuff matters is that guano mining
can be tremendous lead damaging to an environment. Well, he's
gotta handles it down. That's not it's important. I know.
It just you know, raping and pillaging. Uh yeah. And
one big case of this would be uh the island
(28:15):
of Naru, which is the world's smallest, most isolated public
It's about eight square miles the entire place, and as
as it turns out, neighboring island uh Zanna do Yeah
yeah yeah from the from the roller skating movie. Right. So,
so the neighboring island of Zanna do as we assure you,
(28:36):
this is a completely slash, mostly true fact. Their primary
export is uh films about roller skating, and the rus
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
(28:59):
you want call Noel and I for legal advice, we
will gladly inform you that we are not lawyers, but
we'd love to visit you. Hit us up at Ridiculous
at how stuff works dot com. You can also find
us on social media via Facebook, uh, Instagram. We've got
a old friends your page from the early two thousands
(29:20):
that's still kicking. We've got a ello yeah hello, yeah,
I had one of those and uh 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
(29:43):
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 around with our Pinterest board. We go back and forth,
you know, it's like, should we get a Pinterest board,
should just get a wee to board? Yeah? You need
some kind of board though in our social media entourage. Um.
But most importantly, we'll be back soon next week. Maybe
(30:04):
it's just one more day. I'm not sure where this
episode falls, but there will be more ridiculous history coming
your way and we hope that you will join us there. Casey,
could we have a little Island music imp
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.