The boundary between Minnesota and Ontario appears to pass through a couple of tiny unnamed islands in the Rainy River. The boundary generally avoids passing through islands, so I suspect these may be little more than sandbars that have grown up since the boudary was established.
Just opposite the mouth of the Little Fork River near Pelland, Minnesota. It’s at about 48 degrees 32 minutes North; 93 degrees, 35 minutes West.
Just north of Twentyfive Island 48 deg 21 min N, 92 deg 6 min W
Britain itself seems like an obvious ommission, since there is no water boundary between Scotland, England and Wales. Exactly how many countries exist on mainland Britain is debatable and a litle to complex for me to pretend I understand it.
We could also throw Cuba in here as a divided island with both US and Cuban portions.
Does the USA actually claim sovereignty over that part of Cuba that it occupies? Or is it simply a tenant that Cuba would love to get rid of, but can’t?
An interesting historical example: the Condominium of the New Hebrides, which was jointly ruled by Britain and France from 1906 to 1980. The colonial powers didn’t split up the islands now known as Vanuatu – that would have been too simple. Instead, as this brief history explains, there were simply two side-by-side bureaucracies. Tourists had to go through customs twice; stamps were available with either French or English text; and from 1952 until independence, many islanders thought that the co-heads of state – the French President and the British Queen Elizabeth II – were married but living apart, with their squabbles echoed in the conflicting policies and procedures of the resident administrations.
It’s vague, and the US government seems detemrined to keep it that way.
For example prisoners kept at Gutananamo are not in any way under Cuban judicial authority and absolutley under US authority. that’s very different to the situation where someone simply rents propert in Cuba. They remain subject to CUban law.
The other problem is that, IIRC, the US doesn’t recognise any current Cuban administration as legitimate, so the only country with any sovereignty over Gauntanomo is the US.
The practical and legal distinction between that state of affairs and the area being US poprerty is lost on me.
If you want to be silly about it, take any Island nation, say, Iceland. They undoubtedly have embassies - those are technically foreign soil, so they are sharing their island with a lot of countries.
I don’t see it as silly, nor do I see it being comparable to embassies. While embassies are technically foreign soil they exist only on the sufferance of the host nation. Any time the host nation says the embassy has to be moved or shut down. The embassy is maintained through goodwill, not enforcement of claim.
That is not in any way comparable to the situation in Cuba where the US section exists in direct conflict with the express wishes of the ‘host’ nation. It exists solely because the US can enforce its claim and nothing more. In that respect it is no different from the existence of PNG or Northern Ireland where one party with claim to the island would remove the other if it could.
I’m not entirely sure about this, but I suspect the island of Svalbard (very far north in the world) is partly owned by Norway and partly by Russia.
…Actually, it’s looking more and more as though it’s all part of Norway, but I’m sure there’s a Russian settlement there somehow. Might be worth looking into if you’re curious, in any case.
The Svalbard archipelago is a very strange case indeed. Technically, it is under Norwegian jurisdiction, but nobody owns it. The treaty that settled the disputed ownership of the archipelago gave all signatories certain rights to the island, including the right to mine its coal reserves. The Soviet Union maintained a presence there, and Russia has continued to do so, although there isn’t much left. Norway also has a town (Longyearbyen) built near the coal mines that used to support it, and several smaller settlements, mostly for research purposes. To the best of my knowledge none of the other signatories ever established had any permanent presence there.
It’s the sort of arrangement that could only be dreamed up by committee, but it mostly works. It probably helps that the islands aren’t exactly enticing real estate; it’s what’s under the ground that’s so interesting…
Svalbard (which is a small archipelago, not just one island) is unquestionably Norwegian, but has a Russian mining community there extraterritorially, much as if PeMex, the Mexican national petroleum company, had bought the right to drill for oil on a given island on the U.S. side of the border.
Sakhalin was before 1945 an additional example, being split on what I think was the 49th parallel between the U.S.S.R., which now holds the whole island, and Japan, which had the southern half and called it Karafuto.
I wouldn’t count Britain, as it is all part of the United Kingdom. England, Scotland and Wales aren’t “countries” in the internationally accepted “nation state” sense.
An intriguing example is the island of Märket, which is divided between Sweden and Finland. There’s a lighthouse on the island which would be on the Swedish side of the island, but it is Finnish. The border makes a big swing round the lighthouse, but to keep things fair, then makes an equally big swing out into Finnish territory, giving an equivalent area back to Sweden.
You can see a map and photos here (page is in Swedish so I don’t know what it says - can anyone provide a translation?)
Is antarctica ‘shared’ by any countries, in the sense of being claimed as part of those countries?? A number of nations have set up research stations there, IIRC, but generally the continent seems to be an admitted no man’s land.
The Antarctic Treaty holds the continent as the common property of the world for scientific and exploratory purposes. There are a number of claims, which the U.S. does not recognize, to what are generally pie-piece wedges of the continent (see CIA map of claims). Some claims overlap. Notice that the area between 90º and 150º West is totally unclaimed, except for Peter I Island, which is Norwegian. Summary of claims.