But did you know there was also a push to reinvent how to measure time itself? To ditch the 12-hour clock and 24-hour day and replace them with a decimal-based system of metric time?
Under this system, the day was divided into 10 hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. That meant new time units like the centijour, or one one-hundredth of a day, equivalent to exactly 14 minutes and 24 seconds of old-fashioned time.
As you might expect, things got messy fast, not least because nobody could agree when it came to defining what a “second” actually was. That question was so thorny it wasn’t fully settled until the 1960s, when we landed on the modern definition based on the radioactive decay of a cesium-133 atom.
In theory, the system could have worked. Our 24-hour clock is just as arbitrary, after all, but people weren’t ready to set their clock-radio alarms* to 3.2 or to schedule their afternoon coffee break at 6.7. The metric clock, like the calendar that came with it, was ultimately swept into the dustbin of history.
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* Yeah, I know, 1790s… it’s a joke, people. Lighten up.
So, first of all, I rarely have an original thought, so props for this one go to Kevin Underhill, author of “The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance” as posted on his blog, loweringthebar.net.
For over five centuries, from 1264 until 1827, students at the University of Oxford were required to swear an oath as part of their Master of Arts degree ceremony. This oath included a commitment that they would “never agree to the reconciliation of Henry Symeonis.”
Well that’s interesting, but who the hell is Henry Symeonis?
Turns out, Henry Symeonis was a wealthy 13th-century Englishman from Oxford, who was involved in the murder of an Oxford University student in 1242. Alongside other townsmen, he was fined £80 and banished from the town by King Henry III. Despite receiving a royal pardon in 1264, the University of Oxford harbored a lasting grudge, mandating for over 500 years that graduates swear an oath never to reconcile with him. This peculiar tradition persisted until 1827, long after the original offense was forgotten.
I’m sure there’s a lesson in here but exactly what it is, I haven’t quite worked out yet.
When Paris found itself surrounded by Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the city faced an unprecedented communication crisis. Traditional methods of delivering messages and mail were impossible, as enemy troops cut off all routes in and out of the city. But Parisians, true to their reputation for ingenuity, looked to the skies for a solution: balloon mail
Over the course of the siege, more than 60 balloons were constructed to carry mail and dispatches out of Paris. These balloons, often made hastily from lightweight materials like paper, silk, or cotton, were manned by courageous aeronauts who braved enemy fire, poor weather, and uncertain landings in occupied territory. Each balloon carried thousands of letters, which would eventually be retrieved and delivered to their intended recipients. In total, over two million letters made their way out of besieged Paris thanks to these daring flights.
One of the most famous balloons, Le Neptune, carried not only mail but also carrier pigeons, which were later used to send messages back into the city—a two-way communication system that helped keep the Parisians informed and united during the siege. However, not all flights went smoothly. Some balloons were shot down, others were blown off course, with a few landing as far away as Norway.
Balloon mail became not just a lifeline for communication but also a symbol of resilience and ingenuity. It demonstrated the lengths to which people would go to maintain connections with the outside world, even in the face of immense adversity.
Beneath the glittering lights of Paris lies a shadowy secret: the Catacombs, an underground ossuary holding the remains of over six million people—three times the city’s current population. But how did they get there?
In the late 18th century, Paris’s cemeteries were so overcrowded that walls of some nearby cellars began collapsing, dumping skeletons into basements and forcing city officials to act. Their solution? Relocating the remains into the city’s abandoned limestone quarries, creating a macabre underground world, hidden away beneath the bright city lights above.
After all, you can’t have lights without shadows—and for every Parisian basking in the City Of Light, there are three skeletons resting quietly (I hope) in the shadows below.
Okay, if you’ve spent any time reading stuff I’ve posted here, you will have picked up on the fact that I find certain quirky historical facts to be fascinating. This one I stumbled across while I was pulling together some wiki links for my recent post on my day in Monaco.
What caught my eye about this particular former microstate was the way in which it came to be. The six extant microstates in Europe all came into being via some sort of relatively straightforward process.
Vatican City as the successor to the Papal States has preserved its independence through its spiritual significance and diplomatic engagements.
Monaco has secured its independence by skillfully negotiating protective treaties with France and capitalizing on its status as a luxury tourist destination and tax haven.
San Marino, the self-declared world’s oldest republic, has maintained its continuity by leveraging its historical narrative and strategic diplomacy with larger neighboring countries.
Andorra has maintained its unique status as a co-principality governed jointly by leaders from France and Spain, a setup that has provided stability and neutrality, shielding it from external ambitions.
Liechtenstein has preserved its sovereignty through a combination of low-key diplomacy and economic strategies, such as becoming a financial center while maintaining close ties with Switzerland.
Malta secured its independence from British rule in 1964 through negotiations that led to its recognition as a sovereign state, and has since leveraged its strategic location and robust tourism industry to bolster its economy and maintain its autonomy.
So as you can see, those microstates all came into existence as a result of understandable (although in some cases odd or unlikely) situations.
Cospaia, though… is… different. Buckle up, this one’s a bit odd.
In 1440, Pope Eugene IV decided to sell some land to the Republic of Florence in order to raise money due to a struggle he was having with the Council of Basel. That seems straightforward enough, in a late-medieval, great houses maneuvering sort of way. However, an issue arose when the treaty was drawn up which defined the border of the lands being sold as being along certain stream, without actually naming the stream.
As a result, the Papal States and the Republic of Florence understood the border to be along two different streams. This meant that there was a small plot of land that the Papal States thought had been ceded to Florence while simultaneously Florence thought had been retained by the Papal States.
When the people living on this particular piece of land realized that neither Florence nor the Papal States was exercising sovereignty over them, they declared themselves independent, and formed the Republic of Cospaia, a microstate approximately two kilometres long and 500 meters wide, with a population of about 250 people.
The village became accidentally independent in 1440. When Pope Eugene IV ceded the territory of Sansepolcro to the Republic of Florence, by mistake a small strip of land was excluded from the treaty that delimited the borders. Having become no one’s land, the inhabitants promptly declared independence. As a result, the village was the Republic of Cospaia for some 385 years, but in 1826 it was absorbed into the Papal States by agreement with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
When the two treaty signatories realized what had happened, they decided the tiny piece of land wasn’t worth worrying about, so they left it alone… for 385 years!
For nearly four centuries the tiny village existed without a government, police force, army or interference from its much larger neighbors.
When the pope banned the growing of tobacco across Italy, the tiny village nation took advantage of what amounted to a tobacco monopoly and proceeded to make bank over the ensuing years. Not bad for a country that only existed because of a mapping error!
Of course, Cospaia hasn’t existed as a separate nation for almost 200 years now, but I think I’ll add this as a stretch goal on my “Tour Of The Microstates” bucket list.
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