Forwarded on behalf of Bernhard Luerssen, last year's quiz winner, who
kindly offered to set the questions this year.

m a r t i n


Dear Colleagues,

If there ever was a hard act to follow, it was Brendan's excellent
Ultimate Quiz of the Millennium. Nevertheless I'll give it a try:

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS QUIZ OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

THE RULES

1. Entry is open to all members of the int-boundaries email list, no
matter when they joined.
2. Not all questions are equally difficult/easy, I felt. So the number
of points to be won by a correct answer is indicated for each question.
3. Send your answers to: [log in to unmask] by midnight on the
31 December 2001 (Central European Time), i.e. 23.00 Greenwich Mean
Time.
4. After careful deliberation, the person scoring the most points will
be declared the winner. A boundary-related prize will be on its way
shortly afterwards.
5. Correspondence regarding the questions is encouraged. Clarification,
insofar as it does not amount to concrete clues as to the solution, may
well be sought and given. However, as I am not always able to collect my
mail promptly, please bear with me.
6. In order to respect the feelings of superstitionally challenged
members, there is no question 13 in this quiz.
7. There is no fee for participation - and it's no use trying...

THE QUIZ

Q 1 The International Date Line was shortened significantly in 1910.

1.1 What was the name of the island causing the previously longer line?
(1 P)
1.2 What was this island's geographical position? (2 P)
1.3 What specific 'property' of this island led to the shortening of the
International Date Line? (1 P)
1.4 What was the name of the person whose activities, once they became
recognized as criminal, led to the redrawing of the International Date
Line? (First name and surname together = 1 P)


Q 2 A thumbnail-sized piece of paper led to the following sequence of
events:
- Secession of one province from the mother country
- Temporary cession of an integral part of the new country's territory
to a distant power
- Achievement of a remarkable engineering project.

2.1 From which country did this piece of paper originate? (1 P)
2.2 In which year did this piece of paper see the light of day? (1 P)
2.2 What exactly was shown on it? (2 P)
2.3 Why was this so important? (2 P)


Q 3 What did the demarcation commission of the China/Burma boundary in
the 1960‘s do to improve the visibility of the boundary? (1 P)


Q 4 The boundary between the two German states was finally demarcated in
the 1970‘s, except for the stretch running along the river Elbe. The GDR
claimed the boundary to be along the center of the river bed, whereas
the FRG claimed the width of the river up to the tips of the breakwaters
on the northern bank. This conflict remainded unsolved until 1989.

4.1 In the original agreement 1944, what words did the Allies choose to
describe the boundary of the Allied Zones of Occupation in the Elbe
area? (2 P)
4.2 Of the 93.7 km Elbe boundary, over what length did the boundary
according to the wording in the 1944 protocol actually run along the
centre of the river bed? (2 P)
4.3 Which territory bordering the Elbe was subsequently handed over to
another Allied Zone of Occupation following a formal bilateral
agreement? (2 P)
4.4 Apart from the territory mentioned in 4.3, how many territorial
fragments along the river changed hands between the United Kingdom and
the Soviet Union? (2 P)
4.5 On what grounds did the FRG claim the entire width of the river bed?
(2 P)


Q 5 At the end of World War II, French troops occupied a large part of
Southern Germany, including the region along Lake Constance and the
river Rhine. But what about the Büsingen enclave...

5.1 How many members of the French occupation force were allowed into
Büsingen at any one time? (2 P)
5.2 Were these persons allowed to carry weapons? (1 P)
5.3 Which route were these persons to take from 'mainland' Germany? (2
P)
5.4 When and where was the formal agreement on this matter signed? (2 P)


Q 6 In August 1969, military action was taken to help resolve a
territorial disputy by force.

6.1 A number of pilots for this mission under the command of Captain
Nascimento were given the rank of Major. Why? (1 P)
6.2 Which territory was the military action designed to capture? (1 P)
6.3 According to one of the pilots' report, which unexpected obstacle
did the troops encounter in the target area? (1 P)
6.4 What nationality was the only fatality of the confrontation, and
what was his cause of death? (2 P)


Q 7 Some political geographers in the past advocated the maximum
stability for countries with a circular boundary and the capital at its
centre. Who said mathematics has no place in political geography? Lets
imagine an ideal plane shared by countries as close to the 'ideal' shape
as possible, without leaving any gaps. This would obviously be a
honeycomb structure of adjacent regular hexagons. If we now consider an
ideal globe without oceans or large lakes, without seasons and different
climate zones. The task is to cover the surface with 32 countries of
equal area, without leaving gaps, while keeping the boundary length of
each country to the minimum (for reasons of simplicity we assume a
polyeder instead of a true sphere).

7.1 Which shape(s) must these countries have? (3 P)
7.2 How many countries are required of each shape type? (2 P)
7.3 How is the area of each type of shape calculated? (4 P)


Q 8 The McDonald’s Theorem of War and Peace basically says that no two
countries ever went to war against one another if there was at least one
branch of McDonald’s fast food chain in both countries. For this
theorem, civil wars and unrests do not count.

8.1 Name an exception, i.e. both war parties and the year (3 P)
8.2 In this example, how long until the fast food branches on the
territory of one participant were closed? (1 P)


Q 9 We all know these jokes like 'How many (insert group to be derided)
does it take to change a lightbulb?'. In a more serious vein – If the
answer to the question 'The state authorities of how many countries have
to be involved to change a lightbulb?' is 'Four' -

9.1 Where is this street lamp located (village/town/city as well as
street/square name)? (2 P)
9.2 Which four states' authorities would be involved? (2 P)
9.3 During which period of history has this taken place? (1 P)


Q 10 The Channel Island of Guernsey's subdivision into ten Parishes has
produced fragments of almost communal Liechtenstein magnitude. A Parish
in Guernsey is a clerical as well as a communal subdivision.

10.1 Which Parishes are fragmented, if the Parish boundaries at low
water level are taken into account? (2 P)
10.2 Identify the smallest fragment on the island; what is its area in
square meters? (2 P)
10.3 There is a tight bottleneck in the west of the island, where two
Parishes nearly meet at one point. By what distance do we miss out on a
biparochial quadripoint, rounded to the nearest meter? (2 P)


Q 11 The state of Bremen is the smallest of the 16 constituent states of
the Federal Republic of Germany. It consists of the City of Bremen and
the City of Bremerhaven, a territorial fragment some 50 kilometers
downriver from Bremen.

11.1 In what way does the inner harbour area of Bremerhaven qualify as a
territorial curiosity? (1 P)
11.2 What is the smallest fragment of the city state of Bremen called,
and roughly where is that exclave located in relation to Bremen
territory? (1 P)
11.3 What characterizes the population of this fragment, if any? (1 P)


Q 12 Three days after the end of World War 2, the first post-Nazi de
facto government on German territory took office.

12.1 What territory did this government effectively control? (1 P)
12.2 Why did the Allied forces allow this to happen? (1 P)
12.3 On what date did this government hand over control to Allied
forces? (1 P)


Q 14 Micronations are entities created by individuals who want to see
the dream of their own state come true. The world at large usually
ignores them, except during the silly season. Nevertheless, one such
micronation gained recognition by a subject of International Law. After
protest from the 'mother country', which doesn't recognize the
secession, this subject of International Law 'de-recognized' that
micronation.

14.1 Where is this micronation located and what is its name? (1 P)
14.2 Which subject of International Law recognized it? (1 P)
14.3 What is so peculiar about 'de-recognizing' a country/micronation?
(1 P)

That's it. Good luck to all of you!

Bernhard Luerssen