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[Simon]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trivia (More info?)

My local pub quiz had a question tonight along the lines of:
"What is the smallest sovereign state? It has a border of just 11 yards
long."

The answer was The Vatican and apparently the 11 yard border is supported by
Guiness and is deemed indisputable by the serious quiz fraternity.

My logic is that the Vatican is an enclave within Italy. It is about 1
square mile, which gives a circumference of at least 3 or 4 miles. Surely
the "border" between 2 countries is the entire length of the line where the
2 countries meet. This being the case can anyone tell me why the border for
the Vatican is defined as only 11 yards long?

Simon

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trivia (More info?)

"Simon" writes:
> My local pub quiz had a question tonight along the lines of:
> "What is the smallest sovereign state? It has a border of just 11 yards
> long."
>
> The answer was The Vatican and apparently the 11 yard border is supported
> by Guiness and is deemed indisputable by the serious quiz fraternity.

As Simon thinks, this claim is just loony. The most recent Guinness
Book that I have is dated 2001, and the only figure it gives relating
to the Vatican is its population. But looking back through older
editions, I find that the 1992 one gave the area as 108.7 acres and
the border length as 2.53 miles. The CIA World Factbook gives the
area as 0.44 km^2, which agrees with Guinness, and the border length
as 3.2 km, which is 2.0 miles.

> My logic is that the Vatican is an enclave within Italy. It is about
> 1 square mile, which gives a circumference of at least 3 or 4 miles.

It's smaller than that, but 11 yards is, as I said, just loony. The
world's shortest border is given in some of my Guinness editions as
that between Gibraltar (not a sovereign state, of course) and Spain,
which is 1 mile.

There is an entity considered by some people to be an independent
country even smaller than the Vatican: it controls no territory at
all. Its independence is recognized by the Vatican and some other
countries, although this doesn't necessarily mean that they all
consider it a country; its own web site describes it only as "a
sovereign subject of international law". This is the Sovereign
Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes,
and of Malta; for short, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta
(SMOM), or just the Order of Malta <http://www.orderofmalta.org>.

Since the SMOM controls no territory, even if you consider it a
country, the figure of 11 yards is too *long* for its border.
I suppose 11 yards might be the size of the "boundary" of just
one of its offices; I wouldn't know about that.
--
Mark Brader | "Oh, especially if it's accurate. There's nothing worse
Toronto | than *accurate*, ill-informed, irresponsible press
msb@vex.net | speculation." -- Lynn & Jay: "Yes, Prime Minister"

My text in this article is in the public domain.