Netherlands

In 1995, a trader who hid losses in a secret account and kept making reckless trades bankrupted 232-year-old Barings Bank of Britain. His losses totaled £827 million—twice the bank's capital—and the Netherlands ING Group acquired it for just £1.

A war between Britain's Isles of Scilly and the Netherlands lasted 335 years, but both sides completely forgot about it—not a single shot was fired. In 1986, a historian discovered the oversight and wrote to the Dutch embassy, finally ending the war officially.

The concept of jaywalking was invented by the USA automobile industry in the 1920s. The "jay" in jaywalking was a derogatory term meaning "rube," deliberately coined to shift blame for traffic accidents onto pedestrians. Dutch traffic law still has no concept of jaywalking.

In the village of Baarle on the Belgium-Netherlands border, national borders cut through individual buildings. A building's nationality is determined by its front door location, and some doors straddle both countries. Medieval lords' land deals became today's border lines.