Netherlands
The Netherlands once handed Manhattan to Britain over nutmeg. In the 1667 Treaty of Breda, the Dutch gave up New Amsterdam, now Manhattan, for tiny Run in Indonesia, then a source of nutmeg that rivaled gold in value. Britain got the future New York.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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