Aeterna Lucina

  • Micronations
  • Founded 1970s
  • Dissolved 1994
  • Capital Vitama
  • Area 14 km²

The Sovereign State of Aeterna Lucina (also known as the Sovereign Humanitarian Mission State of Aeterna Lucina) was an Australian micronation created in 1978 by German migrant Paul Neuman. He claimed to have received the title ‘Baron Neuman of Kara Bagh’ from exiled king Hassan III of Afghanistan. The area he claimed was originally a property near Byron Bay but it's location changed as he moved elsewhere. Over the years Paul Neuman is said to have been awarded hundreds of other honours, including professorships, Doctorates of Philosophy, and degrees in divinity. He faced fraud charges in 1990 over illegal land and visa sales. This micronation dissolved when Neuman died.

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Transnistria

Transnistria is a small strip of land located between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border with Ukraine. It declared independence in 1990, but has only been recognized as a sovereign entity by—the also unrecognized—South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The United Nations still legally considers Transnistria a part of the Republic of Moldova. The most well known company in Transnistria is called Sheriff—it owns a chain of petrol stations, a chain of supermarkets, a TV channel, a publishing house, a construction company, a Mercedes-Benz dealership, an advertising agency, a spirits factory, two bread factories, a mobile phone network, the football club FC Sheriff Tiraspol and its newly built Sheriff Stadium.

Ceuta & Melilla

Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish exclaves on the north coast of Africa, separated from the Spanish mainland by the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea. The government of Morocco has repeatedly called for Spain to transfer the sovereignty of Ceuta and Melilla, together with the rest of the Spanish plazas de soberanía on the North African coast to Morocco. Morocco has claimed that the territories are colonies.

Conch Republic

In 1982 the Conch Republic was declared as a ludic protest against a Border Patrol blockade which was installed by the US Federal Government to control drug trafficking in and out the Florida Keys. As a result of this roadblock, tourists cancelled their visits and the local community saw their biggest source of income disappear and turned to their Mayor Dennis Wardlow. After a lost lawsuit to stop the roadblock, Wardlow told the press “We are going to go home and secede”. Wardlow declared independence from and war against the US, and surrendered on the same day, demanding one million dollars to restore the pre-blockade economy. The locals view their secession not as a revolutionary act against the US but rather the opposite—they felt that they were alienated as Americans. In the end the publicity surrounding the faux secession led to a new source of income for the local entrepreneurs.