Bottlehead Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: RayP on August 10, 2014, 02:42:11 AM
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Since it has been 100 years since the start of WWI, there have been many historical articles about the period. By chance I read one that described the State of Bottleneck.
Link (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/worldwarone/25-things-you-might-not-know-about-world-war-one/5546018)
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The Free State of Bottleneck, or Freistaat Flaschenhals, was a quasi-state that existed briefly after WWI due to a measurement error. When French and American forces were drawing up their zones of control in occupied Rhineland, the two zones didn’t quite touch, and thus Bottleneck was born. Home to some 17,000 people, it had its own passports, stamps and currency. There was no land or sea access to the state and though a train network ran through the capital, Lorch, trains weren’t permitted to stop, so most of the state’s income was derived from smuggling.
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Now that I am back home, I've started building my push-pull entry for October 18.
ray