I love looking at maps of 19th-century Europe and imagining the swashbuckling continental adventures that must have taken place there. All those quaint-sounding kingdoms and principalities: Prussia, Belgium, Bohemia, Holland, Moresnet…wait, Moresnet? What the heck is "Neutral Moresnet"?

Less is more in Moresnet.

Neutral Moresnet was part of the map of Europe for more than a century, from 1816 until the end of World War I. If you've never heard of it, that's probably because of its size: just one square mile in area, smaller than Central Park. It was located on the Belgian-German border, and belonged to both nations—or neither.

Everyone wants that precious, precious zinc.

This is what happened: The Congress of Vienna in 1815 gave the Dutch back their independence from France, dividing Prussia from the newborn Kingdom of the Netherlands, which included Belgium. But neither the Germans nor the Dutch were willing to cede the border village of Moresnet, because its zinc mine was the only place in continental Europe where zinc ore could be processed to make brass. So the village was carved into three parts: one Dutch, one Prussian, and one little neutral slice, containing the mine, to be figured out later. No permanent arrangement was ever made, so the two powers set up a joint government that lasted 100 years.

Moresnet was the "Four Corners" of Europe.

Moresnet was an irregular pentagon tapering to a point at a hill called Vaalserberg at what is today the southeastern tip of the Netherlands, and still the country's highest point. Once Belgium was granted its independence from the Dutch, that was the point where Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands all met. If you count Neutral Moresnet as a fourth nation, since it was neither part of Germany nor Belgium, then Vaalserberg was an international quadripoint, the only one on earth, until World War I. To this day, the road up Vaalserberg is called the Viergrenzenweg—"Four Borders Way."

A made-up language almost had its very own country.

Neutral Moresnet had its own flag and even circulated its own coins, though the franc was the official currency. Its big chance at international fame came in 1908, after the zinc mine was exhausted. The mine's medical doctor, Wilhelm Molly, was a big fan of the international language of Esperanto, and proposed turning Moresnet into Amikejo ("friendship place"), the world's first Esperanto-speaking utopia. The World Congress of Esperanto, meeting in Dresden, even named Moresnet the new capital of their movement. Sadly, World War I intervened, dashing the dreams of the Esperantists, and Moresnet was permanently ceded to Belgium at the end of the war. Molly's dreams of a linguistic paradise were mortintoj as a doornail.

Explore the world's oddities every week with Ken Jennings, and check out his book Maphead for more geography trivia.