For over a century, a tiny triangular territory barely two miles long sat in the middle of Western Europe with no military, almost no taxes, and no official nationality. Neutral Moresnet was born in 1816 as a bureaucratic placeholder after the Congress of Vienna, when the Netherlands and Prussia could not agree on who should own a valuable zinc spar mine. In this episode we trace how a temporary compromise over a rock turned into a living, breathing place with its own strange identity.

We look at the legal vacuum where visiting judges ruled with no right of appeal, the Vieille Montagne mining company that ran the town like a corporate state, and the low taxes, tariff-free goods, and draft exemption that drew thousands of new residents. When the zinc ran out in 1885, Dr. Wilhelm Molly tried to save the territory with local postage stamps, a  ...