Cospaia, the republic born of a surveying error
In 1441 the border between the Papal States and Florence was drawn along a stream called Rio, but there were two streams of that name, five hundred metres apart. Florence picked the northern one, the pope the southern one, and the strip in between belonged to no one. Cospaia, today a hamlet of San Giustino in Umbria, central Italy, made the most of it for 385 years: no army, no prisons, no customs duties, and some of Italy's first tobacco fields. Independence ended only in 1826, when fourteen representatives signed an act of submission.