Everybody loves weird borders right?
Here’s my favourite:
This is the Ba Green, a 3 acre meadow on the English side of the River Tweed that, for no clear reason, belongs to Scotland.
Well, it turns out the reason is pretty unusual:
Scotland won it in a football game!
But this wasn’t football like you think of it today: this was “ba”, or “mob football” sort of chaotic medieval ancestor to football and rugby. It was played on the streets of villages, and basically the only rule was that you had to get the ball through the village and to the opposing goal.
Every New Year, the people of Wark on Tweed in England and Coldstream in Scotland would play each other, and whoever won would claim ownership of the Ba Green for that year.
However, as time went on the town of Coldstream grew much bigger than Wark, and because there was no limit to the number of players, Coldstream always won.
Eventually, the borders were made official, and the Ba Green became a permanent part of Scotland.
To my knowledge, this is the only piece of land ever won by a nation in a sports game.