Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 April 17

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April 17

Sunken islands and their territorial waters

I know that there's discussion as to how the emergence of a new island in the high seas affects territorial claims of surrounding countries. My question is about the opposite: an island vanishing into the ocean.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which says that "rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf". However, such features are entitled to a territorial sea extending 12 nautical miles. So I need to limit my question to areas which are currently inhabited, or were once inhabited.

If Tuvalu vanishes underwater due to global warming, or natural ocean phenomena (a very realistic possibility, given that their highest point above sea level is a mere 4.6 metres), what happens to the territorial waters? Whose property does the exclusive economic zone become? Does it become "high seas"? Do neighboring countries to whom the ocean would belong were it not for Tuvalu (i.e. areas within 200 nautical miles of their own territory) get to "annex" these territorial waters around these vanished islands? Eliyohub (talk) 14:09, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

For a island that fairly recently vanished, see Jólnir. For an island which it's known will vanish in future, see Surtsey... AnonMoos (talk) 08:35, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Official visit of George II of Greece to Romania?

Was there an official visit of George II of Greece to Romania between his restoration in 1935 and the beginning of WWII? He did live in Romania between 1923 and 1932, but did he vist Romania as head of state after his restoration to the monarchy and return to Greece in 1935? The reason I'm asking (if you're curious) is an old lady from Romania I've once spoken with told me as a little girl she had to learn to sing (presumably the short version of) the Greek national anthem in Greek (she spoke no Greek) for a visit of "the king of Greece". She didn't specify a date or name the king but from various elements of her biography it seems the period between 1935 and 1940 would be the most probable for this to have happened, with the years 1938 or 1939 being the most likely. You'd have thought he had enough stuff to deal with at home at the time to go on official visits abroad but that's what she told me. Basemetal 14:34, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

That seems very unlikely, for several reasons. George's sister, Helen of Greece and Denmark, had been divorced from Carol II of Romania for many years and had been living in Tuscany at the time. Carol and George had a very strained relationship throughout the 1930s, especially in light of Carol's facist tendencies (see Carol II of Romania's cult of personality) and his having divorced his sister many years prior. George II and his regime was fairly right-wing, but George was known to be a close ally of Britain, and whereas Carol II was a close ally of Germany. While George was also married to Carol's cousin, THEY divorced in 1935. Given that they had each divorced each other's relatives, they wouldn't have been that chummy by 1938. I can't see that George would have been all that keen on a state visit to Romania at that late of a date; certainly in the early 1920's he would have: His sister was married to the King of Romania, Naziism had yet to take hold in Europe, and relations would have been good. But by 1938, the history doesn't seem to bear it out as likely. I could be proven wrong, but I have yet myself to find ANY evidence of such a visit in 1938ish time period. --Jayron32 16:48, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Jayron. Those are indeed powerful arguments but I'm not ready to let go just yet because the only other possibility then would be that that old lady lied to me, made up the story, and she didn't seem that kind of a person, plus there didn't seem to be any occasion for inventing such bullshit. Did she get confused? I thought about that. I thought, maybe she mistook a private visit to their school from the time he was living in Romania as a private person in exile for an official visit. But that's impossible because he left Romania in 1932 and she was born around 1927 or 1928. Before 1932 was much too early for her to have been taught a song in a foreign language. There remains a few possibilities. One that it was some other official visit from Greece, not the king, even though she clearly said "the king of Greece". Another possibility is that, despite the personal antipathy between Carol and George the stakes were too high. Carol II did indeed have Nazi sympathies but not the Romanian government as a whole. I remember readin in two books by Grigore Gafencu (as an author he used "Grégoire Gafenco"), foreign minister of Romania at the time ("Les Derniers jours de l'Europe" and "Préliminaires à la guerre à l'est"; I don't know if they've been translated into English but their titles would translate as "The Last Days Of Europe" and "Prelude to the War on the Eastern Front"; note that the Romanian Wikipedia gives romanian titles to those book, but they were actually written by Gafencu in French and I don't even know if they've been translated into Romanian) where he was recounting how, just prior to the start of WWII, the countries in the region Romania, Greece, Yugoslavia and even Turkey (to some extent even Poland; Bulgaria, still whining after San Stefano, playing the odd man out) were, with Britain's encouragement, trying to organize some sort of collective defense or at least position in the face of the mounting tensions. He recounts his own travels through all of those countries. In such a context I could imagine geopolitical considerations may have trumped family bickerings. The thing is, I do not remember Gafencu mentioning any royal visit, but then I didn't have that on my mind when I read those books many years ago so I just might have missed it. I wish I still had those books to check, but I don't. Like you I also couldn't find any trace of a visit in biographies of George II I found on the net but those are usually 1 page biographies. I guess a definitive answer could only be contributed by someone having access to a fairly detailed authoritative biography of George II of a couple hundred pages. One amusing note: that old lady sang the Greek national anthem for me, as I followed on a score (how we came to talk about national anthems would take too long). She still remembered the melody perfectly after something like 70 years (and she had a great voice, completely in tune and steady, for someone that old) but the Greek was all garbled, after 70 years, and a language she didn't actually know. I wish I had recorded her rendition. It was so funny. It still sounded Greek but Greek that had been mixed in a blender. Not as bad though, and by some margin, as "Ken Lee" (the jaw-dropping interpretation by a Bulgarian competitor of the X Factor of Mariah Carey's version of "Without You" that became a YouTube sensation). Basemetal 20:42, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

All decisions made, all passion spent

Watching Morning Departure, and a line is quoted by two characters, "All decisions made, all passion spent". I know "All passion spent" is in Samson Agonistes, but is the whole quotation in anything or was it just the characters building on a common cultural heritage? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 23:46, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: The expression means that the minutae of what once was the subject of ambition have become tedious. 174.16.98.178 (talk) 01:11, 25 April 2018 (UTC)