Word: belgians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...more than a century everyone had managed to get along just fine, even though part of the town was called Baarle-Hertog and was Belgian, and the other was called Baarle-Nassau and was Dutch. Then one day in 1939, a Belgian named Sooi Van Den Eijnde decided to lead his pigs across Lots 91 and 92. The Netherlands Railways, convinced that the lots were Dutch, had built nine houses there, and the Dutch customs official lived in one of them...
...cried the Dutchman when he saw Sooi, "have you got a license to import those pigs?" Retorted Sooi: "I am on Belgian soil-Hertog soil." It soon turned out that in a way he was right: in their treaty of 1843 Holland and Belgium had decided that the land in question was Dutch, but because of an error of a sleepy clerk, it was listed as Belgian-as Sooi subsequently proved in court...
...their establishments on both sides of the border and operating in whichever country happens to offer the more favorable price levels and the lower taxes. "From the cradle to the grave," says Dutch Burgomaster Franciscus de Grauw of Baarle-Nassau, "our actions violate the law." "But," adds his Belgian colleague, Burgomaster Jan Loots of Baarle-Hertog, "we feel 100% delighted with the situation...
...this sort of atmosphere, Sooi saw that the case of Lots 91 and 92 could mean more to him than just easy foraging land for his pigs. He saved up his money after the war, in 1952 bought the nine houses from the railway. He promptly hoisted the Belgian flag, demanded that his new tenants pay Belgian rents rather than the lower Dutch rents. Later, he decided that since there was still so much confusion as to the nationality of the land, he would declare it "Sooi" soil until the bosses in Brussels and The Hague straightened things...
...Last week Eugene was keeping busy in his Belgian jail cell signing checks for rent and taxes on his London property, which, according to the Sunday People, is still being used for the customary purposes by Messina girls. And two more of the ubiquitous brothers are still on the loose somewhere in Europe...