Jeremiah Heaton Claims African Desert So His Daughter Can Be A Princess
Jeremiah Heaton, a father of three from Abingdon, Virginia, recently made the trek across the world to plant a flag in the African desert known as Bir Tawil— and all so his 7-year-old daughter Emily could be a real princess. Heaton declared himself the king of the Kingdom of North Sudan, making Emily royalty, but is still working on getting the new country's neighbors to officially recognize it.
Jeremiah Heaton had been playing with his young daughter who loves princesses when she asked him if she would ever be a real princess. Although Heaton didn't know how he would make it happen, he promised her that he would.
"At the time I had no idea how I would honor her wish but I knew that I had to find a way," Heaton, who works in the mining industry, wrote in a Facebook post.
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However, after doing some research on "terra nullius"— that's Latin for unclaimed land— he found out about Bir Tawil, a wild desert strip between Egypt and Sudan. The two African countries had signed two competing treaties in 1899 and 1902 to trade Bir Tawil for the more fertile and useful Hala'ib, and because neither wanted to recognize their treaties and give up on Hala'ib, Bir Tawil is a no man's land.
So, armed with a flag his three children had designed, Heaton got permission from Egyptian officials to head to the 800-square-mile patch of desert wilderness, and possibly the last piece of unclaimed land on Earth.
"As a parent you sometimes go down paths you never thought you would," he told The Washington Post. "I wanted to show my kids I will literally go to the ends of the earth to make their wishes and dreams come true."
On June 16, Emily's seventh birthday, Heaton planted the flag on the newly christened Kingdom of North Sudan. Now, the dad is working on converting it into an agricultural hub to feed the hungry on the continent, but first, he needs legal recognition from both Egypt and Sudan.
"I feel confident in the claim we've made," Heaton told the Bristol Herald Courier. "That's the exact same process that has been done for thousands of years. The exception is this nation was claimed for love."
