The Shortest-Lived Independent Country in History

In a rather manic video essay on Half as Interesting, narrator Sam from Wendover talks about which nation has had the shortest lifespan of them all. Unsurprisingly, the answer is complicated. Among the candidates for the shortest-lived country is the Sultanate of Zanzibar for one day in 1963, the Republic of Crimea for one day in 2014, and the Russian Democratic Federative Republic, which only lasted about six hours in 1918. The apparent winner of the title, however, is the Independent State of Catalonia, which lasted only eight seconds of a 2017 speech.

On October 10, 2017, the Catalan leader held a speech where he declared independence. Saying I assume the mandate of the people for Catalonia to become an independent state in the shape of a republic. But right after that, he asked Parliament to suspend his declaration of independence so that he could negotiate with Spain given the independent nation of Catalonia a life span of exactly eight seconds