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Ernest Hemingway's brother established a floating republic in the Caribbean
On July 4, 1964, Leicester Hemingway founded New Atlantis, a raft-turned-micronation intended to support marine life in the region
While towns across the United States held Independence Day parades, and Alabama Governor George Wallace gave a speech denouncing the Voting Rights Act, Leicester (also known as “Les”) boarded a bamboo raft moored on a sandbank six miles off the coast of Jamaica. He would then “cart over several Jamaican hills he had bought to fill in around the sunken hulls.” The New York Times reported that Leicester’s goal was to make the island half a mile long, big enough to “accommodate a lighthouse, short-wave radio station, customs house and post office.” He churned out articles about the sporting life; hawked a tourist hotel in the Virgin Islands; performed other public relations work; and developed several book manuscripts, including one about the moon’s positive effect on human sexual activity.
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