Belgian landowner accidentally moves border with France by seven feet

A Belgian landowner unintentially moved a stone that marked the boundary of his country with France, thus making Belgium a little bigger.

A Belgian landowner risked triggering an international incident by moving an old stone boundary marker that has denoted his country's border with France since the 1820 Treaty of Kortrijk. According to the mayor of the Belgian town of Erquelines, David Lavaux, the bold proprietor had underestimated the implications of pushing the historic marker back two metres and 20 centimetres (seven feet). The Belgian farmer was apparently annoyed by the stone in his tractor's path, and thus moved it inside French territory. "Obviously, that increased the size of his property," the bourgmestre told AFP. "What he didn't realise was that the border had been precisely geo-located in 2019, so it was easy to prove that it had been moved."