History
The Aerican Empire was founded on 8 May 1987 by Montreal resident Eric Lis and a core group of friends. Lis, who founded the Aerican Empire as a child, obtained his M.D., C.M. from McGill University and has been published in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Weird Tales magazine.
For the first ten years the Empire was almost wholly fictional, claiming sovereignty over a vast galaxy of planets and engaging in "wars" against other micronations. After the advent of the Internet, through which the founders discovered other micronations similar to their own, the Empire slowly abandoned most fictional elements and worked towards becoming a political entity rather than a hobby. In 1997, the Empire created a Web site.
In 2000, the first growth spurt in the Empire's population was triggered by an article in The New York Times. In the months following this, the Empire's membership rose to over five hundred people. This number slowly fell over the following years as members left, eventually stabilizing and rising again with time.
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“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
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