> On Egyptian maps, Bir Tawil is shown as belonging to Sudan. On Sudanese maps, it appears as part of Egypt. In practice, Bir Tawil is widely believed to have the legal status of terra nullius – “nobody’s land” – and there is nothing else quite like it on the planet.

This is wrong and the article later corrects itself:

> Their ties to the area may be based on traditional rather than written claims – but Bir Tawil is not any more a “no man’s land” than the territory once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius was repeatedly invoked in the early 20th century by both chartered companies and the British government that supported them to justify the appropriation of territory from indigenous people.

The fascinating thing is that the idea that Bir Tawil is, or ever was, terra nullius comes from atriciously bad Wikipedia pages on the subject (in the past even the West Bank was listed as terra nullius!). It likley was those that lead Jeremiah Heaton to think he could claim it by planting a flag there. Because you cannot find any scholarly sources claiming that Bir Tawil is terra nullius. So what must have happened is that one or more Wikipedians, with no legal training, must have found terra nullius described in some source and then started to give terra nullius designations to pieces of land that they thought fit.

Along comes a lot of clueless journalists and repeats Wikipedia's erroneous claims. Wikipedians in turn find these articles and inserts them as references into the articles and the circle is complete.

And fwiw, the literal translation of terra nullius isn't "nobody's land" it's "empty land". Ownership of land is orthogonal to whether it is inhabited. Examples of terra nullius would be Antarctica or tiny remote islands that sometimes pops up in the Atlantic far from any country's coast. Bir Tawil does't fit the bill because it is inhabited. Which state has sovereignty is unclear but we do know it is either Egypt or Sudan. There is no room for a third party to make any claims.