Royal Society a compliment to Lord Brouncker, a peer and the first President of the Royal Society. The society's motto, "Nullius in verba", is Latin for "Take nobody's word for it". It was adopted to signify the fellows' determination to establish facts via experiments and comes from Horace's "Epistles", where he compares himself to a gladiator who, having retired, is free from control. The society's core members are the fellows: scientists and engineers from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth selected based on having made "a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science". Fellows
Terra nullius colonization in 1885. The court found in its advisory opinion that Western Sahara was not "terra nullius" at that time. Terra nullius Terra nullius (, plural "terrae nullius") is a Latin expression meaning "nobody's land", and is a principle sometimes used in international law to describe territory that may be acquired by a state's occupation of it. "Terra nullius" stems from the Roman law term "res nullius", meaning "nobody's thing". According to the Roman law "res nullius", or things without an owner, such as wild animals ("ferae beastiae"), lost slaves and abandoned buildings could be taken as property by anyone