Timeline Netherlands
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Maastricht's name derives from Mosae
Trajectum,
which in Latin means the crossing on the Mosa (Meuse, Maas) River.
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.40)
Holland's official second language is Frisian. The country was
once called Zeeland.
(WSJ, 5/13/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 3/28/99, Z1 p.8)
160BC–220CE The Weerdinge Couple, 2
men dating to this period, were found in a Holland bog in 1904.
(AM, 7/97, p.66)
53BC Caesar claimed to have wiped
out the Celtic Eburones after they conspired with other groups in an
attack that killed 6,000 Roman soldiers. The Eburones lived in an area
that later came be known as part of Belgium, Germany and the
Netherlands.
(AP, 11/14/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eburones)
50BCE Maastricht, Netherlands,
began as a Roman settlement.
(SSFC, 2/20/05, p.F2)
1-100AD A Teutonic tribe known as the Frisians (or
Friesians) settled in what is now the Netherlands in the first century
A.D.
(HNQ, 3/5/00)
180CE A Roman military transport
ship was built about this time, as Marcus Aurelius passed the throne to
the emperor Commodus. It later sank in the Rhine. In 2003 archeologists
in the Netherlands unveiled the preserved ship.
(AP, 5/15/03)
600-700 In the seventh century the Frisians clashed
with the Franks and resisted Christianity, but succumbed to Frankish
rule and accepted Christianity a century later. Citizens of the
Netherlands’s province of Friesland are still called Frisians and the
Frisian language is still spoken there.
(HNQ, 3/5/00)
727 May 30, Hubertus (72), bishop
of Tongeren-Maastricht, saint, died.
(MC, 5/30/02)
739 Nov 7, Willibrord (81),
[Clemens], 1st bishop of Utrecht (695-739) and saint , died.
(MC, 11/7/01)
830 The Utrecht Psalter was
produced in the Netherlands. Its 166 ink drawings illustrated passages
in the psalms. In the eleventh century an English copy was made that
became known as the Harley Psalter.
(Econ, 6/13/09,
p.86)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utrecht_Psalter)
918 Mar 1, Balderik became bishop
of Utrecht.
(SC, 3/1/02)
953 Apr 21, Otto I, the Great,
granted Utrecht fishing rights.
(MC, 4/21/02)
988 May 6, Dirk II, West Frisian
count of Holland, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1010 May 3, Ansfried (~69), 9th
bishop of Utrecht (995-1010), saint, died.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1076 Feb 22, Godfried III, with
the Hump, duke of Lower Lorraine, was murdered. [see Feb 26]
(MC, 2/22/02)
1076 Feb 26, Godfried III with the
Hump, duke of Netherlands-Lutheran, was murdered. [see Feb 24]
(SC, 2/26/02)
1099 Apr 14, Conrad, bishop of
Utrecht, was stabbed to death.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1100 Wittem Castle in Limburg
dates to this time.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.T13)
1121 Mar 2, Dirk VI became count
of Holland.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1122 Mar 2, Floris II, the fat
one, count of Holland, died.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1219 Jan 16, Floods followed a
storm in Northern Netherlands and thousands were killed.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1235 Sep 5, Henry I, duke of
Brabant, died. Brabant was a duchy later divided between Netherlands
and Belgium.
(WUD, 1994 p.177)(MC, 9/5/01)
1258 Mar 26, Floris the Guardian,
count-regent of Holland, died.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1280 Muiden Castle, 10 miles east
of Amsterdam, dates to this time.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.T13)
1287 Dec 14, The Zuider Zee
seawall collapsed with the loss of 50,000 lives.
(MC, 12/14/01)
1294 May 3, Jan I, duke of Brabant
(Belgium-Netherlands), Limburg, poet, died.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1299 The Count of Holland gained
control of the County of Zeeland, which had been under contention
between Holland and Flanders.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeland)
1300 The Oude Kerk church in
Amsterdam dates to this time.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T9)
1301 Jul 4, Battle at Breukelen:
Holland vs. Lichtenberg.
(Maggio)
1345 The Frisian victory over the
Dutch on the beach at Warns was their last before the Dutch took over.
(WSJ, 5/13/98, p.A20)
1366 Records indicate that cheese
was weighed in Alkmaar at this time.
(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.T10)
1404 Netherlands experienced a
severe flood.
1421 Nov 18-1421 Nov 19, In the
St. Elizabeth flood the Southern sea flooded 72 villages killing
some 10,000 in Netherlands.
(www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/SK-A-3147-B?lang=en)
1432 Zeeland became part of the
Low Countries possession of Phillip the Good (1396-1467) of Burgundy.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeland)
1433 Apr 14, Liduina van Schiedam
(53), Dutch mystic (Christ's Bride), saint, died.
(MC, 4/14/02)
c1450-1516 Hieronymus Bosch, painter was born.
Hieronymus van Aken was born in the small Dutch Brabant city of
‘s-Hertogenbosch in Flanders.
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.172)(WSJ, 8/25/98,
p.A12)(WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A19)
1451 Sep 21, Cardinal Nicholas of
Cusa ordered the Jews of Holland to wear a badge.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1459 Mar 2, Adrian VI [Adriaan F
Boeyens], Pope (1522-23), was born in the Netherlands.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1460 May 9, In the Netherlands the
courtyard Episcopal palace at Atrecht had witch burnings.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1466 Oct 26, Desiderius Erasmus
(d.1536), scholar and author (In Praise of Folly), was born in
Rotterdam. He was of illegitimate birth, but became a priest and a
monk. He excelled in philology, the study of ancient languages, namely
Latin and Greek and worked on a new translation of the New Testament.
The more he studied it, the more he came to doubt the accuracy of the
Vulgate, St. Jerome's translation into Latin, dating from around 400.
"In Praise of Folly" is his most famous work... In it Erasmus had the
freedom to discourse, in the ironic style of Lucian (the Greek author
whose works he translated), concerning all the foolishness and
misguided pompousness of the world.
(V.D.-H.K.p.159-160)(MC, 10/26/01)
1477 Future Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian I, a member of the Habsburg family of Austria, married Mary
of Burgundy, heiress of all the Netherlands. Maximilian had given Mary
a diamond engagement ring, a practice that soon spread. In 1996 Andrew
Wheatcroft wrote a history of the Habsburgs: "The Habsburgs."
(WSJ, 1/19/96, p.A-12)(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.6)(SFC,
5/28/08, p.G2)
1477 The Seventeen Provinces, a
personal union of states in the Low Countries in the 16th century,
became the property of the Habsburgs. They roughly covered the current
Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, a good part of the North of France
(Artois, Nord) and a small part of Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeland)
1483 Apr 6, Raphael (Raffaello
Sanzio, d.1520), Dutch painter (Sistine Madonna) , was born to an
unremarkable painter in the Duchy of Urbino. He went on to paint famous
works in the Vatican. After an apprenticeship in Perugia, he went to
Florence, having heard of the work da Vinci and Michelangelo were
doing. His last 12 years were spent on numerous commissions in Rome. He
died on his 37th birthday, his funeral mass being celebrated in the
Vatican. .
(HN, 4/6/98)(HNQ, 11/17/00)
1487 Hans Memling (c.1440-1494),
Flemish painter, painted the diptych “Virgin and Child” and “Maarten
van Nieuwenhove” (1463-1500), who was his patron.
(SFC, 10/18/05, p.D2)(SFC, 12/23/06, p.E12)
1489-1490 The plague ravaged the Netherlands.
(WSJ, 10/12/98, p.A17)
1492 May 15, Cheese and Bread
rebellion: German mercenaries killed 232 Alkmaarse.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1500s Holland and Saxony began to
protect the rights of inventors to their creations.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1507 Margaret of Austria was
appointed Regent by the States-General (parliament) of the Netherlands
until the Archduke Charles came of age.
(TL-MB, p.9)
1510 Jun 9, Nicolaas van
Nieuwland, corrupt 1st bishop of Harlem, was born.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1511 Portuguese traders reached
the Banda Islands, including Run, and broke the Venetian monopoly over
nutmeg. Over the next century the Dutch muscled in an almost cornered
the nutmeg market. The history of the nutmeg trade was documented in
1999 by Giles Milton in his: "Nathaniel's Nutmeg."
(WSJ, 5/21/99, p.W7)
1512 Nov 16, Jemme Herjuwsma,
Fries rebel, was beheaded.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1512 Nov 17, Kempo Roeper, Frisian
rebel, was quartered.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1517 Jul 1, The 1st burning of
Protestants at stake in Netherlands.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1517 Archduke Charles left the
Netherlands for Spain and entered Valladolid in triumph.
(TL-MB, p.11)
1519 Jul 6, Charles of Spain was
elected Holy Roman emperor in Barcelona. The Catholic heir to the
Hapsburg dynasty, Charles V, was elected Holy Roman Emperor, combining
the crowns of Spain, Burgundy (with the Netherlands), Austria and
Germany. He was the grandson of Ferdnand and Isabella of Spain.
(V.D.-H.K.p.162)(NH, 9/96, p.18)(HN, 7/6/98)
1520 Oct 7, The 1st public burning
of books took place in Louvain, Netherlands.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1521 May 28, Willem van Croij
(~62), duke of Soria, died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1521 Oct 25, Emperor Charles V
banned wooden buildings in Amsterdam.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1522 Apr 29, Emperor Charles V
named Frans van Holly inquisitor-gen of Netherlands.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1523 Nov 30, Amsterdam banned the
assembly of heretics.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1523 Hans Holbein completed the
first of several portraits of Erasmus. He also began the design of 51
plates on the "Dance of Death," which reflected ideas of the
Reformation.
(TL-MB, p.12)
1524 Apr 19, Pope Clemens VII
fired the Netherlands inquisitor-general French Van de Holly.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1524 Dec 11, Henry Van Zutphen,
Dutch Protestant martyr, was burned at stake.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1525 May 10, Church reformer John
Pistorius was caught in the Hague.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1525 Sep 15, Jan de Bakker (26),
Roman Catholic priest also known under the name Pistorius, was burned
during the Reformation in the Netherlands.
(http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/p/pistorius_joh.shtml)
1527 Nov 20, Wendelmoet "Weyntjen"
Claesdochter, became the 1st Dutch woman to be burned as heretic.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1528 Nov 30, Great Wierd, Dutch
Gelderland army commander, was beheaded.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1530 In Antwerp William Tyndale
published his translation into English of the Pentateuch, the first
five books of the Old Testament, and shipped copies to England.
(WSJ, 12/22/94, A-20)(ON, 11/04, p.2)
1531 May 31, "Women's Revolt" in
Amsterdam: wool house in churchyard.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1531 Dec 6, John Volkertsz
Trimaker, Dutch Anabaptist leader, was beheaded.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1534 Feb 26, Pope Paul III was
affirmed George van Egmond as bishop of Utrecht.
(PTA, 1980, p.440)(SC, 2/26/02)
1534 Mar 26, Lübeck,
Hanseatic League port in the Baltic, accepted free Dutch ships into
East Sea.
(SS, 3/26/02)(WUD, 1994 p.851)
1535 Feb 10, 12 nude Anabaptists
ran through the streets of Amsterdam. [see 1534]
(MC, 2/10/02)
1535 May 21, Imperial authorities
in Antwerp captured and imprisoned William Tyndale for heresy over his
translation of the Bible into English.
(WSJ, 12/22/94,
A-20)(www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b2tyndalew.htm)
1535 Jun 24, Francis of Waldeck
overcame the Anabaptists of Munster. Fanatic leader John of Leyden and
others were tortured and executed in Jan 1536.
(MC, 6/24/02)(PC, 1992, p.179)
1535 Jul 10, Jacob Van Campen,
Anabaptist bishop of Amsterdam, was beheaded.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1536 Jul 12, Desiderius Erasmus
(b.1469 in Rotterdam) died, humanist, priest (Novum instrumentum omne),
died. His most famous works included "In Praise of Folly" and a Greek
text of the New Testament. In 1999 Prof. Charles Trinkaus published
"Collected Works of Erasmus: Controversies," an examination of the
religious conflict between humanism and the Reformation.
(V.D.-H.K.p.159-160)(SFC, 9/27/99, p.A26)(WSJ,
1/31/03, p.W13)(MC, 7/12/02)
1540 Feb 14, Emperor Charles V
entered Ghent without resistance and executed the rebels. He brutally
beat down an uprising against taxes for an expansionist war. Nine
leaders were beheaded and another hanged. City burgers were forced to
walk the streets barefoot with rope hanging round their necks. The
"Gentse Feesten" annual festival re-enacts this event every mid-July.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.T10)(MC, 2/14/02)
1550 Apr 28, Powers of Dutch
inquisition were extended.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1550 Apr 29, Emperor Charles V
gave inquisitors additional authority.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1555 Oct 25, Emperor Charles V put
his son Philip II in charge of Netherlands, Naples, and Milan.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1556-1620 Adriaen de Vries, sculptor. He was born in
The Hague and worked in Florence under the sculptor Giovanni Bologna.
His work included "Juggling Man" (c1610-1615), a bust of Emp. Rudolf II
(1603), and the Neptune Fountain (1615-1618).
(WSJ, 1/6/98, p.A20)(WSJ, 12/7/99, p.A24)
1557 Pieter Breughel the Elder
created his painting "The Drunkard Pushed Into the Pigsty." [see
Flanders]
(WSJ, 9/6/02, p.W14)
1558 Hendrick Goltzius (d.1617),
Dutch Master painter, was born.
(WSJ, 8/14/03, p.D8)
1564 Dec 31, Willem of Orange
demanded freedom of conscience and religion.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1564-1651 Abraham Bloemaert, artist and teacher of
Hendrick ter Brugghen.
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.13)
1566 Aug 25, Iconoclastic fury
began in the Dutch province of Utrecht. Fanatical Calvinists instigated
religious riots in the Netherlands.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)(TL-MB, 1988, p.21)
1566-1638 Joachim Wytawael (Wtewael), Dutch mannerist
painter.
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.13)(SFEM, 9/17/00, p.96)
1566-1640 Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Dutch painter.
(SFC, 4/4/01, p.C1)
1567 Apr 11, Dutch Prince William
of Orange fled from Antwerp to Breda.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1567 May 1, Michiel Jansz van
Mierevelt, Dutch royal painter, was born.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1567 Oct 6, The Duke of Alba
became guardian of the Netherlands. Spain’s Duke of Alba arrived in
Brussels at the head of a 10,000 troops to quell the iconoclastic riots.
(MC, 10/6/01)(WSJ, 7/1/04, p.D8)
1568 Jan 24, In Netherlands Duke
of Alba declared (future King) William of Orange an outlaw.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1568 Feb 16, A sentence of the
Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death
as heretics. From this universal doom only a few persons, especially
named, were acquitted.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War)
1568 Oct 5, Willem of Orange's
army occupied Brabant.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1568-1648 The Eighty Years' War, or Dutch Revolt was
the secession war in which the proto-Netherlands first became an
independent country and in which the region now known as Belgium became
established. It was carried on by the Calvinist and predominantly
mercantile Dutch provinces.
(TL-MB, 1988,
p.21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War)
1569 Sep 5, Pieter Breughel, South
Netherlands (Flemish) painter, died at about 44.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1570 Mar 4, Spain’s King Philip II
banned foreign Dutch students.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1570 Nov 2, A tidal wave in the
North Sea destroyed the sea walls from Holland to Jutland. Over a
thousand people are killed.
(HN,
11/2/98)(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)
1572 Apr 1, The Sea Beggars under
Guillaume de la Marck landed in Holland and captured the small town of
Briel.
(HN, 4/1/99)
1572 Jun 9, Willem van Orange's
army occupied Gelderland.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1572 Jun 24, Adrianus van Gouda,
lay brother, was hanged along with Cornelis van Diedt, Daniell van
Arendonck (clergyman), Joannes van Naarden (priest) and Ludovicus Voets
(priest).
(MC, 6/24/02)
1572 Jul 9, 19 Catholic priests
were hanged in Gorcum, Holland.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1572 Jul 18, William of Orange was
recognized as viceroy of Holland, Friesland and Utrecht.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1572 Dec, The Dutch town of
Naarden surrendered to Imperial Spanish troops under the Duke of Alba
(1507-1582). The town was then burned and the entire population
massacred. Alba’s attempt to impose a 10% sales tax on commodities
stirred resistance that led to the Dutch independence. In 2004 Henry
Kamen authored ”The Duke of Alba.”
(WSJ, 7/1/04, p.D8)
1572 Dutch warships, Beggars of
the Sea, effectively harried Spanish shipping in the English Channel
and fueled the Dutch War of Independence.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)
1572 The Dutch used carrier
pigeons during the Spanish siege of Haarlem.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1573 Jul 20, Lancelot of Brederode
(Netherlands), water beggar, was beheaded.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1574 Oct 1-2 A storm broke a
Leiden dike and 20,000 Spanish soldiers drowned. Spanish forces in the
Netherlands besieged Leyden, but William the Silent (Willem of Orange)
breached the dykes to flood the land. This allowed his ships to sail up
to the walls and lift the siege.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)(PCh, 1992, p.198)(MC, 10/1/01)
1575 The Bols family arrived in
Amsterdam to open ‘het Lootsje’ where they would distill liqueurs. This
was the starting point of what would become the world’s oldest
distillery. Bols began producing Genever, a Dutch style of gin, in
1664. In 2007 it opened a House of Bols museum in the museum quarter in
the Dutch capital. It was dedicated to the history of Jenever (also
known as genever or jeniever), the juniper-flavored alcoholic liquor
from which gin evolved. The museum is housed on two floors of the Bols
headquarters at 14 Paulus Potterstraat. Originally sold as a remedy for
lumbago muscular pain, the traditional Dutch and Flemish drink was
allegedly invented at the end of the 16th century by Sylvius de Bouve,
a chemist, alchemist, renowned scholar and professor at the university
of Leyden.
(http://amsterdam.wantedineurope.com/news/news.php?id_n=2999)(www.lucasbols.com/index.asp)(WSJ,
5/31/08, p.A12)
1576 Nov 8, All 17 provinces of
the Netherlands united in the Pacification of Ghent in the face of
Spanish occupation. The 17 provinces of the Netherlands formed a
federation to maintain peace.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)(HN, 11/6/98)
1576 Mutinous Spanish forces
sacked Antwerp in "the Spanish Fury."
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)
1577 Jun 28, Pietro Paul Rubens
(d.1640), Flemish painter, was born in Germany, the child of
protestants exiled from Antwerp. His work included "Helene Fourment"
and "The Abduction of the Daughters of Leucippus."
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1250)(HN, 6/28/01) (Econ,
5/15/04, p.81)
1577 Sep 23, William of Orange
made his triumphant entry into Brussels, Belgium.
(HN, 9/23/98)
1578 Jan 28, Cornelis Haga, Dutch
lawyer, ambassador to Constantinople (1611-39), was born.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1578 Don John of Austria died of
fever. He was succeeded as Governor of the Netherlands by Alessandro
Farnese, Duke of Parma.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)
1579 Jan 25, The Union of Utrecht
brought together seven northern, Protestant provinces of the
Netherlands against the Catholics. Known as the United Provinces, they
become the foundation of the Dutch Republic. The Treaty of Utrecht was
signed, marking the beginning of the Dutch Republic.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)(AP, 1/25/98)
1579 Jan, The Peace of Arras
ensured that the southern provinces of The Netherlands were reconciled
to Philip II. It joined the Low Country Walloons (Catholics) with those
of Hainaut and Artois.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)(PCh, 1992, p.200)
1579 Mar 23, Friesland joined the
Union of Utrecht.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1580 Jun 18, States of Utrecht
outlawed Catholic worship.
(MC, 6/18/02)
c1581 Franz Hals (d.1666),
painter, was born.
(WUD, 1994 p.640)(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.T7)
1581 The seven northern provinces
of the Netherlands renounced their allegiance to Philip II of Spain.
(TL-MB, p.23)
1582 Nov 1, Maurice of Nassau, the
son of William of Orange, became the governor of Holland, Zeeland and
Utrecht.
(HN, 11/1/98)
1583 Apr 10, Hugo Grotius (d.1645)
of Holland, father of international law, was born. Huig de Groot
(Latinized as Hugo Grotius), Dutch jurist and statesman, is generally
regarded as the founder of international law because of his influential
work "On the Law of War and Peace" published in 1625. He became a
member of a diplomatic mission to France at age 15 and began practicing
law at 16. A liberal Protestant, de Groot became involved in religious
disputes in the Netherlands and was arrested in 1618 and sentenced to
life imprisonment. He escaped in 1621 and fled to Paris. He served the
Swedish government as ambassador to France from 1634-1644.
(HN, 4/10/98)(HNQ, 3/15/00)
1584 Jan 7, This was the last day
of the Julian calendar in Bohemia & Holy Roman empire. The 1582
Gregorian (or New World) calendar was adopted by this time in Belgium,
most of the German Roman Catholic states and the Netherlands.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, Par p.27)(MC, 1/7/02)
1584 Jul 10, William of Orange
(1533-1584), Prince of Orange (1544-1584), Count of Nassau (1559-1584),
and first stadholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, was
assassinated by Burgundian Balthasar Gerard (25) with a handgun. Philip
II of Spain had called for a volunteer assassin due to William’s
reluctance take a public stand on religious issues. William was
succeeded by his 17-year-old son, Maurice of Nassau. In 2006 Lisa
Jardine authored “The Awful End of Prince William the Silent.”
(TL-MB, 1988, p.23)(WSJ, 4/5/06, p.D8)
1584 A Dutch trading post was
established at the Russian port of Archangel.
(TL-MB, p.23)
1585 Apr 5, Clemens Crabbeels
became bishop of Hertogenbosch.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1585 Antwerp was sacked by the
Duke of Parma, resulting in long-lasting loss of trade for that port.
(TL-MB, p.24)
1585 Simon Stevin, Dutch
mathematician and military and civil engineer, introduces decimals into
the mathematical calculations of his physics in Die Thiende.
(TL-MB, p.24)
1585 The Dutch used the first
time-bombs in floating mines actuated by clockwork at the siege of
Antwerp.
(TL-MB, p.24)
1587 Giles Everard, a Dutch
doctor, authored “Panacea,” extolling the virtues of tobacco. The Latin
version was made available in English in 1659.
(WSJ, 11/22/08, p.W11)
1588-1629 Hendrick ter Brugghen was an artist of the
Utrecht School. His paintings included: "St. Sebastian Tended by
Irene." He traveled to Rome and was influenced by the work of
Caravaggio.
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.8)
1590 Mar 4, Mauritius of Nassau's
ship reached Breda, Netherlands.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1592-1656 Gerard van Honthorst was an artist of the
Utrecht School. His paintings included "The Denial of St. Peter"
(1620-1626), and "Saint Sebastian" from (c1620/1623). He traveled to
Rome and was influenced by the work of Caravaggio.
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.8,12)
1595 Apr 2, Cornelis de Houtman's
ships departed to Asia around Cape of Good Hope.
(MC, 4/2/02)
c1595-1624 Dirck van Baburen was an artist of the
Utrecht School. He traveled to Rome and was influenced by the work of
Caravaggio.
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.8)
1596 May 18, Willem Barents left
Amsterdam for Novaya Zemlya.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1597 Jun 20, Willem Barents, Dutch
explorer who discovered Spitsbergen & Bereneil, died. In 1995
Rayner Unwin authored "A Winter Away from Home," an account of Barents’
Arctic voyages.
(WUD, 1994 p.120)(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.C17)(MC, 6/20/02)
1597 In Amsterdam the Spinhuis
(spinning house) was opened as a workhouse for fallen women.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T9)
1597-1665 Pieter Saenredam, Haarlem painter of
architectural motifs.
(WSJ, 7/2/02, p.D7)
1597/8-1671 Jan van Bijlert, painter. He traveled to
Rome and was influenced by the work of Caravaggio.
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.13)
1598 Jun, A 5-ship Dutch
expedition to Japan departed Rotterdam with Will Adams, English ship
pilot, as chief navigator.
(ON, 11/02, p.8)
1599 The Dutch East India Company
dates to this time. [see 1602]
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1600 Apr 19, The Dutch ship
Liefde, piloted by Will Adams, reached Japan with a crew of 24 men. 6
of the crew soon died. 4 other ships in the expedition were lost.
(ON, 11/02, p.8)
1600 Dec 31, The British East
India Company (d.1874) was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I in London to
carry on trade in the East Indies in competition with the Dutch, who
controlled nutmeg from the Banda Islands.
(WUD, 1994, p.449)(WSJ, 1/11/99,
p.R49)(www.theeastindiacompany.com/history.html)
1600-1700 Britain waged wars against the Dutch. The
English fleet sailed in three segments, the 3rd of which was commanded
by a Rear Admiral. [see 1780-1783]
(SFEC, 8/3/97, Z1 p.2)
1600-1700 Cognac 1st appeared when Dutch sea
merchants found that they could better preserve white wine shipped from
France to northern Europe by distilling it. They then learned the wine
got better as it aged in wooden barrels.
(WSJ, 7/14/03, p.A1)
1600-1700 West Timor was seized by the Netherlands.
(SFC, 3/3/98, p.A6)
1600-1800 A mass migration of nearly 1 million people
in the 17th and 18th century led to the decline of this small nation.
(SFC, 3/31/98, p.F4)
1601 Joachim Wtewael painted "Mars
and Venus Discovered by Vulcan."
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.8)
1602 Mar 20, The Dutch East India
Company was chartered to carry on trade in the East Indies. The company
traded to 1798 whereupon its possessions were dissolved into the Dutch
empire.
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~sdconinc/VOC/
(WUD, 1994, p.449)(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 215)(HNQ,
7/23/00)
1602 Japan’s Shogun Ieyasu seized
the Dutch ship Liefde and granted its crew allowances to live in Japan.
(ON, 11/02, p.9)
1604 Sep 20, After a two-year
siege, the Spanish retook Ostend [NW Belgium], the Netherlands, from
the Dutch.
(WUD, 1994, p.1019)(HN, 9/20/98)
1604-1667 Christiaen van Couwenbergh, Dutch painter.
(SFC, 4/4/01, p.C1)
1605 Japan’s Shogun Ieyasu allowed
some of the Dutch crew of the ship Liefde to return home, but kept Will
Adams in Japan. Adams soon married Magoma Oyuki, a young noblewoman.
(ON, 11/02, p.10)
1606 Jul 15, The painter Rembrandt
(d.1669) Harmenszoom van Rizn (Rijn), was born in Leiden, Netherlands.
His paintings included "Old Woman Cutting Her Nails," "Night Watch,"
"Self Portrait Leaning Forward" (1628), "Two Studies of Saskia Asleep"
(1635-1637), "Jupiter and Antiope" (1659) and "Aristotle Contemplating
the Bust of Homer." He started making etchings in the 1620s when the
medium was barely a 100 years old.
(WSJ, 10/1/96, p.A20)(SFC, 10/12/96, p.E3)(SFC,
5/17/97, p.E1)(AP, 7/15/97)
1608 Oct 2, Jan Lippershey,
spectacle maker, formally offered to the Estates of Holland his new
spyglass for warfare. He was the 1st to file a patent claim for a
spyglass.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9048449)(CW,
Spring ‘99, p.33)
1608 The Oudemannenhuis almshouse
was built in Haarlem.
(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.T7)
1609 Mar 25, Henry Hudson embarked
on an exploration for Dutch East India Co.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1609 Sep 12, English
explorer Henry Hudson sailed into the river that now bears his name.
Hudson sailed for the Dutch East India Company in search of the
Northwest Passage, a water route linking the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, when he sailed up the present-day Hudson River.
(AP, 9/12/97)(HNQ, 7/23/00)
1610 The Dutch ousted the
Portuguese from Indonesia by this time, but the Portuguese retained the
eastern half of Timor.
(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)
1610 The first cargo of Asian tea
arrived in Amsterdam
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
1610-1650 Painters from Utrecht worked in the style
of Caravaggio.
(WSJ, 10/20/97, p.A19)
1611 Joachim Wtewael painted
"Andromeda." He and Bloemaert helped transmit the Italian mannerist
influence and a preference for figure painting over landscape
(SFC, 9/12/97, p.C8)
1613 Apr 7, Gerard Dou, Dutch
painter (Night School), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1613-1675 Gerrit Dou, Dutch artist. He was a student
of Rembrandt.
(SFC, 5/25/00, p.A24)
1614 Crispijn de Passe the Younger
published "Hortus Floridus" in Holland.
(WSJ, 7/7/98, p.A14)
1615 Joachim Wtewael painted the
"Judgement of Paris."
(SFC, 9/12/97, p.C8)
1616 Dec 25, Nathaniel Courthope,
a British merchant-adventurer under direct orders from James I, landed
his ship Swan at the Banda Island of Run. He persuaded the islanders to
enter an alliance with the British for nutmeg. He fortified the 1 by 2
mile island and with 30 men proceeded to hold off a Dutch siege for
1,540 days.
(WSJ, 5/21/99, p.W7)
1616 The Dutch became the first to
establish colonies in Guyana with Essequibo. Berbice followed in 1627,
and then Demerara in 1752.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana)
1616-1691/92 Emanuel de Witte, Dutch painter.
(SFC, 4/4/01, p.C1)
1617 Feb 4, Louis Elsevier (~76),
Dutch publisher, died.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1617 The Pilgrims decided to leave
the Netherlands. They formed a partnership in a joint-stock company
with a group of London merchants in a company called John Pierce &
Assoc. They received a grant for a plantation in the Virginia colony
but ended up landing in Massachusetts. Each adult was to receive a
share in the company but earnings would not be divided for 7 years.
(WSJ, 11/26/97, p.A14)
1618 Aug, Hugo Grotius, attorney
general of Holland, was arrested on the orders of Prince Maurice of
Nassau, ruler of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, for
conspiring to undermine the authority of the government.
(ON, 10/04, p.1)
1618 Hendrick Goltzius (b.1558),
Dutch Master painter, died. His work included "Danaë."
(WSJ, 8/14/03, p.D8)
1619 May 13, Johan van
Oldenbarnevelt (b.1547), Dutch lands advocate, was beheaded.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1619 May 18, Hugo the Great
(1582-1645), Hugo de Groot or Grotius, Dutch scholar, the "Father of
Int’l. Law" and author of the 1st treatise on the law of the sea, Mare
liberum," was sentenced to life in prison.
(SC, 5/18/02)(Internet)
1619 Jun 5, Hugo Grotius was taken
to Loevestein Castle to begin his life sentence. His wife and 5
children were allowed to stay with him.
(ON, 10/04, p.1)
1619 Amsterdam opened a stock
exchange.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1620 Jul 22, The Pilgrims set out
from Holland destined for the New World. The Speedwell sailed to
England from the Netherlands with members of the English Separatist
congregation that had been living in Leiden, Holland. Joining the
larger Mayflower at Southampton, the two ships set sail together in
August, but the Speedwell soon proved unseaworthy and was abandoned at
Plymouth, England. The entire company then crowded aboard the
Mayflower, setting sail for North America on September 16, 1620.
(HNQ, 3/4/00)(MC, 7/22/02)
1621 Jun 3, The Dutch West India
Company received a charter for New Netherlands, now known as New York.
The Dutch West India Co. was formed to trade with America and West
Africa.
(AP, 6/3/97)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1621-1622 Dutch artist Dirck van Baburen painted "The
Mocking of Christ."
(SFC, 9/12/97, p.C8)
1622 Feb 27, Rembrandt Carel
Fabritius (d.1654), Dutch painter, was born.
(SFC, 4/4/01, p.C1)(MC, 2/27/02)
1622 Mar 22, Hugo Grotius escaped
from Loevestein Castle.
(ON, 10/04, p.2)
1622 Dirck van Baburen painted:
"The Procuress."
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.8)
1622 In Aklmaar the cheese market
officially opened. [see 1366]
(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.T10)
1623 Apr 29, 11 Dutch ships
departed for the conquest of Peru.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1623 Dirck van Baburen painted
"Prometheus Chained."
(SFC, 9/12/97, p.C1)
1624 Cafe Chris opened in
Amsterdam and served the construction workers of the nearby Westerkerk.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T5)
1624 The Dutch conquered Salvador,
Brazil.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.T8)
1624 Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel
encased a wooden frame in a greased leather sheath and pushed it
underwater to create what’s claimed to be the world’s 1st submarine.
(SFC, 7/15/00, p.B3)
1625 Sep 24, Dutch Gen’l. Bowdoin
Hendrik and his fleet of 17 ships sailed into San Juan, Puerto Rico,
and attacked El Morro. He held the garrison under siege for 3 weeks and
then set the town to flames. This infuriated the Spanish who attacked
and sent the Dutch fleeing.
(HT, 4/97, p.31-33)(MC, 9/24/01)
1625 Hendrick ter Brugghen painted
"Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene."
(SFC, 9/12/97, p.C8)
1625 Rembrandt depicted himself as
a bit player in his painting "The Stoning of St. Stephen."
(WSJ, 8/11/99, p.A16)
1625 Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) of
Holland published his influential work "On the Law of War and Peace."
Huig de Groot (Latinized as Hugo Grotius), Dutch jurist and statesman,
is generally regarded as the founder of international law. "It is
lawful to kill who is preparing to kill."
(HN, 4/10/98)(HNQ, 3/15/00)(Econ, 11/22/03, p.25)
1626 May 4,
Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on what is now Manhattan island.
Indians sold Manhattan Island for $24 in cloth and buttons. Peter
Minuit became director-general of New Netherlands
(AP, 5/4/97)(HN, 5/4/98)(MC, 5/4/02)
1626 Nov 7, Peter Schager of
Amsterdam informed the States General that the ship "The Arms of
Amsterdam" had arrived with a cargo of furs and timber from New
Netherlands and that the settlers there had bought the Island of
Manhattan for 60 guilders.
(WSJ, 11/19/99, p.W10)
1626 Rembrandt depicted part of
himself in his painting "History Piece."
(WSJ, 8/11/99, p.A16)
c1626-1627 Hendrick ter Brugghen painted "The
Concert."
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.12)
1626-1679 Jan Steen, Dutch painter.
(SFC, 4/4/01, p.C1)
1627 Mar 3, Piet Heyn conquered 22
ships in Bay of Salvador, Brazil.
(SC, 3/3/02)
c1627-1628 Hendrick ter Brugghen painted
"Melancholia."
(SFC, 9/12/97, p.C1)
1628 Mar 10, Constantine Huygens
Jr., Dutch poet, painter, cartoonist, was born.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1628 Abraham Bloemaert painted his
"Virgin and Child."
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.13)
1628 Rembrandt Harmenszoom van
Rizn (Rijn) (1606-1669), Dutch painter, painted "Self Portrait Leaning
Forward."
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1213)(WSJ, 10/1/96, p.A20)
1628 Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish
painter, was called upon to broker a peace between Catholic Spain and
Protestant England.
(Econ, 5/15/04, p.81)
1629 Apr 14, Christian Huygens
(d.1695), Dutch astronomer, discoverer of Saturn's rings, was born. He
invented the pendulum and along with Newton showed that any body
revolving around a center is actually accelerating constantly toward
that center, even though the rate of rotation remains constant.
(TNG, Klein,
p.30)(http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_huygens.htm)
1629 Jun 18, Piet Heyn (51),
lt.-admiral (Spanish silver fleet), died in battle.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1629 Oct 13, Dutch West Indies Co.
granted religious freedom in West Indies.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1629 The Batavia, a Dutch East
India ship, struck a reef off the western coast of Australia. Some 300
survivors made it to a tiny island in the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago,
where Jeronimus Cornelisz, a junior officer, took power after a vicous
struggle. He ran a regime of murder, rape and torture for 3 months when
helped arrived from the Dutch colony on Java. 70 of the 300 initial
survivors were still alive. Cornelisz was quickly tried and executed.
In 2005 Simon Leys authored “The Wreck of the Batavia.”
(WSJ, 1/10/06, p.D8)
1629-1684 Pieter de Hooch, Dutch painter of
contemplative scenes of everyday life.
(WSJ, 2/2/99, p.A20)
1632 Oct 24, Antoni van
Leeuwenhoek, Dutch naturalist, was born.
(HN, 10/24/00)
1632 Oct 31, [Johannes] Jan
Vermeer (d.1675), tavern keeper and Dutch painter (Procuress,
Astronomer), was born in Delft. Only 35 of his pictures are known to
survive. These include: "Girl With a Pearl Earring" (1665-1666), "The
Little Street" (1657), "Saint Praxedis" (1655), "Allegory of Faith"
(1671) and "The Artist in His Studio." His wife was Catharina Bolnes.
(WSJ, 11/15/95, p.A-20)(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994,
p.1587)(MC, 10/31/01)
1632 Nov 24, Baruch (Benedict) de
Spinoza (d.1677), Dutch rationalist philosopher, was born in Amsterdam.
"Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear."
(AP, 9/24/99)(MC, 11/24/01)
1632 Rembrandt painted his work
"Europa" and "Portrait of a Lady Aged 62." The portrait sold for $28.7
million in 2000.
(WSJ, 3/9/98, p.A16)(SFC, 12/15/00, p.C15)
1633 Dec 18, Willem van de Velde
the Young, Dutch seascape painter, was baptized.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1633 Rembrandt van Rijn painted
the "Portrait of a Bearded Man in a Red Coat." It sold for $9.1 million
in 1998.
(SFC, 2/3/98, p.E3)
1634 Rembrandt van Rijn painted
"Portrait of a Woman." It hangs in the Speed Museum of Louisville, Ky.
(WSJ, 12/18/97, p.A20)
1634-1637 The Dutch tulip craze was known as the
"tulipomania." A futures market was created for tulip bulbs in Dutch
taverns and prices crashed 95% in the end. In 2000 Peter M. Garber
authored "Famous First Bubbles," and restored a sense of proportion to
the inflated notions of the mania.
(WSJ, 7/7/98, p.A14)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(WSJ,
1/18/00, p.C14)(WSJ, 8/2/00, p.A20)
1635 Apr 16, Frans van Mieris, the
Elder, Dutch painter, was born.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1635-1637 Rembrandt Harmenszoom van Rizn (Rijn)
(1606-1669), Dutch painter, painted "Two Studies of Saskia Asleep."
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1213)(WSJ, 10/1/96, p.A20)
1636 Mar 26, University of Utrecht
held its opening ceremony.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1636 Nov 17, Henrique Dias,
Brazilian general, won a decisive battle against the Dutch in Brazil.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1636 Rembrandt made his etching
"Self-portrait with Saskia."
(HT, 5/97, p.60)
1636 Pieter Saenredam, Haarlem
painter of architectural motifs, spent 3 months in Utrecht where he
drew the interiors of the gothic churches.
(WSJ, 7/2/02, p.D7)
1637 Mar 5, John van der Heyden,
Dutch painter, inventor (fire extinguisher), was born.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1637 Nov 20, Peter Minuit &
1st Dutch and Swedish immigrants to Delaware sailed from Sweden. Peter
later purchased Manhattan Island for 60 guilders.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1637 The Dutch tulip bulb craze
crashed as futures prices became too high for speculators to pay off
and take delivery.
(WSJ, 7/7/98, p.A14)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(WSJ,
1/18/00, p.C14)
1637 The Dutch attacked and
captured Elmina (Ghana), which up to that point was the centre of
Portuguese activity in West Africa.
(www.moxon.net/ghana/cape_coast.html)
1638 Mar 23, Frederik Ruysch,
Dutch anatomist, was born.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1638 Aug 9, Jonas Bronck of
Holland became the 1st European settler in the Bronx.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1638 Rembrandt painted the
"Portrait of Willem Bartolsz Ruyter," a Dutch actor.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.E3)
1638 Joachim Wytawael (Wtewael,
b.1566) , Dutch mannerist painter, died. His work included "The
Adoration of the Shepherds."
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.13)(SFEM, 9/17/00, p.96)
1640 Rembrandt painted his
"Portrait of a Man Seated in an Armchair" about this time.
(WSJ, 11/3/95, p.A-12)
1641 Sep 23, Adrian "Aart" van
Wijck, theologian, was born. He fought Jansenism.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1642 Aug 13, Christian Huygens
discovered the Martian south polar cap.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1642 Dec 13, Dutch navigator and
explorer Abel Janszoon sighted present-day New Zealand. He fled after
Maori cannibals feasted on the “friendship party” he sent ashore.
(NG, Aug., 1974, p.196)(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.T4)(AP,
12/13/07)
1642 Rembrandt van Rijn painted
"Night Watch."
(WSJ, 3/904, p.D8)
1642 Curacao became a colony of
the Netherlands.
(Econ, 6/19/04, p.72)
1645 Aug 28, Hugo Grotius, Dutch
jurist and politician, died. In 1917 Hamilton Vreeland authored “Hugo
Grotius: The Father of Modern Science and International Law.”
(RTH, 8/28/99)(ON, 10/04, p.4)
1647 May 11, Peter Stuyvesant (37)
arrived in New Amsterdam to become governor of New Netherland. The
one-legged professional soldier was sent from the Netherlands to head
the Dutch trading colony at the southern end of Manhattan Island.
Stuyvesant lost a leg in a minor skirmish in the Caribbean in 1644.
(ON, 4/00, p.1)(AH, 10/04, p.74)(AP, 5/11/08)
1647 Nov 8, Pierre Bayle (d.1706),
French-Dutch theologian, philosopher, and writer, was born. He authored
the "Historical and Critical Dictionary." "If an historian were to
relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses and disorders of mankind,
his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history."
(WUD, 1994, p.128)(AP, 11/19/97)(WSJ, 12/2/97,
p.A20)(MC, 11/8/01)
1647 Nov 10, The all Dutch-held
area of New York was returned to English control by the treaty of
Westminster.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1648 May 15, The independence of
the Netherlands was finally recognized with the Dutch and Spanish
ratification of the Treaty of Munster, initially signed on January 30.
(www.oldandsold.com/articles36/netherlands-18.shtml)
1648 Van Ruisdael painted "Dunes
at Haarlem." His work this year also included his print "Christ
Preaching (The Hundred Guilder Print).
(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.T7)(WSJ, 3/904, p.D8)
1649 Salomon van Ruysdael
(1602-1670), Dutch landscape artist, created his painting “Ferry on a
River.”
(WSJ, 7/2/08,
p.D7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruisdael)
1649 The Prins Willem was built in
Middelburg, Netherlands, as the flagship of the Dutch East India
Company. The 3-masted ship, launched on Jan 1, 1650, sank in 1662 off
Madagascar.
(AP, 7/30/09)(http://tinyurl.com/mteqbf)
1650 Nov 4, William III, Prince of
Orange and King of England, was born. [see Nov 14]
(HN, 11/4/98)
1650 Nov 14, William III, King of
England (1689-1702), was born. [see Nov 4]
(HN, 11/14/98)
c1650 Jan Baptist Weenix painted
"Mother and Child in an Italian Landscape."
(SFEM, 8/31/97, p.12)
1652 Apr 7, The Dutch established
settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1652 May 29, English Admiral
Robert Blake drove out the Dutch fleet under Lieutenant-Admiral Tromp.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1652 Michael Sweerts, Flemish
artist, painted "Plague in an Ancient City" in Rome. In 1998 it held by
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.D7)
1652 War broke out between the
Netherlands and England.
(ON, 4/00, p.2)
1653 May 18, Carel Reyniersz (48),
Governor-General of Netherlands and East Indies, died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1653 Rembrandt painted his
"Aristotle With a Bust of Homer."
(WSJ, 11/3/95, p.A-12)
1654 Rembrandt van Rijn painted a
portrait of poet-businessman Jan Six, one of the richest Amsterdammers
of his time. His work this year also included "A Woman Bathing in a
Stream" and "Flora." His work this year also included the etching and
drypoint “The Descent From the Cross by Torchlight.”
(WSJ, 6/19/00, p.A42)(WSJ, 3/904, p.D8)(SFC,
1/28/06, p.E4)(Econ, 6/23/07, p.96)
1654 Carel Fabritius, a student of
Rembrandt, died in a munitions explosion.
(WSJ, 7/20/01, p.W11)
1654-1656 Rembrandt van Rijn painted a medallion
portrait of Muhammed Adil Shah of Bijapur.
(SFEM, 2/1/98, p.16)(SFC, 2/7/98, p.E8)
1655 Apr 26, Dutch West Indies Co.
denied Peter Stuyvesant's desire to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1655 Sep 26, Peter Stuyvesant
recaptured Dutch Ft. Casimir from Swedish in Delaware.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1655 Rembrandt painted "Polish
Rider."
(WSJ, 12/5/96, p.A16)
1655 Jan Steen painted "A Burgher
of Delft and His Daughter." In 2004 it sold for $14.6 million to the
Dutch National Museum.
(SFC, 4/4/01, p.C1)(SFC, 8/21/04, p.E12)
1655 Vermeer painted his Saint
Praxedis. [see Vermeer, 1632-1675]
(WSJ, 11/15/95, p.A-20)
1655 Pieter de Hooch moved to
Delft and painted there for 5 years.
(WSJ, 7/20/01, p.W11)
1655 Mar 25, Christiaan Huygens,
Dutch inventor and astronomer, discovered Titan, Saturn's largest
satellite.
(www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/huyglens.html)
1655-1660 Rembrandt painted his picture called "The
Auctioneer."
(WSJ, 11/3/95, p.A-12)
1656 Jan 8, Oldest surviving
commercial newspaper began in Haarlem, Netherlands.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1656 Jul 26, Rembrandt declared he
is insolvent.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1656 Christian Huygens
invented the first pendulum clock, as described in his 1658 article
"Horologium". It was built by Solomon Coster and was later put on
exhibit at the Time Museum in Rockford, Ill. The time-pieces previously
in use had been balance-clocks, Chris Huygens' pendulum clock was
regulated by a mechanism with a "natural" period of oscillation and had
an error of less than 1 minute a day.
(http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_huygens.htm)(SF
E&C, 1/15/1995, T-10)
1657 Vermeer painted his "The
Little Street" about this time (1658-1660).
(WSJ, 11/15/95, p.A-20)(SFC, 4/4/01, p.C1)
1659 Rembrandt Harmenszoom van
Rizn (Rijn) (1606-1669), Dutch painter, made "Jupiter and Antiope"
(1659).
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1213)(WSJ, 10/1/96, p.A20)
1659 Christian Huygens of Holland
used a 2-inch telescope lens and discovered that the Martian day is
nearly the same as an Earth day.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.A16)
1660 May 7, Isaack B. Fubine of
Savoy, in The Hague, patented macaroni.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1660 Rembrandt painted "The Old
Woman Cutting Her Nails" about this time.
(WSJ, 11/3/95, p.A-12)
c1660 The Dutch crafted an early
version of a boat they called a "yacht."
(SFC, 7/18/98, p.E3)
1660 Pieter Claesz (b.ca.1597),
Dutch still-life painter, died.
(WSJ, 11/22/05, p.D8)
1661 Aug 6, Holland sold Brazil to
Portugal for 8 million guilders.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1661 Rembrandt depicted himself in
the painting "Self-Portrait as St. Paul." His work this year also
included "James the Apostle."
(WSJ, 8/11/99, p.A16)(SFEC, 1/16/00, BR p.5)(WSJ,
3/904, p.D8)
1662 Feb 11, The Prins Willem,
built in 1643 as flagship of the Dutch East India Company, sank off
Madagascar. A replica, built in the 1980s, burned down at Den Helder in
2009.
(AP, 7/30/09)(http://tinyurl.com/mteqbf)
1662 Apr 27, Netherlands and
France signed a treaty of alliance in Paris.
(http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn1767012)
1662 Rembrandt depicted himself in
a painting as the fifth-century Greek painter Zeuxis. His work this
year also included “The Syndics of the Clothmakers' Guild.”
(WSJ, 8/11/99, p.A16)(Econ, 6/23/07, p.96)
1662 Dutch fortune seekers killed
over 400 members of the Nayar warrior caste in Kerala, India.
(SFEM, 7/18/99, p.12)
1663 Rembrandt depicted himself as
a bit player in his painting "The Raising of the Cross."
(WSJ, 8/11/99, p.A16)
1663 The Amsterdam attic church,
later known as the Museum Amstelkring, was built after the monarchy
banned the public practice of Catholicism.
(SFEC, 6/18/00, p.T11)
1663 Abraham Blauvelt, Dutch
pirate, died about this time. In the early 1630's He explored the
coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua. Afterwards, he went to England and
with a proposal for a settlement at site in Nicaragua, which is near
the town and river of Bluefields, Nicaragua.
(www.thepirateking.com/bios/blauvelt_abraham.htm)
1664 Apr 4, Adam Willaerts, Dutch
seascape painter, died.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1664 Aug 29, Adriaen Pieck/Gerrit
de Ferry patented a wooden fire spout in Amsterdam.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1664 Sep 5, After days of
negotiation, the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam surrendered to the
British, who would rename it New York. The citizens of New Amsterdam
petitioned Peter Stuyvesant to surrender to the English. The "Articles
of Capitulation" guaranteed free trade, religious liberty and a form of
local representation. In 2004 Russell Shorto authored "The Island At
the Center of the World," a history of New York's Dutch period.
(HN, 9/5/98)(ON, 4/00, p.3)(WSJ, 3/16/04, p.D6)
1664 Sep 8, The Dutch formally
surrendered New Amsterdam to 300 English soldiers. The British soon
renamed it New York.
(AP, 9/8/97)(ON, 4/00, p.3)
1664-1667 The Second Anglo-Dutch War.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1665 Mar 4, English King Charles
II declared war on Netherlands.
(SC, 3/4/02)
c1665 Gerrit Dou painted "Woman at
the Clavichord" and a "Self-Portrait" in which he resembled Rembrandt.
(WSJ, 5/24/00, p.A24)
1665 Jacob van Ochtervelt
(1634-1682), Dutch artist, painted his “Street Musicians in the Doorway
of a House.”
(WSJ, 1/30/09,
p.W2)(http://wwar.com/masters/o/ochtervelt-jacob.html)
1665 The British briefly
recaptured the Banda Island of Run from the Dutch.
(WSJ, 5/21/99, p.W7)
1665-1666 Vermeer painted his "Girl With a Pearl
Earring" about this time. [see Vermeer, 1632-1675] In 1999 Tracy
Chevalier authored the novel "Girl With a Pearl Earring," a
fictionalization based on one of Vermeer's models.
(WSJ, 11/15/95, p.A-20)(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.3)
1666 Franz Hals (b.1581?),
painter, died in the Oudemannenhuis almshouse in Haarlem. The almshouse
later became the Frans Hals Museum.
(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.T7)
1667 Jun 18, The Dutch fleet
sailed up the Thames and threatened London. They burned 3 ships and
captured the English flagship in what came to be called the Glorious
Revolution, in which William of Orange replaced James Stuart.
(HN, 6/18/98)(WSJ, 3/14/00, p.A28)
1667 Jul 21, The Peace of Breda
ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War and ceded Dutch New Amsterdam to the
English. The South American country of Surinam, formerly Dutch
Guiana, including the nutmeg island of Run was ceded by England
to the Dutch in exchange for New York in 1667 after the second
Anglo-Dutch War.
(WUD, 1994, p.961)(HN, 7/21/98)(HNQ, 8/21/98)(WSJ,
5/21/99, p.W7)
1668 Feb 7, The Netherlands,
England and Sweden concluded an alliance directed against Louis XIV of
France.
(HN, 2/7/99)
1669 Oct 4, Rembrandt H. van Rijn
(b.1606), painter and etcher (Steel Masters, Night Watch), died. In
1999 Simon Schama published the biography "Rembrandt's Eyes."
(WSJ, 11/24/99, p.A16)(MC, 10/4/01)
1669 Vermeer painted "The Art of
Painting." The 3' by 4' work was larger than most of his paintings.
(SFC, 11/24/99, p.E8)
1670 Vermeer painted his "A Young
Woman Standing at a Virginal" and "A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal."
Estimates for auction in 2004 for the seated one reached $5.4 million.
(WSJ, 6/19/00, p.a42)(SFC, 4/1/04, p.E7)
1670 Spinoza (1632-1677), Dutch
philosopher, authored "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" an enlightened
assessment of the Old Testament and a plea for religious toleration.
(WSJ, 12/15/05, p.D8)
1671 Vermeer painted his "Allegory
of Faith." [see Vermeer, 1632-1675]
(WSJ, 11/15/95, p.A-20)
1672 Apr 29, King Louis XIV of
France invaded the Netherlands.
(HN, 4/29/99)
1672 Jun 15, The Sluices were
opened in Holland to save Amsterdam from the French.
(HT, 6/15/00)
1672 Jul 4, States of Holland
declared "Eternal Edict" void.
(Maggio)
1672 Aug 20, Jan de Witt, Dutch
politician and mathematician, was assassinated by a carefully organized
lynch "mob" after visiting his brother Cornelis de Witt in prison. He
was killed by a shot in the neck; his naked body was hanged and
mutilated and the heart was carved out to be exhibited.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Witt)
1672 Christian Huygens of Holland
discovered the southern polar caps on Mars.
(http://chapters.marssociety.org/toronto/Education/TL1500.shtml)
1673 Mar 28, Adam Pijnacker (51),
Dutch landscape painter, etcher, was buried.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1673 May 29, Cornelis van
Bijnkershoek, lawyer, president of High Council, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1673 Jun 25, French commander
Charles de Batz (b.1611), known as D’Artagnan, was slain in the service
of Louis XIV. He died at the Siege of Maastricht in the Franco-Dutch
War and was one of the musketeers who inspired Dumas’ fiction.
(SSFC, 4/13/08,
p.E4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Artagnan)
1673 Aug 9, Dutch recapture NY
from English. It was regained by English in 1674.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1673 Dec 28, Joan Blaeu (77),
Dutch cartographer, publisher (Atlas Major), died.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1673 The most important of
Christian Huygens' written works, the "Horologium Oscillatorium," was
published in Paris. It discussed the mathematics surrounding pendulum
motion and the law of centrifugal force for uniform circular motion.
(http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_huygens.htm)
1674 Feb 9, English reconquered NY
from Netherlands.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1674 Feb 19, Netherlands and
England signed the Peace of Westminster. NYC became English.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1674 Nov 10, Dutch formally ceded
New Netherlands (NY) to English. [see 1664]
(MC, 11/10/01)
1675 Jan 20, Christian Huygens,
Dutch scientist, transformed a theoretical insight on springs into a
practical mechanism with the 1st sketch of a watch balance regulated by
a coiled spring.
(www.princeton.edu/~mike/articles/huygens/timelong/timelong.html)(Econ,
2/4/06, p.73)
1675 Mar 2, Prince William III was
installed as Governor of Overijssel.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1675 Johannes Vermeer (b.1632),
Dutch painter, died in poverty. In 2001 Anthony Bailey authored
"Vermeer: A View of Delft."
(WSJ, 11/15/95, p.A-20)(SSFC, 3/25/01, BR p.5)
1676 Apr 29, Michiel A. de Ruyter
(69), Dutch rear-admiral, (Newport), was killed.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1677 Feb 15, King Charles II
reported an anti-French covenant with Netherlands.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1677 Feb 21, [Benedictus] Baruch
Spinoza (b.1632), Dutch philosopher, died. In 2003 Antonio Damasio
authored "Looking for Spinoza," a look at contemporary neurological
research in contrast with the opposing philosophical views of Spinoza
and Descartes. In 2005 Matthew Stewart authored “The Courtier and the
Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World.
(WUD, 1994 p.1371)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.M4)(WSJ,
12/15/05, p.D8)
1677 Nov 4, William and Mary were
married in England. William of Orange married his cousin Mary (daughter
to James, Duke of York and the same James II who fled in 1688).
(HN, 11/4/98)(HNQ, 12/28/00)
1683 Sep 17, Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek reported the existence of bacteria.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1688 Nov 1, William of Orange set
sail for England at the head of a fleet of 500 ships and 30,000 men. He
intended too oust his father-in-law King James II. The Dutch
parliament, the States General, funded William with 4 million guilders.
Amsterdam financiers provided another 2 million. Some of this was used
to print 60,000 copies of his “Declaration” (of the reasons inducing
him to appear in arms in the Kingdom of England), which were
distributed in England. In 2008 Lisa Jardine authored “Going Dutch: How
England Plundered Holland’s Glory.”
(WSJ, 8/28/08, p.A13)
1688 Nov 5, William of Orange
landed in southern England and marched with his army nearly unopposed
to London.
(WSJ, 8/28/08, p.A13)
1688 Nov 26, Louis XIV declared
war on the Netherlands.
(HN, 11/26/98)
1688 Dec 10, King James II fled
London as "Glorious Revolution" replaced him with King William (of
Orange) and Queen Mary. [see Dec 11]
(MC, 12/10/01)
1688 Dec 11, James II abdicated
the throne because of William of Orange landing in England.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1688 Dec 28, William of Orange
made a triumphant march into London as James II fled in the "Glorious
Revolution." William of Orange—son of William II, Prince of Orange and
Mary, daughter of Charles I of England—was fourth in line to the
English throne.
(HN, 12/28/98)(HNQ, 12/28/00)(WSJ, 2/6/02, p.A16)
1689 May 12, England’s King
William III joined the League of Augsburg and the Netherlands. The
"Grand Alliance" was formed to counter the war of aggression launched
by Louis XIV against the Palatinate states in Germany. This is known as
The War of the League of Augsburg (1689-97) also The Nine Years' War,
and the War of the Grand Alliance.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/king_william.htm)
1690 Jul 1, Led by Marshall
Luxembourg, the French defeated the forces of the Grand Alliance at
Fleurus in the Netherlands.
(HN, 7/1/98)
1690 Oct 23, There was a revolt in
Haarlem, Holland, after a public ban on smoking.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1691 Aug 20, The 1st African
slaves arrived to North America on a Dutch ship. It docked in
Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty human captives among its cargo.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1691 Oct 3, English and Dutch
armies occupied Limerick, Ireland.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1692 Mar 14, Peter Musschenbroek,
Dutch physician, physicist (Leyden jar), was born.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1692 Mar 26, King Maximilian was
installed as land guardian of South Netherlands.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1692 May 29, Battle at La Hogue:
An English & Dutch fleet beat France.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1692 Aug 3, French forces under
Marshal Luxembourg defeated the English at the Battle of Steenkerke in
the Netherlands.
(HN, 8/3/98)
1693 Jul 4, Battle at
Boussu-lez-Walcourt: French-English vs. Dutch army.
(Maggio)
1693 Jul 29, The Army of the Grand
Alliance was destroyed by the French at the Battle of Neerwinden in the
Netherlands.
(HN, 7/29/98)
1695 Jul 8, Christian Huygens
(66), Dutch inventor, astronomer, died. He generally wrote his name as
Christiaan Hugens, and it is also sometimes written as Huyghens. In his
book “Cosmotheros,” published in 1698, he speculated on life on other
planets.
(http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_huygens.htm)
1695 Portugal established colonial
rule in the eastern half of Timor Island. The western side was
incorporated into the Dutch East Indies.
(SFC, 5/18/02, p.A15)
1696 Jan 31, An uprising of
undertakers took place after funeral reforms in Amsterdam.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1696 Mar 7, English King William
III departed Netherlands.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1697 Sep 20, The Treaty of Ryswick
was signed in Holland. It ended the War of the Grand Alliance (aka War
of the League of Augsburg,1688-1697) between France and the Grand
Alliance. Under the Treaty France’s King Louis XIV (1638-1715)
recognized William III (1650-1702) as King of England. The Dutch
received trade concessions, and France and the Grand Alliance members
(Holland and the Austrian Hapsburgs) gave up most of the land they had
conquered since 1679. The signees included France, England, Spain and
Holland. By the Treaty of Ryswick, a portion of Hispaniola was formally
ceded to France and became known as Saint-Domingue. The remaining
Spanish section was called Santo Domingo.
(www.caribbeanguides.net/hispaniola.htm)(www.jacobite.ca/documents/1697ryswick.htm)
1700 May 7, Gerard van Swieten,
Dutch botanist, was born.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1701 Sep 7, England, Austria, and
the Netherlands formed an Alliance against France.
(HN, 9/7/98)
1702 Mar 8, William III of Orange
(51), Dutch King of England (1689-1702), died after falling from his
horse and catching a chill. Anne Stuart (37), his sister-in-law,
succeeded to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland and reigned
until 1714.
(PCh, 1992, p.272)(MC, 3/8/02)(AP, 3/8/98)
1703 May 18, Dutch and English
troops occupied Cologne.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1704 Aug 4, In the War of Spanish
Succession, an Anglo-Dutch fleet captured Gibraltar.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gibraltar)(AP, 9/19/06)
1707 Apr 6, Willem Van de Velde
(73), the Young, Dutch seascape painter, died.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1708 Jul 11, The French were
defeated at Oudenarde, Malplaquet, in the Netherlands by the Duke of
Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy.
(HN, 7/11/98)
1709 Oct 20, Marlborough and
Eugene of Savoy took Mons in the Netherlands.
(HN, 10/20/98)
1712 Oct 4, Utrecht banished poor
Jews.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1714 Bernard de Mandeville, Dutch
philosopher, achieved widespread fame with his lengthy poem "The Fable
of the Bees: Private Vice, Publick Benefits."
(NH, 7/02, p.74)
1722 Apr 5, Dutch explorer Jacob
Roggeveen discovered Easter Island, a Polynesian Island 1400 miles from
the coast of South America. They noted that the island was treeless and
wondered how massive statues were erected. Much of the population was
later wiped out and the island became a possession of Chile. An
indigenous script called rongorongo survived but by 2002 was still not
deciphered. In 2005 Steven Roger Fischer authored “Island at the End of
the World: The Turbulent History of Easter Island.”
{Polynesia, Chile, Netherlands, Explorer}
1723 Aug 26, Anton van Leeuwenhoek
(b.1632), Dutch biologist, inventor (microscope), died in Delft,
Netherlands. [some sources say Aug 30]
(http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Catalog/Files/leewnhok.html)
1724 May 18, Johann K. Amman (54),
Swiss-Dutch doctor for deaf-mutes, died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1726 Feb 26, Maximilian II, M.
Emanuel, elector of Bavaria, governor of Netherlands, died.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1729 May 25, Jean de Neufville,
Dutch-US merchant (started 4th English war), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1730 Jul 21, States of Holland put
a death penalty on "sodomy."
(MC, 7/21/02)
1732 Jun 3, Pieter Vuyst, Dutch
gov-gen. of Ceylon, was executed.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1736 Mar 23, Iman Willem Falck,
Dutch Governor of Ceylon (1765-83), was born.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1736 Sep 16, Gabriel Daniel
Fahrenheit (b.1686), Gdansk-born German physicist, died in the
Netherlands. He discovered that water boils at 212F and freezes at 32F.
(www.britannica.com)
1741 Apr 13, Dutch people
protested the bad quality of bread.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1744-1828 Eisa Eisinga, knitting-wool processor. He
devoted his spare time to astronomy and mathematics and built a small
planetarium in Franeker (1781).
(NH, 6/00, p.10)
1745 Jan 8, England, Austria,
Saxony and the Netherlands formed an alliance against Russia.
(HN, 1/8/99)
1745 May 11, French forces
defeated an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army at Fontenoy.
(HN, 5/11/98)
1747 Jul 2, Marshall Saxe led the
French forces to victory over an Anglo-Dutch force under the Duke of
Cumberland at the Battle of Lauffeld.
(HN, 7/2/98)
1747 Sep 16, The French captured
Bergen-op-Zoom, consolidating their occupation of Austrian Flanders in
the Netherlands.
(HN, 9/16/98)
1747 Dec 9, England and
Netherlands signed a military treaty.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1748 Jun 28, A riot followed a
public execution in Amsterdam and over 200 were killed.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1749 Feb 8, Jan van Huysum (66),
Dutch still life painter, died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1751 Sep 12, Amsterdam refused to
establish a Jewish ghetto.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1751 Sep 13, Henry Kobell, Dutch
painter and cartoonist, was born.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1756 Nov 4, Anthony van Hoboken,
Rotterdam merchant-ship owner, was born.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1757 Feb 13, John C. Hespe, Dutch
journalist, politician, was born.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1761 Mar 23, John W. de Winter,
Dutch Vice-Admiral (Battle at Kamperduin), was born.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1761 May 13, Adrian Loosjes Pzn
(1818, Dutch publisher, writer (Mauritius Lijnslager), was born.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1765 Mar 18, David H. Chass, Dutch
baron, general (fought Napoleon at Waterloo), was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1772 May 11, Joseph Kerckhoff,
Limburg surgeon, robber captain, was hanged.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1774 A Dutch merchant cobbled
together the earliest mutual-style fund, Eendragt Maakt Magt (Unity
creates Strength). The first modern mutual fund was launched in Boston
in 1924.
(Econ, 4/21/07, p.83)
1776 Apr 26, Joan M. Kemper, Dutch
lawyer (designed civil code law book), was born.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1776 The Dutch built a slave house
on Goree Island off the coast of Senegal.
(SFC, 7/9/03, p.A10)
1779 May 25, Henry M. Baron de
Kock, Dutch officer, politician, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1780-1783 A 4-year war with England was fought.
(SFC, 3/31/98, p.F4)
1781 Eisa Eisinga (1744-1828),
knitting-wool processor, built a small planetarium in Franeker.
(NH, 6/00, p.10)
1782 Apr 19, Netherlands
recognized the United States.
(HN, 4/19/97)
1783 Apr 10, Hortense E. de
Beauharnais, French queen of Netherlands (1806-10), was born.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1784 May 20, Peace of Versailles
ended the war between France, England, and Holland.
(HN, 5/20/98)
1784 Jun 16, Holland forbade
orange clothes.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1784 The Teyler Museum opened as
the country’s first public collection.
(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.T7)
1788 Sep 15, An alliance between
Britain, Prussia and the Netherlands was ratified at the Hague.
(HN, 9/15/99)
1791 Mar 23, Etta Palm, a Dutch
champion of woman's rights, set up a group of women's clubs called the
Confederation of the Friends of Truth.
(HN, 3/23/99)
1793 Feb 1, France declared war on
Britain and the Netherlands.
(HN, 2/1/99)
1793 Mar 4, French troops
conquered Geertruidenberg, Netherlands.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1795 Sep 16, The Capitulation of
Rustenburg: A Dutch garrison at the Cape of Good Hope surrendered to a
British fleet under Adm. George Elphinstone.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1796 Mar 1, The 1st National
Meeting was held in the Hague.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1799 The Dutch East India Company
liquidated and the Dutch government took control over the islands of
Indonesia.
(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)
1801 Oct 6, Napoleon Bonaparte
imposed a new constitution on Holland.
(HN, 10/6/98)
1803 Feb 21, The British return
the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch (Batavian Republic) under the Treaty
of Amiens.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1803 Barend Cornelis Koekkoek,
artist, came from a renowned family of artists. He considered the
painting of nature the only true calling of an artist.
(WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W16)
1806 Jan 10, The Capitulation of
Papendorp: The Dutch in Cape Town surrendered to a British fleet.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1814 May 30, The First Treaty of
Paris was declared, after Napoleon's first abdication. It returned
France to its 1792 borders and secured for the British definite
possession of the Cape of Good Hope. [see Aug 13]
(HN, 5/30/98)(HN, 5/30/99)(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1814 Aug 13, Treaty of
London-Netherland was signed to stop the transport of slaves. By
agreement Britain paid the Dutch £6 million in compensation for
the Cape of Good Hope. [see May 30]
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)(MC, 8/13/02)
1815 Mar 1, Sunday observance in
Netherlands was regulated by law.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1815 Apr, British General Arthur
Wellesley, duke of Wellington, began assembling troops at Brussels,
Belgium. 73,000 British troops were joined by 33,000 German, Dutch and
Belgian troops preparing to face Napoleon. Prussian Gen. Gebhard
Leberecht von Blucher gathered an army of 120,000 southeast of Brussels.
{Belgium, Britain, France, Prussia, Netherlands}
(ON, 4/06, p.1)
1815 May 29, Cornelis de Gijselaar
(64), politician, patriot, died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1817 Feb 19, William III, King of
the Netherlands, was born.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1819 Oct 6, Willem A. Scholten,
Dutch potato flour manufacturer, was born.
(MC, 10/6/01)
1820 Mar 5, Dutch city of
Leeuwarden forbade Jews to go to synagogues on Sundays.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1825 A disastrous breach of Dutch
coastal defenses occurred.
(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)
1828 Apr 4, Casparus van Wooden
patented chocolate milk powder (Amsterdam).
(MC, 4/4/02)
1830 Aug 25, Belgium rebelled
against Netherlands.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1831 Jan 20, Protocols were signed
in London that recognized Belgium as an independent nation. Belgium
became a nation and combined French and Flemish-speaking lands. The
Rothschild banking empire financed the founding of Belgium.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)(SSFC, 2/24/02,
p.C5)(http://tinyurl.com/3335jt)
1831 Aug 2, The Dutch army, headed
by the Dutch princes, invaded Belgium, in the so-called "Ten Days
Campaign", and defeated Belgian forces near Hasselt and Leuven. Only
the appearance of a French army under Marchal Gerard caused the Dutch
to stop their advance.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Revolution)
1836 A Dutch regiment entered the
kingdom of the Ashanti tribe (later Ghana). Holland had taken this land
as a colony to mine gold and sell slaves. Slavery was outlawed but
African men were enlisted as troops in a form of indentured servitude.
The Ashanti king sent his son and nephew, Kwasi and Kwame Boachi, to
Holland for a European education in exchange for providing troops. In
2001 Arthur Japin authored the novel "The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi."
(SSFC, 1/21/01, BR p.5)
1837 May 29, Alexander F. de
Savornin Lohmann, Dutch minister, party leader (CHU), was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1838 In Ghana Asante King Nana
Badu Bonsu II had his head cut off by Maj. Gen. Jan Verveer in
retaliation for Bonsu's killing of two Dutch emissaries, whose heads
were then displayed as trophies. In 2008 Dutch author Arthur Japin
discovered Bonsu’s head in a jar of formaldehyde at Leiden Univ.
Medical Center. In 2009 the Dutch government returned the head of
Bonsu’s descendants.
(SFC, 3/21/09, p.A2)(SFC, 7/24/09, p.A2)
1839 In the Netherlands the
locomotive named "De Arend" was the first and pulled a train from
Amsterdam to Haarlem with a top speed of 23 mph.
(SFC, 6/18/99, p.D4)
1840 Oct 8, King William I of
Holland abdicated.
(HN, 10/8/98)
1840 Niels Gade, Dutch composer,
wrote the overture "Echoes of Ossian."
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.B1)
1841 Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
authored "Thoughts and Recollections of a Landscape Artist."
(WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W16)
1844 Jul 25, Louis Napoleon
(b.1779), French king of the Netherlands (1806-10), died.
(www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Louis-Napoleon-Bonaparte)
1846 Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
painted his "Portrait of a Young Lady."
(WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W16)
1849 May 25, Andreas Michiels
(52), Dutch Military Governor of West Sumatra, died in battle.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1851 May 18, The
Amsterdam-Nieuwediep telegraph connection linked.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1853 Mar 4, Pope Pius IX recovered
Catholic hierarchy in Netherlands.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1853 Mar 30, Vincent Van Gogh
(d.1890), Dutch artist, was born in Zundert, Neth. His work included
"The Drawbridge and Sunflowers in a Vase," and "Harvest in Prevance,"
which was done both in oil and as a watercolor. The watercolor sold in
1997 for $14.7 mil. He produced an estimated 900 paintings and 1200
drawings but sold virtually none of them. In 1997 it was reported that
more than 100 of his paintings and drawings might be fakes. 300 of his
canvasses were painted in the last 15 months of his life.
(AAP,1964)(WUD,1994, p.606)(SFC, 6/26/97,
p.A21)(SFC, 7/5/97, p.A8)(SFEC, 1/4/98, Z1p.8)(HN, 3/30/98)
1853-1890 Theo Van Gogh, the younger brother of
Vincent Van Gogh. Theo's widow Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger inherited the
paintings of Vincent that had been in Theo's hands.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.B2)
1857 May 10, Hendrik Zwaardemaker,
Dutch physiologist (olefactometer), was born.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1858 Oct 9, Gerard L.F. Philips,
Dutch engineer and manufacturer, was born.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1863 Jul 1, The Dutch abolished
slavery in Suriname. The Dutch were among the last Europeans to abolish
slavery.
(AP, 7/2/03)
1864 May 18, Jan P. Veth Bayern,
Dutch painter, etcher, lithographer, art historian, was born.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1860 May 21, Willem Einthoven,
Dutch physiologist, inventor of the electro-cardiogram, was born.
(HN, 5/21/01)(MC, 5/21/02)
1864 May 18, Jan P. Veth Bayern,
Dutch painter, etcher, lithographer, art historian, was born.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1864 May 29, A.H. Borgesius, Dutch
amateur astronomer, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1864 Sep 5, British, French &
Dutch fleets attacked Japan in Shimonoseki Straits.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1864 Gerard Adriaan Heineken
founded a beer brewery. In 2002 it was the world’s 3rd largest brewery.
(SFC, 1/5/02, p.A22)
1865 May 25, Pieter Zeeman, Dutch
physicist (Zeeman effect, Nobel 1902), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1870 Jul 11(Jun 11), 1st-stone
Amstel Brewery opened in Amsterdam.
(MC, 7/11/02)
1871 Mar 28, Willem Mengelberg,
conductor (NY Philharmonic 1922-30), was born in Utrecht, Neth.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1872 Mar 7, Piet Mondrian
(d.1944), Dutch abstract painter, was born. He was born in Amersfoort,
near Amsterdam. His two principal styles date from before and after
1907. His Red Tree in 1908 reflects the stance of a Van Gogh. In
1911 he went to Paris and quickly changed his style in response to
Cubism. He emigrated to New York in 1940. His Broadway Boogie Woogie
was done in 1942-1943. He was labeled as a degenerate by the Nazis and
was sent to New York to continue working. He went through a number of
styles i.e. fauvist, neoimpressionist Dutch landscapes, to total
abstractions in a manner of his own that he called neoplasticism. He
was a pioneer of abstract painting.
(WSJ, 6/6/95, p.A-14)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-18)(SFC,
10/4/97, p.E1)(HN, 3/7/98)
1873 From the Netherlands the
Holland America cruise line began operations.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.T5)
1873 The Dutch began colonization
efforts in Aceh province (Indonesia), which led to a decades-long war.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.A30)(SFCM, 11/2/03, p.8)
1876 Aug 7, Margaretha Zelle (aka
Mata Hari) was born in the Netherlands. Mata Hari, otherwise known as
Margaretha G. Macleod, passed secrets to the Germans in World War I.
(WSJ, 1/16/97, p.A16)(HN, 8/7/98)
1877 Feb 26, Carel S. Adama van
Scheltema, Dutch poet, writer (socialism), was born.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1877 May 29, John Lothrop Motley
(63), (History of United Netherlands), died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1880 Vincent Van Gogh ended his
career as a theology student and began painting.
(WSJ, 3/14/00, p.A28)
1880-1962 Queen Wilhelmina Of Netherlands (b.Aug 31,
d.Nov 28 at 82), reigned 1890-1947.
(DT internet 11/28/97)
1881
Apr 1, Kingdom post office in Netherlands opened.
(OTD)
1882 Vincent Van Gogh painted "The
Wounded Veteran.'
(WSJ, 3/14/00, p.A28)
1883 May 29, WFLC Marianne
princess of Orange-Nassau, died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1885 Vincent Van Gogh painted "The
Potato Eaters" and "A Pair of Shoes."
(SFC, 1/14/98, p.D3)(WSJ, 8/14/01, p.A12)
1885 The façade of the
Rijksmuseum was completed.
(WSJ, 1/8/99, p.C13)
1886-1888 Vincent Van Gogh made his Paris sojourn.
(WSJ, 3/14/00, p.A28)
1887 Van Gogh painted "The
Courtesan." It was inspired by an 1820 work by the Japanese artist
Keisai Eisen who pictured an intricately coifed woman that later
appeared on the cover of a French magazine
(SFC, 11/16/98, p.E3)(WSJ, 12/1/98, p.A20)
1887-1888 Van Gogh painted "Self-Portrait with Felt
Hat" and "Self-Portrait as an Artist."
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.W11)(SFC, 1/18/99, p.B2)
1888 Vincent van Gogh painted the
"Portrait of a Young Man in a Cap." The painting is up for auction and
may fetch as much as $8 mil. In 1990 Robert Altman directed a film
titled "Vincent and Theo" about Van Gogh and his brother. Van Gogh also
painted his "Boats at Saintes-Maries," "The Bedroom" and "Self Portrait
as an Artist" in this year. He cut his ear in this year with a razor
during a quarrel with painter Paul Gauguin.
(WSJ, 4/27/95, p.C-18)(WSJ, 11/10/95, p. A-10)(SFC,
4/13/96, p.E3)(SFC, 1/14/98, p.D3)(SFEC, 10/25/98, Z1 p.12)
1889 Van Gogh painted "The
Gardener," while a patient in St. Remy. He also did "Wheatfield with a
Reaper" and "Crab on Its Back" in this year.
(SFC, 5/21/98, p.A14)(SFC, 1/18/99, p.B1)(WSJ,
8/14/01, p.A12)
1890 Apr 6, Anthony Herman Gerard
Fokker (d.1939), aircraft pioneer, was born in Java.
(www.britannica.com)
1890 Jul 29, Artist Vincent van
Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers, France, while
painting "Wheatfield with Crows." Earlier in the year he painted his
"Garden at Auvers" and "Portrait of Dr. Gachet," which sold to a
Japanese tycoon in 1990 for $82.5 mil. In 1939 Irving Stone wrote a
novel about Van Gogh titled "Lust for Life," which spawned a 1956 movie.
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-12)(SFC, 5/26/96, Zone 1 p.2)(AP,
7/29/97)(SFEC, 6/14/98, BR p.9)
1890 Nov 23, Grand Duchy of
Luxembourg separated from the Netherlands.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1890 The Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.
was founded.
(WSJ, 11/2/04, p.A14)
1891 May 15, Gerard and Anton
Philips began their Philips & Co. operations in Eindhoven, Holland,
with the production of light bulbs.
(www.vedpuriswar.org/book/PHILIPS.htm)(WSJ, 1/7/04,
p.A1)
1891 May 25, Robert W.P.
Peereboom, Dutch editor in chief (Haarlem Newspaper), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1894 A disastrous breach of Dutch
coastal defenses occurred.
(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)
1896 Numico was founded by
Martinus van der Hagen, a Dutch inventor, after he won the exclusive
right to make infant formula out of cow’s milk.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.59)
1898 Jun 17, Maurits C. Escher,
Dutch graphic artist, was born.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1899 May 18, The First Hague Peace
Conference opened in the Netherlands as 26 nations met on World
Goodwill Day. The destruction or seizure of enemy property with no
military value was banned at the convention. The czar of Russia had
called for a disarmament conference that, for reasons of diplomatic
niceties and international rivalries, ended up in The Hague.
(AP, 5/18/99)(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)(AP, 4/17/06)
1902 Mar 3, Isaac D. France van de
Putte (79), Dutch premier (1866), died.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1902 May 29, Dutch State Mine law
formed.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1902 Jul 18, Charles W.J.
Mengelberg, Dutch composer, conductor, was born.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1903 Jan 21, Harry Houdini escaped
from police station Halvemaansteeg in Amsterdam.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1903 Mar 26, American Hotel opened
in Amsterdam.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1904 Apr 24, Willem de Kooning
(d.1997), abstract impressionist artist, was born in Rotterdam.
(SFC, 3/20/97, p.A1,6,E1)(HN, 4/24/01)
1904 Aug 10, Dutch newspaper Volk
fired gay journalist Jacob de Cock.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1904 The Weerdinge Couple, 2 men,
were found in a Holland bog and dated from 160BC - 220AD.
(AM, 7/97, p.66)
1905 May 29, Jan [Johannes]
Teulings, Dutch actor, director (That Joyous Eve), was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1905 Dec 7, Gerard Kuiper,
Dutch-US astronomer (moons of Uranus, Neptune), was born.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1906 Apr 28, Bartholomeus J "Bart"
Bok, Dutch-US astronomer (Milky Way), was born.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1907 The Hague Convention of this
year prohibited the taking of war booty and instituted what some
considered the first wartime environmental protections.
(WSJ, 5/29/96, p.A6)(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)
1907 Royal Dutch combines its oil
operations with Shell Transport & Trading Co.
(WSJ, 11/2/04, p.A14)
1908 Dec 13, The Dutch took two
Venezuelan Coast Guard ships.
(HN, 12/13/98)
1908 The first bus line to link
the Jordaan section with the rest of Amsterdam opened.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T5)
1909 Apr 30, Juliana, queen of the
Netherlands, was born. She fled during the Nazi occupation and
abdicated in favor of her daughter Beatrix.
(HN, 4/30/99)
1909 The Elfstedentocht, a
125-mile ice skating race, officially began.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.A1,11)
1911 Jun 10, Queen Wilhelmina
opened the Rembrandt house in Amsterdam.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1912 May 18, Maurits Binger
established 2 Dutch movie companies.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1912 May 29, John Hanlo, Dutch
poet (Go to the Mosque), was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1912 Aug 13, Jan Peeters, Dutch
water colors painter, monumental artist, was born.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1912 Nov 25, Johannes D. De Jong,
Frisian poet and photographer (Kar £t twa), was born.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1912 A ban on brothels was
enacted. It was overturned in 1999.
(SFC, 10/27/99, p.A13)
1913 May 14, Franz Hals museum
opened in Haarlem, Netherlands.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1913 Kamerlingh Onnes of Holland
won the Nobel Prize for liquefying helium. His major discovery was
superconductivity, the elimination of electrical resistance at very
cold temperatures. In 1999 Tom Shachtman described the event in his
book "Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold."
(WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W12)
1914 Mar 1, H. Colijn, Dutch
Minister of war, was named director of British Petroleum.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1914 Aug 24, German Zeppelins
bombed Antwerp.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Sep 2, German Zeppelins again
bombed Antwerp.
(AH, 1/97)
1915 Mar 4, Petrus de Jong, Dutch
premier (KVP, 1967-71), was born.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1915 Aug 26, Gre [Gerarda D]
Brouwenstijn, Dutch opera soprano, was born.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1916 A disastrous breach of Dutch
coastal defenses occurred.
(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)
1917 Jan 6, Hendrik P.G. Quack
(82), lawyer and economist (Bank of Netherlands), died.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1917 Feb 26, Utrecht Harbor,
Netherlands, held its 1st Annual fair.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1917 Mar 8, Ferdinand von Zeppelin
(78), Dutch count, air pioneer, died.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1917 Oct 15, Mata Hari, a Dutch
dancer who had spied for the Germans, was executed by a firing squad
outside Paris.
(WSJ, 1/16/97, p.A16)(AP, 10/15/97)
1917 Piet Mondrian and three other
painters founded the movement known as De Stijl, which became
synonymous with Mondrian.
(HNQ, 7/16/01)
1918 May 18, The Netherlands
Indian Volksraad was installed in Batavia (later Djakarta).
(SC, 5/18/02)
1918 Nov 10, Retired German Kaiser
Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1919 Jul 21, Anthony Fokker
established an airplane factory at Hamburg and Amsterdam.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1919 Sep 6, Pier Pander (b.1864),
Dutch sculptor, died.
(http://home.wxs.nl/~bekke412/pier.html)
1919 Oct 11, KLM Royal Dutch
Airlines made its debut and served a pre-packaged dinner, believed to
be the 1st in-flight meal, on a flight between London and Paris.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)(WSJ, 5/31/08, p.A12)
1920 Jan 23, The Dutch government
refused demands from the victorious Allies to hand over Kaiser Wilhelm
II, the dethroned German monarch who had fled to the Netherlands.
(AP, 1/23/00)
1920 Dec 13, League of nations
established the Int’l. Court of Justice in The Hague.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1920 The plane maker NV Fokker
firm was founded. By 1996 it was in trouble and seeking protection from
its creditors.
(WSJ, 1/24/96, p.A-12)
1921 Apr 5, Alphons Diepenbrock
(b.1862), Dutch composer, died in Amsterdam. His work included
“Wandering Through the Woods” (1910).
(SFC, 9/1/04, p.B7)
1922 May 18, Dutch 2nd Chamber
agreed to a 48 hour work week over the previous 45 hours.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1923 Mar 3, US Senate rejected
membership in International Court of Justice, The Hague.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1923 Dutch physicist Dirk Coster
(1889-1950) and Hungarian chemist George Charles de Hevesy (1889-1966)
found element 72, Hafnium. It was identified in zircon (a zirconium
ore) from Norway, by means of X-ray spectroscopic analysis. It was
named in honor of the city in which the discovery was made, from the
Latin name "Hafnia" meaning "Copenhagen."
(www.chemistryexplained.com/elements/C-K/Hafnium.html)(http://tinyurl.com/kj24t)
1924 Apr 20, Nina Foch (d.2008),
film, theater and TV actress, was born in Leyden, Netherlands.
Her films later included “An American in Paris” (1951).
(SFC, 12/13/08, p.A5)
1924 H. Pander & Son, a
Netherlands’ furniture company, bought an aircraft manufacturing firm
and started making small airplanes. They continued to make furniture
through the mid 1930s.
(SFC, 11/7/07, p.G6)
1925 Mar 2, SDAP-Second-Faction
(Dutch Socialists) of parliament demanded drastic disarmament.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1926 Mar 4, De Geer government in
Netherlands took office.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1926 Mar 26, ACD de Graeff was
appointed Governor-General of Dutch East-Indies.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1927 Feb 22, Baruch Spinosa's
house of mourning opened as a museum in Amsterdam.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1927 Apr 30, Princess Juliana got
a seat in Dutch Council of State.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1927 May 29, Dick Hillenius, Dutch
biologist, writer, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1928 Jul 28, The Olympics opened
at Amsterdam. Track and field events opened for women for the 1st time
despite objections from Pope Pius IX. Germany was allowed to
participate for the 1st time since WWI.
(SC, 7/28/02)(NG, 8/04, Geographica)(WSJ, 4/12/08,
p.R2)
1928 Aug 3, Ray Barbuti saved the
US team from defeat in Amsterdam Olympics track events by winning 400 m
(47.8 sec).
(SC, 8/3/02)
1928 Aug 10, The Univ. of
California crew won the rowing championship at the Olympics in Holland.
(SFC, 8/8/03, p.E6)
1928 Aug 12, The 9th Olympic Games
closed in Amsterdam. During the games several women collapsed at the
end of the 800-meter run. This led to a 32-year ban on women running in
Olympic races over 200 meters.
(SC, 8/12/02)(SSFC, 4/13/03, p.F1)
1929 Jun 12, Anne Frank,
German-Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim, was born in Holland. She
with her family hid from the Nazis in Holland during World War II. Her
diary is world famous
(HN, 6/12/98)(MC, 6/12/02)
1930 Jan 3, The second conference
on war reparations began in the Hague.
(HN, 1/3/99)
1930 British detergent maker Lever
Bros. merged with Margarine Unie of the Netherlands to form Unilever.
(www.ubffoodsolutions.com/company/history)
1932 Apr 5, A Dutch textile strike
was broken by trade unions.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1932 May 10, Government of
Netherland declared "Wilhelmus" the national anthem.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1932 Han van Meegeren sold his
Vermeer forgery “Lady and Gentleman at the Spinnet” for 40 thousand
guilders. In 2007 this would represent about $225,000.
(ON, 12/07, p.10)
1932 The Afsluitdijk dam was
completed. It sealed the Zuider Zee from the ocean and formed the
freshwater Lake IJssel.
(SSFC, 3/25/01, p.C1)
1933 Feb 8, Elly Ameling, soprano
(Ilya-Idomeneo), was born in Rotterdam, Holland.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1933 Apr 22, Dutch government
forbade a left-wing radio address.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1933 Dec 3, Paul Crutzen, Dutch
chemist, was born.
(HN, 12/3/00)
1934 Jan 10, Marinus van der Lubbe
(24), Dutch communist, was guillotined in Berlin.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1934 Jul 4, Jordanians revolted in
Amsterdam after reduction in employment.
(Maggio, 98)
1935 Mar 3, Dutch Revolutionary
Socialist Worker's party (RSAP) was formed.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1935 May 29, Hague local museum
opened.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1936 Oct, Dutch-born Peter Debye
(1884-1966), won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies on the
structure of molecules. In 1938, as Chairman of the German Physical
Society, he had a letter sent out under his name requesting that the
domestic Jewish members voluntarily resign. In 1940 he moved to the US.
In 2006 he emerged in a book, "Albert Einstein in the Netherlands."
which contained evidence of pro-Nazi actions. In 2008 the Terlouw
Committee, appointed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, reviewed the
allegations and issued its report clearly stating that Debye was
neither a Nazi collaborator nor a Nazi sympathizer.
(AP, 3/3/06)(http://piurl.com/5F)
1936 The Dutch film "The Trouble
With Money" was directed by Max Ophuls.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, DB p.50)
1938 Jan 10, Eduard van Beinum
became the 1st conductor of Amsterdam Concert orchestra.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1938 May 12, In Holland, the 4-day
convention at Utrecht ended. A Provisional Constitution for the World
Council of Churches was adopted.
(SC, internet, 5/12/97)
1938 May 6, Dutch writer Maurits
Dekker was sentenced to 50 days for "offending a friendly head of
state" (Hitler).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1939 Mar 28, Dutch hunter shot
English bombers down.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1939 Nov 18, The Netherland KNSM
passenger ship Simon Bolivar hit a German mine and 86 died.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1939 Dec 23, Anthony H.G. Fokker
(49), Dutch airplane builder (Spider), died in America.
(www.obituariestoday.com)
1940 May 8, German commandos in
Dutch uniforms crossed the Dutch border to hold bridges for the
advancing German army.
(HN, 5/8/99)
1940 May 10, German forces began a
blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting
France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line. Belgium was invaded by Germany
and maintained resistance for 18 days.
(WSJ, 8/1/95, p.A-8)(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)(HN,
5/10/02)
1940 May 13, British bombed a
factory at Breda, Netherlands.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1940 May 13, Dutch Queen
Wilhelmina fled to England.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1940 May 14, The Netherlands
(Holland) surrendered to Nazi Germany after the bombing of Rotterdam
that left 600-900 dead.
(HN, 5/14/98)(MC, 5/14/02)
1940 May 15, German troops
occupied Amsterdam. Gen Winkelman surrendered.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1940 May 16, Jacques Goudstikker,
Dutch art dealer, fell on a staircase of the SS Bodegraven as the ship
was refused entry at Dover. He died from a broken neck. His inventory
in Amsterdam totaled some 1,400 works, which Reichsmarschall Herman
Goring, Hitler’s 2nd in command, soon snapped up.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.D7)
1940 May 18, German forces under
Field Marshal Georg von Kuchler (1881-1968) occupied Antwerp,
Netherlands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_von_K%C3%BCchler)
1940 May 19, Amsterdam time became
MET (Middle European Time).
(DTnet, 5/19/97)
1940 May 29, Arthur Seyss-Inquart
was installed as Reich Commissioner of Hague, Netherlands.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1940 Jun 11, Princess Juliana of
the Netherlands arrived in Canada as an exile.
(AP, 6/11/03)
1940 Jun 21, German occupiers
disbanded the Dutch States-General, Council of State.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1940 Jul,
Jan Zwartendijk, a Dutch diplomat, and Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese
diplomat, worked together to save some 2,000 thousand Polish Jews, who
had fled to Lithuania by issuing them visas for Japan, China and the
Dutch colonies in South America. Zwartendijk wrote out the so called
Curacao visas, while Sugihara issued the transit visas. The Sugihara
family was later captured by the Russians and placed in a concentration
camp for 1 1/2 years.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A13)(SFC, 9/9/96,
p.A16)(www.remember.org/witness/righteous.html)
1941 Feb 9, Nazi collaborators
destroyed the pro-Jewish cafe Alcazar Amsterdam. Alcazar had refused to
hang "No Entry for Jews" signs in front.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1941 Feb 19, Nazi police were
attacked and driven away from Koco, Amsterdam by young Jews. Nazis
raided Amsterdam and rounded up 429 young Jews for deportation.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1941 Feb 26, Utrecht and Zaandam
struck against raid on Jews.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1941 Mar 3, Netherlands NSB-leader
Mussert visited Göring in Berlin.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1941 Mar 4, 18 Geuzen resistance
fighters were sentenced to death in The Hague.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1941 Mar 8, Martial law was
proclaimed in Holland in order to extinguish any anti-Nazi protests.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1941 Mar 20, D.A. van den Bosch,
anti-Nazi clergyman (Amersfoort Camp), died.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1941 Apr 24, Dutch Prince Bernhard
became an RAF pilot.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1941 May 15, Nazi occupiers in
Netherlands forbade Jewish music.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1941 May 19, German occupiers in
Holland forbade bicycle taxis.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1941 Jul 11(Jun 11), The 2nd great
roundup of Jews of Amsterdam took place.
(MC, 7/11/02)
1941 Aug 18, The concentration
camp at Amersfoort, Netherlands, opened.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1941 Nov 25, German Jews in
Netherlands were declared stateless.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1942 Jan 11, Japan declared war
against the Netherlands, the same day that Japanese forces invaded the
Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia).
(AP, 1/11/98)(HN, 1/11/99)
1942 Feb 16, German submarines
attacked an Aruba oil refinery and sank the tanker Pedernales.
(MC, 2/16/02)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C11)
1942 May 3, Nazis executed 72 in
reprisal in Sachsenhausen, Netherlands. Johan H. Westerveld, lt.-Col,
leader Order Service, was among the executed.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1942 May 17, Dutch SS vowed
loyalty to Hitler.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1942 Jun 9, German-Neth press
reported that 3 million Dutch were sent to East-Europe.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1942 Jun 12, Anne Frank received
her diary as a birthday present in Amsterdam.
(MC, 6/12/02)
1942 Jun 14, Anne Frank began her
diary.
(MC, 6/14/02)
1942 Jun 20, Adolf Eichmann
proclaimed the deportation of Dutch Jews.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1942 Jul 6, Anne Frank's family
went into hiding in After House, Amsterdam.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1942 Jul 9, Anne Frank (13), her
family and 4 other Jews went into hiding in the attic above her
father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
(HN, 7/9/01)(MC, 7/9/02)
1942 Jul 16, Jews were transported
from Holland to an extermination camp.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1942 Jul 26, Roman Catholic
churches protested the Dutch bishops’ stand against the spread of
Judaism.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1942 Aug 25, German SS began
transporting Jews of Maastricht, Neth.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1942 Oct 15, Dirk Bannink, nurse
and local councilor Deventer, Netherlands, was executed.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1942 The Catholic hierarchy of
Amsterdam spoke against the Nazi treatment of Jews. This led to a
redoubling of roundups and deportations.
(WSJ, 4/25/97, p.A18)
1943 Feb 17, Dutch churches
protested to Artur Seyss-Inquart against persecution of Jews.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1943 Mar 1, In Amsterdam a Jewish
old age home for disabled was raided.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1943 Mar 2, 1st transport of Jews
from Westerbork, Netherlands, to Sobibor concentration camp.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1943 Mar 18, The ships James
Oglethorpe (US) and Terkolei (Neth.), were torpedoed and sank.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1943 Mar 31, US errantly bombed
Rotterdam, killed 326.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1944 Apr 30, The 8th and 9th US
Army Air Forces and Royal Air Force Bomber Command began to fly sorties
into France and the Low Countries in preparation for the Allied
Expeditionary Force landing on Jun 6.
(SDUT, 6/6/97, p.B9)
1943 Apr 30, Dutch struck against
forced labor in Nazi Germany's war industry.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1943 Apr 30, Etty Hillesum, Dutch
diarist, died in Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1944 May 19, 240 gypsies were
transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork Neth.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1943 May 26, Jews rioted against
Germans in Amsterdam.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1943 Jun 25, Arthur Seyss-Inquart
ordered a mass arrest of Dutch physicians.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1943 Oct 20, A US B-17 bomber
crashed in the Netherlands near the small town of de Bilt. Of the 10
men on board 5 died and 5 were captured. Robert Surdez, co-pilot, died
in 2004.
(SFC, 3/30/04, p.B1)(SFC, 8/11/04, p.B7)
1943 Willem Kolff invented the 1st
dialysis machine in Holland.
(WSJ, 10/2/03, p.A2)
1944 Jun 6, Gerrit John van de
Peat (41), artist, resistance fighter, was executed.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1944 Jun 6, Nazi troops executed
96 prisoners by firing squad.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1944 Jun 9, 99 inhabitants of
Tulle were hanged by the SS.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1944 Jul 15, Anne Frank
(1929-1945) entered this in her diary: "In spite of everything I still
believe that people are really good at heart." In 1998 5 additional
pages to her diary were reported. She died of typhoid in the spring of
1945 at the Bergen-Belson concentration camp.
(AP, 8/4/98)(SFC, 8/19/98, p.A16)
1944 Jul 19, Carl Bock, Danish
Gestapo agent, was liquidated.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1944 Jul, SS men Heinrich Boere
and Jacobus Petrus Besteman shot and killed Dutch pharmacist Fritz
Hubert Ernst Bicknese at his home in Breda for suspected activity in
Nazi resistance. Boere was sentenced to death in absentia by a Dutch
court in 1949. This was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 2009
Boere (88) was slated to stand trial for murder in Germany for the
execution-style killings of three Dutch civilians during World War II.
(AP, 3/7/08)(AP, 7/7/09)
1944 Aug 1, Anne Frank's last
diary entry; 3 days later she was arrested.
(MC, 8/1/02)
1944 Aug 4, Nazi police
raided the secret annex of a building in Amsterdam and arrested eight
people, including 15-year-old Anne Frank, whose diary became a famous
account of the Holocaust. She died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration
camp in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated.
(AP, 8/4/02)
1944 Sep 3, The 68th & last
transport of Dutch Jews, which included Anne Frank, left for Auschwitz.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1944 Sep 5, "Mad Tuesday" 65,000
Dutch Nazi collaborators fled to Germany.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1944 Sep 8, Germany's V-2
offensive against England began. The 1st V-2 rockets landed in London
& Antwerp.
(HN, 9/8/98)(MC, 9/8/01)
1944 Sep 17, Infantry glider
troops of the 82nd Airborne Division entered Holland. British and
American airborne troops parachuted into Holland to capture the Arnhem
bridge as part of Operation Market Garden. The plan called for the
airborne troops to be relieved by British troops, but they were left
stranded and eventually surrendered to the Germans. The 1974 book by
Cornelius Ryan, "A Bridge Too Far," was based on this operation and was
made into the 1977 film.
(HN, 9/17/98)(HC, 12/12/01)(AP, 9/17/06)
1944 Sep 21, The last British
paratroopers at bridge of Arnhem surrendered.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1944 Sep 27, Thousands of British
troops were killed as German forces rebuffed their massive effort to
capture the Arnhem Bridge across the Rhine River in Holland.
(HN, 9/27/98)
1944 Sep 28, At the Battle of
Arnhem the Germans defeated the British airborne in Netherlands.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1944 Sep, SS men Heinrich Boere
and an accomplice named Hendrik Kromhout shot Dutch bicycle-shop owner
Teun de Groot when he answered the doorbell at his home in the town of
Voorschoten. They then continued to the apartment of F.W. Kusters, and
forced him into their car. They drove him to another town, stopped on
the pretense of having a flat tire and shot him.
(AP, 3/7/08)
1944 Nov 28, The first Allied
supplies reached Antwerp by convoy.
(HN, 11/28/98)
1944 Piet Mondrian (b.1872), Dutch
artist, died of pneumonia. To create an art of harmony and order he
used straight lines exclusively. "His trademark paintings of black
lines forming a grid and primary colors are a calculated, mathematical
blueprint for an organized life." A leading abstract artist in the
early half of the 20th century, Dutch painter Piet Mondrian was also a
leading proponent of De Stijl ("The Style"). Born to an educator and
amateur artist in 1872, Mondrian pursued a career as a painter from an
early age. He was influenced by the Post-Impressionists, but gravitated
towards Cubism after seeing an exhibition of works by Picasso and
others.
(Hem, Dec. 94, p.131)(WSJ, 5/25/01, p.W10)(HNQ,
7/16/01)
1945 Mar 3, Roermond-Venlo,
Netherlands, was freed.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1945 Mar 3, RAF bombing error hit
The Hague and killed 511.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1945 May 5, Netherlands and
Denmark were liberated from Nazi control.
(HN, 5/5/98)
1945 Mar 5, Allies bombed The
Hague, Netherlands.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1945 Mar 6, In Holland SS General
Hans Albin Rauter, was ambushed, and his driver and orderly were
killed. Rauter was seriously wounded. SS Brigadefuhrer Dr. Eberhardt
Schongarth immediately ordered reprisals and a total of 263 people were
shot. A Special Court of Justice in the Hague sentenced Rauter to death
and he was executed March 25, 1949. Schongarth was tried by a British
Military Court, found guilty on another war crime charge, sentenced to
death and was hanged in 1946.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres.html
(WW2D, p.610)
1945 Mar 8, 53 Amsterdammers were
executed by Nazi occupiers.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1945 Mar 11, Flemish Nazi
collaborator Maria Huygens was sentenced to death.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Mar 12, In Amsterdam 30
people were executed by Nazi occupiers.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Mar 13, Queen Wilhelmina
returned to Netherlands.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1945 Apr 8, Nazi occupiers were
executed. Nazi general Christiansen fled the Netherlands.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1945 Apr 12, Canadian troops
liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Westerbork, Neth.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1945 Apr 14, Arnhem and Zwolle
were freed from Nazis.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1945 Apr 17, Hannie Schaft (24),
Dutch resistance fighter who lived in Haarlem, known as the "Girl with
red hair," was executed by the Germans just one month before the war
ended. She was a student who joined the resistance early in the war. On
her bicycle she delivered ration coupons, newspapers, secret
information and weapons. She was shot and buried in a shallow grave in
the Dunes around Bloemendaal.
(MC, 4/17/02)(Internet)
1945 May 1, Arthur Seys-Inquart,
Nazi overlord of Netherlands, fled to Flensburg.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1945 May 7, SS opened fire on a
crowd in Amsterdam and killed 22.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1945 May 29, Dutch police arrested
and imprisoned Hans van Meegeren (1889-1947) for collaborating with the
enemy. His name had been traced to a sale made during the second world
war of what was then believed to be an authentic Vermeer to Nazi
Field-Marshal Hermann Goering. On July 12, in order to prove his
innocence, Meegeren revealed that he had forged the painting.
(WSJ, 10/14/06, p.P10)(ON, 12/07, p.12)
1945 Jun 6, Meinoud M. Rost van
Tonningen, anti Semite, NSB (1937-41), committed suicide.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1945 Aug 17, Indonesian
nationalists declared independence from the Netherlands.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A13)(AP, 8/17/99)
1945 Oct 6, Gen Eisenhower was
welcomed in Hague on Hitler's train.
(MC, 10/6/01)
1945 Dec 27, The Dutch formally
relinquished sovereignty to Indonesia.
(WSJ, 7/24/01, p.B4)
1946 Mar 2, Dutch troops landed on
East Bali.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1946 May 29, KVP won the
Provincial National elections in Netherlands.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1947 Nov 12, Hans van Meegeren
(1889-12947), Dutch painter and forger, was tried for forgery and
convicted of “obtaining money by deception” and “appending false names
and signatures with the intent to deceive.” He was given the minimum
sentence of one year and then the court petitioned Queen Wilhelmina
that he be pardoned, but he died 6 weeks later.
(ON, 12/07, p.12)
1947 Dec 29, Hans van Meegeren
(b.1889), Dutch painter and forger, died. In 2006 Frank Wynne authored
“I Was Vermeer.”
(WSJ, 10/14/06,
p.P10)(http://denisdutton.com/van_meegeren.htm)
1947 Gerard Kuiper of Holland and
Texas discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.A17)
1948 Mar 18, France, Great Britain
and Benelux signed the Treaty of Brussels.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1948 Apr 18, International Court
of Justice opened at Hague, Netherlands.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1948 May 4, The Hague Court of
Justice convicted Hans Rauter (SS) of war crimes.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1948 May 12, Queen Wilhelmina
resigned. [see Sep 4]
(MC, 5/12/02)
1948 Aug 23, The World Council of
Churches (WCC) was formed in Amsterdam to help reconcile differences
among Christians. Headquarters were later established in Geneva.
(Econ, 2/23/08,
p.79)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Council_of_Churches)
1948 Sep 4, Queen Wilhelmina
abdicated the Dutch throne for health reasons.
(AP, 9/4/97)
1948 Sep 6, Queen Juliana
(1909-2004) of the Netherlands was crowned, two days after the
abdication of her mother, Queen Wilhelmina. Juliana abdicated in 1980.
(AP, 9/6/98)(SSFC, 3/21/04, p.B7)
1948 Auke Bert Pattist, a Nazi
collaborator, was convicted for helping Nazis and persecuting Jews. He
escaped from prison and later settled in France and Spain where he died
in 2001 at age 80.
(SFC, 3/27/01, p.A18)
1948 Dutch economist Petrus
Johannes Verdoorn (1911-1982), developed what came to known as
Verdoorn's law. It relates to the long-term dynamic relationship
between the rate of growth in output and the growth of productivity due
to increasing returns.
(www.economyprofessor.com/economictheories/verdoorns-law.php)
1948 H.B.G. Casimir, Dutch
physicist, deduced the necessity of a quantum-mechanical effect arising
from the zero-point energy of the harmonic oscillators that are the
normal modes of the electromagnetic field. The Casimir force was first
measured in 1997 and can be seen in a gecko's ability to stick to a
surface with just one toe.
(AFP, 8/6/07)(www.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/casimir.htm)
1949 Dec 27, Queen Juliana of the
Netherlands granted sovereignty to the United States Indonesia after
more than 300 years of Dutch rule. The Netherlands retained control of
Irian Jaya, inhabited by Melanesians, until 1963.
(EWH, 1968, p.1168)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)(AP, 12/27/99)
1949 Heinrich Boere (b.1922), part
of a Waffen SS death squad of mostly Dutch volunteers, was sentenced to
death in the Netherlands. The squad had been tasked with killing fellow
countrymen in reprisal for attacks by the anti-Nazi resistance. His
sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and Boere managed to
escape to Germany. A German court has refused to extradite him because
he might have German nationality as well as Dutch. In 2008 Dortmund
prosecutor Ulrich Maass charged Heinrich Boere (86) with the 1944
murders of three men as a member of the Waffen SS death squad
code-named Silbertanne, or Silver Pine.
(AP, 3/8/08)(AP, 4/16/08)
1950 West Timor (Dutch Timor),
part of the former Dutch East Indies, became Indonesian territory when
Holland transferred sovereignty.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.A13)(TOH, 1982, p.1949)(SFC,
9/8/99, p.A17)
1952 Feb 26, A
Netherlands-Indonesian Unity conference took place.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1952 Apr 3, Dutch Queen Juliana
spoke to the US Congress.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1952 May 6, Maria Montessori
(b.1870), Italian physician, educationist, died In Holland. She opened
her 1st school in San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori)(SFC,
1/6/07, p.B1)
1952 May 29, A 2nd Round
Conference between Dutch Antilles and Suriname ended.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1952 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
began offering first class passengers ceramic houses filled with
liquor. Industry rules capped handouts at 75 cents, but there was no
limit on booze. In 2008 the 89th house in the series made it debut on
Oct 7, the airline’s 89th birthday.
(WSJ, 5/31/08, p.A1)
1953 Jan 31-1953 Feb 1, A powerful
storm breached sea dikes in the south of the Netherlands, killing more
than 1,800 people and cementing a deep resolve among the Dutch that
their ancient enemy, water, would never kill again. 307 people died in
eastern England.
(SSFC, 3/25/01,
p.C3)(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)
1954 The Hague Convention of this
year forbade the taking of war booty. The Hague cultural Property
Convention recognized the protection of cultural, religious and
historical monuments including national parks.
(WSJ, 5/29/96, p.A6)(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)
1954 The 5 islands of the
Netherlands Antilles were federated. These included Bonaire, Curacao,
St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.38)
1955 May 18, Queen Juliana opened
the E55 fair in Amsterdam.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1956 Apr 10, Philips broadcasted
the 1st Dutch color TV programs.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1956 May 18, Queen Juliana opened
the Rembrandt fairs in Amsterdam.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1956 Nov 6, Holland and Spain
withdrew from Olympics, to protest Soviets in Hungary.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1957 May 4, The Anne Frank
Foundation formed in Amsterdam.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1957 Jul 4, Dutch 2nd Chamber
accepted temporary tax increase.
(Maggio)
1958 Jun 23, In the Netherlands
the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation was founded by Prince Bernhard. It
awarded the annual Erasmus Prize to individuals or institutions that
have made notable contributions to European culture, society, or social
science.
(www.123exp-culture.com/t/03604490053/)
1958 Aug 14, KLM
Superconstellation crashed west of Ireland, killing 99.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1959 Apr 13, Eduard A van Beinum
(57), Dutch musician, conductor, died.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1959 Oct 13, K. Rudolf Mengelberg,
Dutch composer (Amsterdam Concertgebouw), died at 67.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1959 Aldo van Eyck (d.1999 at 80)
designed the State Orphanage in Amsterdam.
(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A18)
1959 The massive Groningen gas
field was discovered in the Netherlands.
(WSJ, 6/26/08, p.B1)
1961 Dec 1, The Territory of New
Guinea declared independence from the Netherlands.
(WUD, 1994, p.962)(SFC, 6/5/00, p.A8)
1962 Mar 21, Dutch RC Bishop
Willem Bekkers declared himself in favor of birth control. The church
in the Netherlands tried to promote a more liberal view of birth
control. But their view did not prevail.
(http://tinyurl.com/lpxof8)
1962 Jun 3, Lee Harvey Oswald
arrived by train in Oldenzaal, Netherlands.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1962 Jun 4, Lee Harvey Oswald
departed Rotterdam on SS Maasdam to US.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1962 Jun 28, Thalidomide was
banned in Netherlands.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1963 The western part of the
island of New Guinea, Irian Jaya, became a province of Indonesia. It
was formerly a Dutch territory called West New Guinea, Dutch New Guinea
or Netherlands New Guinea. A West Papua pro-independence movement began
and by 2004 an estimated 100,000 civilians had died in the struggle.
(WUD, 1994, p.1623)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)
1964 Aug 25, Singapore
limited imports from Netherlands due to Indonesian aggression.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1965 May 25, Remco Prins, Dutch
rock guitarist/vocalist (Burma Shave-Stash), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1965 May 25, Roef-Ragas, Dutch
actor (Missing Link, Red Rain, Juju, Mykosch), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1968 Mar 3, Greece, Portugal and
Spain's embassies were bombed in the Hague.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1968 Apr 27, In the Netherlands
part of a group of Catholic radicals left their own party and formed
the Political Party of Radicals (PPR). The party dissolved in 1991.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Party_Radicals)
1968 Sep 1, Pirate Radio Marina in
the Netherlands began transmitting.
(www.historyorb.com/entertainment/radio/pirate-radio)
1968 The Rembrandt Research
Project was formed and funded by the government to act as the
gatekeepers of Rembrandt’s work.
(WSJ, 8/7/98, p.W12)
1969 Mar 25, John and Yoko Ono
staged a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1969 Mar 26, The Nuclear reactor
in Dodewaard, Netherlands, went into use.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodewaard_nuclear_power_plant)
1969 May 30, Refinery workers on
Curacao set fires in Willemstad. Marines from the Netherlands restored
order.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.38)
1969 Oct, Economists Jan Timbergen
(1903-1994) of the Netherlands and Ragnar Frisch of Norway were awarded
the Nobel Prize in Economics for having developed and applied dynamic
models for the analysis of economic processes. Tinbergen was a founding
trustee of Economists for Peace and Security.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Tinbergen)
1971 Oct 1, As of this day divorce
in the Netherlands could only be granted on the ground of the
irretrievable breakdown of the marriage (Article 1:151 of the Dutch
Civil Code).
(http://www2.law.uu.nl/priv/cefl/Reports/pdf/Netherlands02.pdf)
1973 Jul 20, The Japanese Red Army
and Lebanese guerrillas hijacked a Japan Airlines plane over the
Netherlands. The passengers and crew were released in Libya where the
hijackers blew up the plane.
(SFC, 11/9/00,
p.C2)(www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1771)
1973 The Dutch government built
the Van Gogh Museum.
(Econ, 1/21/06, p.81)
1974 Apr 6, Willem Dudok (b.1884),
Dutch architect (Hilversum Town Hall), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Marinus_Dudok)
1974 Sep 1, In the Netherlands
laws prohibiting pirate radio came into effect.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline)
1974 Sep 13, In the Netherlands
the French embassy at the Hague was taken over by Haruo Wako and 2
other Japanese Red Army militants. A 4-day standoff ended with the
release of comrade Yutaka Suyaka from a French jail. The attack was
linked to Carlos the Jackal, aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. In 2005 a Tokyo
District Court sentenced Wako to life imprisonment.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)(SFC, 11/9/00,
p.C2)(http://my-my-miyuki.blogspot.com/)
1975 Sep 14, Rembrandt's
"Nightwatch" was slashed and damaged in Amsterdam.
(http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n7_v86/ai_21113228)
1975 Dec 14, Six South Moluccan
extremists surrendered after holding 23 hostages for 12 days on a train
near the Dutch town of Beilen.
(AP, 12/14/00)
1975 The Dutch film "Keetje
Tippel" (Cathy Tippel or Katie's Passion, or Hot Sweat) starred Jan De
Bont and was directed by Paul Verhoeven.
(WSJ, 7/23/99, p.W4)
1975 Suriname gained Independence
from the Netherlands.
(SFC, 9/6/96, p.A14)
1976 Aug 26, Prince Bernhard,
husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, agreed to resign his
positions with the Dutch armed forces and industry following severe
criticism of his behavior by a commission of enquiry into a Lockheed
bribery scandal. Bernhard had allegedly received $1.1 million as a gift
from Lockheed.
(RTH, 8/26/99)(SFC, 12/24/08, p.B7)
1976 Dec 6, Dutch War criminal
Pieter Menten (1899-1987) was arrested in Switzerland after fleeing
there in November.
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Menten)
1976 Claes Oldenburg (b.1929),
Swedish-born American artist, constructed a 41-foot "Trowel I"
for the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands by. He also made
"Typewriter Eraser."
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.82)(SFC, 10/26/96, p.B1)
1976 Amnesty International
received Netherlands’ Erasmus-prize.
(www.nndb.com/honors/622/000165127/)
1977 May 8, The trial of Pieter
Menten (b.1899), a former Dutch SS officer and art collector, began in
Amsterdam. He was convicted and sentenced to 15 years, but the sentence
was reduced to 10 years in 1980.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9805/08/)(http://tinyurl.com/2n79xl)
1977 May 23, Moluccan extremists
held 105 schoolchildren and 50 others hostage on a hijacked train in
Netherlands. The children were released May 27. The siege ended June 11.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1977 May 25, Dutch social
democratic party won parliamentary election.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1977 Jun 11, A 20-day hostage
drama in the Netherlands ended as Dutch marines stormed a train and a
school held by South Moluccan extremists. Six gunmen and two hostages
on the train were killed.
(AP, 6/11/97)
1977 The Economist coined the term
“Dutch disease” to describe how the exploitation of natural resources
can cause a decline in other forms of economic activity, particularly
manufacturing. This briefly happened in the Netherlands when natural
gas was discovered (1959).
(Econ, 10/11/08, p.36)
1978 Jun 25, Argentina beat
Netherlands in the World Cup soccer championship in Buenos Aires.
(SFC, 2/4/97,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_FIFA_World_Cup)
1980 Apr 30, Juliana Z(1909-2004),
Queen of the Netherlands, abdicated. Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard, was
crowned queen of Netherlands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliana_of_the_Netherlands)
1980 Jul 9, Pieter Menten (81),
Dutch war criminal and art collector, was sentenced to 10 years in
prison.
(http://tinyurl.com/369gbh)(http://tinyurl.com/3xjlqp)
1980 Sep 5, The opera “Satyagraha”
by Philip Glass, commissioned by the city of Rotterdam, was first
performed by the Netherlands Opera.
(WSJ, 4/19/08,
p.W14)(www.philipglass.com/html/recordings/satyagraha.html)
1980 Oct 4, Some 520 people were
forced to abandon the cruise ship “Prisendam” in the Gulf of Alaska
after the Dutch luxury liner caught fire—no deaths or serious injury
resulted. The ship capsized and sank a week later.
(AP, 10/4/08)
1980 Oct 25, The US ratified the
Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
Countries following Islamic law did not sign. The treaty required
countries to send abducted children back to the jurisdiction where they
have previously lived.
(SFC, 12/6/03,
p.A14)(www.international-divorce.com/icara.htm)(Econ, 2/7/09, p.22)
1981 Apr 12, Hendrik F. Andriessen
(b.1892), Dutch organist, composer (Te Deum), died.
(http://www2.rnw.nl/mu/en/behind/biographies/hendrikandriessen)
1983 Jan 25, The Infrared
Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) space probe, sponsored by the United
Kingdom, the US, and the Netherlands, was launched. It studied infrared
radiation from across the cosmos and exposed stars as they were born
from clouds of gas and dust.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)
1983 Mar, Compact Disc recordings,
introduced by Phillips and Sony in Europe in 1982, were introduced to
the US.
(www.iconnect.net/home/bsnpubs/cdhist.html)
1983 Nov 1, Anthony van Hoboken
(b.1887), Dutch musicologist, died in Zurich. He is best known for his
Haydn Catalog (1957).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_van_Hoboken)
1983 Nov 9, Alfred Heineken, beer
brewer from Amsterdam, was kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than
$10 million. Heineken was freed Nov 30. Cor van Houton, the kidnapper,
was shot to death in 2003.
(HN, 11/9/98)(AP, 1/24/03)
1983 Nov 30, Police freed
kidnapped beer magnate Alfred Heineken in Amsterdam.
(www.cedmagic.com/museum/press/ced-timeline-1983.html#11-1983)
1983 The Dapper Foundation of
Amsterdam was founded with a private gift donation of African art. It
was brought to Paris in 1986 and housed in an elegant private museum at
50 Avenue Victor Hugo.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T7)
1984 May 25, Piet Ketting
(b.1904), Dutch pianist, conductor, composer, died.
(http://tinyurl.com/2tpeyt)
1985 Jul 10, French security
forces sank the Rainbow Warrior, a ship operated by Greenpeace near NZ.
Fernando Pereira, a Dutch photographer, was killed in the sinking.
(SFC, 5/7/99,
p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior)
1987 Nov
14, Pieter Menten (b.1899), Dutch war criminal, died at an old people's
home in Loosbroek, southern Netherlands.
(www.jbwan.com/roblog/archives/000615.html)
1987 In the Netherlands the
first campaign to alter social norms of condom use focused on a number
of Dutch celebrities who use condoms themselves.
(http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/IES/netherlands.html)
1987 In the Netherlands art works
by David Teniers, Willem van de Velde, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Eva
Gonzales, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Paul Desire
Trouillebert were stolen from the Noortman gallery in Maastricht. In
2009 police recovered eight of the paintings and arrested 3 suspects.
(AP, 3/8/09)
1987 Heavy floods inundated the
town of Valkenburg as the Geul River overflowed.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A5)
1988 Mar 2, Dutch Liberal Party
merged with SDP.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1988 Apr 11, In Amsterdam the
Royal Concert building (Concertgebouw) reopened.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Concertgebouw_Orchestra)
1988 Dec, Thieves stole three
paintings by van Gogh, with an estimated value of $72 million to $90
million, from the Kroeller-Mueller Museum in a remote section of the
Netherlands. Police later recover all three paintings.
(AP, 2/11/08)
1988 The Dutch film "The
Vanishing" was directed by George Sluizer. An American remake was also
directed by Sluizer.
(SFEC, 8/1/99, DB p.48)
1989 Ter Beek (d.2008 at 64)
became defense minister in a centrist coalition led by PM Ruud Lubbers
and served until 1994. He worked to streamline the Dutch military in
the aftermath of the Cold War, including scrapping the draft.
(AP, 9/30/08)
1990 Toy company FAO Schwartz sold
out to Dutch Company Koninklijke Bijenkorf Beheer.
(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.B1)
1991 Apr, Two masked armed men
stole 20 paintings, worth at least $10 million each at the time, from
Amsterdam's van Gogh Museum. The paintings are found in the getaway car
less than an hour later.
(AP, 2/11/08)
1991 Dec 9, European Community
leaders meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht tentatively agreed to
begin using a single currency by 1999.
(AP, 12/9/01)
1991 Dec 11, European Community
leaders meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht hammered out a
compromise for a loose federation of their countries. The Maastricht
treaty was signed on February 7, 1992, and entered into force on
November 1, 1993. It set entry terms for joining a European monetary
union.
(WSJ, 11/18/96, p.A10)(WSJ, 3/3/97, p.A1)(AP,
12/11/01)
1991 Klaas Bruinsma, gangster and
drug baron, was gunned down near an Amsterdam hotel.
(SSFC, 10/11/03, p.A2)
1992 Feb 7, The Treaty on the
European Union was signed in Maastricht by the Foreign and Finance
Ministers of the Member States.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 Apr 13, The opera "Life With
an Idiot" by Alfred Schnittke had its world premier at the Netherlands
Music Theater in Amsterdam.
(SFC, 8/5/98, p.A17)
1992 Apr 13, An earthquake rocked
Germany and the Netherlands.
(http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/sig_1992.html)
1992 Jul 11, In Bosnia it was
later alleged on Dutch TV that Dutch troops deliberately drove an
armored vehicle into a Muslim blockade on this day and killed as many
as 30 people.
(SFC, 8/21/98, p.A14)
1992 Oct 4, In the Netherlands an
Israeli El Al Jumbo Jet transport, enroute from New York to Tel Aviv,
crashed into an Amsterdam apartment complex and killed 43 people. Since
then scores of people complained of unidentified health problems. In
1998 it was revealed that the jet carried 50 gallons of dimethyl
methylphosphonate, a non-poisonous ingredient of sarin nerve gas,
destined for Israel. A report on the crash was released in 1999 and
said that the plane's ballast included carcinogenic depleted uranium.
{Netherlands, Air Crash, Israel, Medical}
(AP, 10/4/97)(WSJ, 4/22/99,
A1)(www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/5.03/990211-cargo.html)
1992 Dec 15, The Netherlands
ratifies the Treaty on the European Union.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 Dec 21, A Dutch DC-10 burst
into fire at landing on Faro, Portugal, and 56 died.
(http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19921221-0)
1993 Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom
won the European Literary Prize for best novel for his work: "The
Following Story."
(SFC, 4/25/97, p.A3)
1993 Prosecution stopped against
physicians giving lethal drugs to patients to help them commit suicide.
In 2000 euthanasia was legalized.
(SFC, 11/29/00, p.A17)
1993 A family in the Netherlands
was found to have an abnormally high number of violent criminals. The
criminal members were found to have a faulty gene that caused the
absence of the enzyme monoamine oxidase A, an enzyme that regulates a
group of neurotransmitters including serotonin and dopamine. Both of
these were important for emotional responses.
(Econ, 12/23/06, Survey p.6)
1994 May 21, John Henry Weidner
(81), Dutch-US resistance fighter, died.
(MC, 5/21/02)
1995 Apr 27, Willem Frederik
Hermans (b.1921), Dutch author, died. His 1966 novel “Beyond Sleep” was
considered to be one of the founding works of modern Dutch literature.
In 2007 an English translation became available.
(WSJ, 1/7/07,
p.P8)(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Frederik_Hermans)
1995 Jun 3, In Bosnia Mladic
forces seized a Dutch observation post.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A12)
1995 Jul 6, 3:15AM The UN safe
area at Srebrenica came under attack by Bosnian Serbs, and thousands of
male residents were killed. The acquisition and delivery of arms was
organized by Yugoslav army officer Mirko Krajisnik, brother to Momcilo
Krajisnik, president of the Bosnian Serb assembly. In 1998 Chuck
Sudetic published "Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War
in Bosnia." The book focused on the Srebrenica killings. 300 Dutch
troops were later accused of not preventing the Serbs from overrunning
the town.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.A8)(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A12)(SFC,
8/12/98, p.A14)
1995 Jul 8, Shelling resumed and
the Dutch abandoned 3 posts under direct fire. 30 Dutch troops were
taken by the Serbs to Bratunac.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A12)
1995 Jul 9, The Dutch again asked
for air support but it was refused.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A12)
1995 Jul 16, Early reports of
massacres in Bosnia emerged as the first survivors of the long march
from Srebrenica began to arrive in Muslim-held territory. Following
negotiations between the UN and the Bosnian Serbs, the Dutch were at
last permitted to leave Srebrenica, leaving behind weapons, food and
medical supplies.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/675945.stm)
1995 A river flood forced the
evacuation of 200,000 people and millions of animals.
(SSFC, 3/25/01, p.C3)
1996 Jan 26, The Dutch government
provided 365 mil in short-term funds to keep Fokker going for a few
weeks to allow the search for a foreign partner.
(WSJ, 1/30/96, p.A-11)
1996 Feb, The last Dutch draft
notices were sent out.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A15)
1996 May 7, The first
international war crimes proceeding since Nuremberg opened at The Hague
in the Netherlands, with a Serbian police officer, Dusan Tadic, facing
trial on murder-torture charges. Tadic was convicted of crimes against
humanity but acquitted of murder on May 7, 1997. In Jul, 1997 he was
sentenced to 20 years in prison.
(AP, 5/7/97)(SFC, 5/8/97, p.C2)(SFC, 7/15/97, p.A12)
1996 May 18, A 40 year agreement
was signed between Royal Dutch/Shell and Perupetro, Peru’s state oil
company. Royal Dutch will spend $2.7 bil to develop a natural gas field.
(SFC, 5/18/96, p.D-6)
1996 Jun 9, The latest
unemployment rate was 7%.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Parade, p.9)
1996 Jul 7, The average cost of a
Big Mac in the Netherlands was $3.21.
(SFC, 7/7/96, Parade, p.17)
1996 Sep 25, A DC-3 aircraft went
into the North Sea near Den Helder and killed all 32 people on board.
(SFC, 9/26/96, p.A11)
1996 Dec 2, It was reported that a
Dutch rubber company had produced and shipped to England a 100
water-filled rubber mats (water beds) for cows. The product seemed to
enhance milk production.
(SFC, 12/3/96, p.A12)
1996 Dec, Wim Duisenberg of the
Netherlands was approved to run the European Monetary Institute in
Frankfurt, Germany.
(SFC, 5/1/98, p.D6)
1996 Wijnand van der Sanden,
curator of the Drents Museum in Holland, authored "Through Nature to
Eternity: The Bog Bodies of Northwest Europe."
(AM, 7/97, p.62)
1996 Fokker went bankrupt,
and the last new Fokker-50 was delivered to Ethiopian Airlines in May,
1997. Stork, another Dutch company, bought a large part of Fokker's
assets, and continued to be a main provider of parts and service for
Fokker planes.
(AP, 2/10/04)
1997 Mar 19, Willem de Kooning
(92), Dutch-born abstract painter, considered to be one of the 20th
century's greatest painters, died in East Hampton, N.Y.
(SFC, 3/20/97, p.A1,6,E1)(AP, 3/19/98)
1997 Mar 25, An arson attack left
a Turkish woman and 5 children dead in the Hague.
(SFC, 3/29/97, p.A9)
1997 Oct 2, The EU formally set up
a common foreign and security policy in the Amsterdam Treaty. It set to
adopt key asylum and immigration measures within five years of the
treaty's entry into force, expected in 1999. A protocol to the 1997
Treaty of Amsterdam reclassified animals as sentient beings.
(Econ, 8/26/06,
p.42)(http://hrw.org/worldreport/Helsinki-28.htm)(Econ, 12/2/06, p.88)
1997 Oct 22, A 64-year-old woman,
dubbed the "furniture terrorist," received an 8-month sentence for
causing an estimated $500,000 damage to furniture over a six-year
period. She wandered through showrooms and slashed sofas with a razor
often in a Zorro-like "Z" style.
(SFC,10/23/97, p.A17)
1997 The Dutch film "Character"
was set in Rotterdam in the 1920s. It won an Oscar for best foreign
film.
(SFC, 3/24/98, p.A6)
1997 ING Direct, an online banking
service under Dutch parent ING Groep NV, was launched in Canada. In
2000 it began operations in the US from Wilmington, Del. By the end of
2007 it had over 7 million customers and $62 billion in deposits. In
2008 Arkadi Kuhlman, ING’s US chief, and Bruce Philp, chairman of ING
Direct’s marketing partner, authored “The Orange Code: How ING direct
Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause.”
(WSJ, 12/10/08, p.A17)
1997-2001 In the Netherlands Lucia de Berk murdered 7
people in her care by giving them lethal doses of drugs. In 2004 a
court sentenced her to life in jail and compulsory psychiatric
treatment for killing. A high court ordered a review, ruling that the
woman could not be sentenced to both life in jail and psychiatric care.
In 2006 de Berk was sentenced to life in prison.
(Reuters, 7/13/06)
1998 May 3, European leaders
meeting in Brussels, Belgium, agreed on Wim Duisenberg of the
Netherlands as the chief of the new European Central Bank (ECB), but
with the proviso that he step down in 2002 to make way for Frenchman
Jean-Claude Trichet.
(BS, 5/3/98, p.21A)(AP, 5/3/99)
1998 Aug 1, The 5th quadrennial
Gay Games began in Amsterdam with some 15,000 competitors. The games
closed Aug 8.
(SFEC, 8/2/98, p.A2)
1998 Aug 24, The United States and
Britain agreed to allow two Libyan suspects in the bombing of Pan Am
flight 103 to be tried by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands.
A former Libyan intelligence agent was later convicted of murder; the
other suspect was acquitted.
(AP, 8/24/08)
1998 Sep 10, The Rotterdam
Convention was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rotterdam. It is a
multilateral agreement to promote shared responsibilities in relation
to importation of hazardous chemicals, became legally binding to its
parties. It officially entered into force on Feb 24, 2004. As of 2008,
73 countries were signatories and 126 were parties.
(www.ec.gc.ca/international/multilat/rotterdam_e.htm)
1998 Sep 19, The worst storm in a
century hit the Netherlands and Belgium over the past week.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A5)
1998 Oct 13, It was reported that
Dutch auditors chastised the prime minister and other officials for
spending $40 million to acquire the Piet Mondrian painting: "Victory
Boogie Woogie."
(WSJ, 10/13/98, p.A1)
1998 Nov 13, The cabinet approved
a plan to let homosexuals adopt Dutch children by Jan 1, 2000.
(SFEC, 11/15/98, p.A20)
1998 Dec 1, Dutch and Flemish
lexicographers unveiled a 40-tome dictionary with 45,000 pages that
documented words back to 1500. It took 147 years to complete and
compilers stopped at 1976.
(SFC, 12/2/98, p.C2)
1998 The 245 minute film
"Amsterdam Global Village" was directed by Johan van der Keuken and
showed at the SF Film Fest.
(SFEC, 4/12/98, DB p.55)
1998 The Dutch film "The Dress"
starred Hanri Garcin and Ariane Schluter. It was written and directed
by Alex van Warmerdam.
(SFC, 11/27/98, p.C8)
1998 The documentary film "Sex,
Drugs and Democracy" was produced.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T9)
1998 Ernst Langhout, a
singer-songwriter, increased his sales when he began singing in his
native Frisian language.
(WSJ, 5/13/98, p.A20)
1999 Jan 1, Netherlands along with
10 other European Union nations made the transition to the new Euro
monetary system.
(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A8)
1999 Feb 18, Transamerica was
bought by Aegon NV of the Netherlands in a deal valued at $9.7 billion.
The assessed value of the Transamerica Pyramid in SF was set at $190
million.
(SFC, 2/19/99, p.A1)(SFC, 5/29/04, p.C2)
1999 Apr 5, Libya handed over to
UN officials 2 men accused in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103.
They were then flown to the Hague to be tried under Scottish law. UN
Sec. Gen'l. Kofi Annan immediately suspended economic sanctions on
Libya.
(SFC, 3/20/99, p.A8)(SFC, 4/6/99, p.A1)
1999 May 16, The 1956 Picasso
painting, "Woman Nude Before Garden," was slashed by a mental patient
in Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum.
(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A20)
1999 May 19, The Dutch Cabinet of
Prime Minister Wim Kok resigned following a split over whether to give
citizens the right to vote in referendums.
(SFC, 5/20/99, p.A13)
1999 Oct 12, Professors Gerardus
't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman of the Netherlands won the Nobel
Prize in Physics for the invention of mathematical tools to calculate
properties of fundamental particles. From 1981 to his retirement in
1997, Veltman was an active member of the Univ. of Michigan physics
department.
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.A2)(MT, Fall/99, p.7)
1999 Oct 26, The Parliament
overturned a 1912 ban on brothels.
(SFC, 10/27/99, p.A13)
1999 Dec 7, In Holland a student
(17) in Veghel shot and wounded a teacher and 4 fellow students in the
1st school shooting in Dutch history. The student was reported to have
been upset over a romance. The student's father (35) and sister (15)
were arrested 2 days later as accessories.
(SFC, 12/8/99, p.A15)(SFC, 12/10/99, p.D8)
1999 The Netherlands documentary
film "I Love Money" (the title used symbols for "love" and "money") was
directed by Johan van der Keuken.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, DB p.36)
1999 A leftist coalition toppled
the long-ruling Christian Democrats.
(SFC, 8/17/01, p.A16)
2000 Mar 21, Holland announced
that it would give the Jewish community $180 million for injustices
suffered after returning from Nazi death camps. Another $114 million
was set for Dutch victims of Japanese WW II prison camps in Indonesia
and $14 million for Dutch Gypsies persecuted by the Nazis.
(SFC, 3/22/00, p.A12)
2000 Apr 6, Two Russian cosmonauts
docked with Mir. The destruction of the space station was delayed after
MirCorp. of Amsterdam agreed in Feb. to pay $10-20 million to lease
commercial rights.
(SFC, 4/7/00, p.D2)(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.T12)
2000 Apr 15, Rem Koolhaas (56),
Dutch architect, won the annual $100,000 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A4)
2000 May 4, Hendrik Casimir
(b.1909), Dutch physicist, died. He was best known for his research on
the two-fluid model of superconductors (together with C. J. Gorter) in
1934 and the Casimir effect (together with D. Polder) in 1946.
(Econ, 5/24/08,
p.105)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Casimir)
2000 May 13, In the Netherlands a
fireworks depot exploded in Enschede and 20 people were killed with 589
injured. An estimated 100 tons of fireworks exploded and flattened some
400 houses.
(SFEC, 5/14/00, p.A12)(SFC, 5/15/00, p.A13)
2000 Jun 7, It was reported that
Patrick Atoon of Nigmegen had spent 8 years building his web site
dedicated to the meanings of words in rap music: www.rapdict.org.
(WSJ, 6/7/00, p.A1)
2000 Jun 18, In England officials
found 58 bodies in the back of a truck at Dover. The truck had arrived
from Zeebrugge under 86-degree heat and 54 male and 4 female Chinese
immigrants from Fujian province appeared to have suffocated. There were
2 survivors. The chief suspect was arrested in Rotterdam in 2001. In
2001 Dutch driver Perry Wacker (32) was convicted and sentenced to 14
years in prison. Ying Guo (30) was convicted of conspiracy and was
sentenced to 6 years in prison.
(SFC, 6/19/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.A1)(SFC,
6/21/00, p.A12)(SFC, 1/23/01, p.C14)(SFC, 4/6/01, p.D6)
2000 Sep 12, A bill was passed
that converted same-sex partnerships into full-fledged marriages.
(SFC, 9/13/00, p.A12)
2000 Oct, Brothels were legalized.
The $1 billion sex industry was estimated as 5% of the Dutch economy.
(SSFC, 8/12/01, p.A15)
2000 Nov 28, In the Netherlands
lawmakers of the lower house voted 104 to 40 to legalize euthanasia
with strict guidelines.
(SFC, 11/29/00, p.A17)
2001 Jan 1, In the Netherlands a
fire in a Volendam café killed at least 5 people and injured
over 130.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.A12)
2001 Jan 31, In the Netherlands a
Scottish court sentenced Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan
intelligence officer, to life in a Scottish prison for the 1998 bombing
of Pan Am Flight 103. A second Libyan was acquitted.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.A11)(SFC, 2/1/01, p.A1)(WSJ,
2/1/01, p.A1)(AP, 12/19/03)
2001 Mar 31, Legislation enacted
in 2000 to legalize gay marriages went into effect as of midnight.
(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A10)
2001 Apr 5, Dutch driver Perry
Wacker was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 14 years in
prison in the deaths of 58 Chinese immigrants who suffocated in his
truck in Dover, England.
(AP, 4/5/02)
2001 Apr 10, The Dutch Senate
legalized euthanasia gave doctors immunity from prosecution for
assisting in the deaths of terminally ill patients.
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.C2)
2001 Jul 5, Scientists at Delft
Univ. of Tech. in the Netherlands reported the creation of
nanotechnology transistors built from a single molecule.
(SFC, 7/6/01, p.B3)
2001 Jul 12, Herman Brood (55),
musician, jumped to his death from the roof of an Amsterdam hotel. He
had recorded nearly 20 albums and had acted in Dutch films. In 1978 he
made a hit with his single "Saturday Night."
(SFC, 7/13/01, p.D5)
2001 Aug 16, Col. Vidoje
Blagojevic, former commander of Bratunac, pleaded innocent at the Hague
war crimes tribunal for 1995 war crimes in Srebrenica. On January 17,
2005, Col. Vidoje Blagojevic became the second indictee to be convicted
on Srebrenica Genocide charges and other human rights violations. He
was sentenced to 18 years in prison. On May 9, 2007, the Appeals
Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia ruled that Col Blagojevic had not been complicit in the
genocide at Srebrenica because he had not known his troops intended to
commit it. Blagojevic’s sentence was reduced to 15 years.
(SFC, 8/17/01,
p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre)
2001 A charge of 7 guilders was
planned for motorists entering major cities in order to reduce traffic
congestion.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.B8)
2001 KaZaA, an internet
file-sharing program, was founded in Amsterdam by Niklas Zennstrom of
Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark. In 2004 they launched Skype software
for internet telephony.
(Econ, 7/3/04, p.54)
2001-2005 Ruud Lubbers (b.1939), former Dutch prime
minister (1982-1994), served as the head of the UNHCR.
(Econ, 9/6/08,
p.67)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruud_Lubbers)
2002 Jan 3, Alfred Henry Heineken
(78), builder of a global beer brand, died in the Noordwijk. Freddie
designed the green bottle and logo. In 1983 he was abducted for weeks
and released unharmed.
(WSJ, 1/4/02, p.A1)(SFC, 1/5/02, p.A22)
2004 Jan 13, The European
Commission proposed an initiative aimed at creating a single market for
services within the European Union (EU), similar to the single market
for goods act of 1986. It came to be known as Bolkestein
Directive after the Dutch Commissioner Frits Bolkestein (b.1933), who
launched it. Trade unions opposed it. On 16 February 2006, the European
Parliament in plenary session in Strasbourg voted in favor of a
compromise proposal that went a long way towards meeting the trade
union demands.
(www.etuc.org/a/499)
2002 Feb 9, At the Winter Olympics
in Salt Lake City, Jochem Uytdehaage of the Netherlands won the gold
medal in the men's 5,000-meter speedskating race in world record time
of 6:14.66.
(AP, 2/9/03)
2002 Mar, In the Netherlands the
Liveable Rotterdam Party catapulted Pim Fortuyn, its chief figurehead,
onto the national stage. Fortuyn rode a wave of dissatisfaction over
immigration, Islam and the elitism of the ruling Labor Party. He was
shot to death May 6.
(Econ, 3/11/06, p.46)
2002 May 6, In the Netherlands Pim
Fortuyn (54), a right-wing populist with an anti-immigrant platform,
was shot to death in Hilversum. Volkert van der Graaf (32), an
environmental activist, was arrested May 7 for the murder.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.A1)(SFC, 5/8/02,
p.A17)
2002 May 15, Election results in
the Netherlands showed the opposition Christian Democrats with a
sizeable victory with 43 seats. List, the party of recently slain Pim
Fortuyn, took 2nd place with 26 seats and named Mat Herben as leader.
Jan Peter Balkenende, head of the Christian Democrats, was set to be
PM. The ruling Labor Party won 23 of the 150 seats.
(WSJ, 5/16/02, p.A14)(SFC, 5/16/02, p.A8)(WSJ,
5/17/02, p.A1)
2002 May, Uganda began to fear
that too much Western assistance might damage its economy by pushing up
the value of its shilling. The phenomenon is called Dutch Disease
because decades ago massive oil revenues in the Netherlands unsettled
the exchange rates and left exports less competitive.
(WSJ, 5/29/02, p.A4)
2002 Jul 1, In the Hague the
world's first permanent war crimes tribunal officially came into
existence. It was vehemently opposed by the United States.
(AP, 7/1/02)
2002 Jul 17, Joseph Luns (90),
foreign minister for 19 years, died. He had also served for 13 years as
NATO sec. gen.
(SFC, 7/18/02, p.A26)
2002 Aug 30, In the Netherlands 8
men were detained for providing financial and logistical services to al
Qaeda and for recruiting fighters.
(SFC, 9/3/02, p.A6)
2002 Oct 6, Prince Claus (76), the
German-born husband of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, died in
Amsterdam.
(AP, 10/6/03)
2002 Oct 16, The Dutch government
collapsed amid infighting in the List party.
(WSJ, 10/17/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec, Two thieves broke in
through the roof of the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and stole
two paintings by van Gogh valued at $30 million. The men were convicted
a year later, but the paintings were not recovered.
(AP, 2/11/08)
2003 Jan 13, Dutch Foreign
Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer took over as head of the 55-nation
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for 2003. He said
the Vienna-based OSCE would sharpen its efforts to improve border
security and police cooperation and cut off the flow of cash to
terrorist groups.
(AP, 1/13/03)
2003 Jan 22, In the Netherlands
voters rejected an anti-immigration party and gave 44 seats to the
Christian Democrats and 42 to the Labor party.
(SFC, 1/23/03, p.A10)
2003 Mar 2, Netherlands,
the world’s 4th largest poultry exporter, discovered a bird flu in some
its poultry for the 1st time in 30 years.
(WSJ, 3/6/03, p.A11)
2003 Mar 11, The 18-judge
world court was inaugurated at the Hague. It had been approved Jul 17,
1998, by the Rome Treaty.
(SFC, 3/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 17, In the Netherlands a
law went into effect that allowed pharmacies to fill prescriptions for
marijuana.
(SFC, 3/18/03, p.A8)
2003 Apr 15, In the Netherlands,
Volkert van der Graaf, the killer of politician Pim Fortuyn, was
sentenced to 18 years in prison.
(AP, 4/15/08)
2003 Apr 17, A Dutch veterinarian
(57) died from avian influenza 2 days after working on a farm where
animals were infected with the bird flu. He was believed to be the 1st
victim of the current epidemic.
(WSJ, 4/21/03, p.A10)
2003 May, Heineken paid $2.2
billion for BBAG, Austria's leading beer maker.
(Econ, 6/28/03, p.63)
2003 Jun 6, The Netherlands said
it will send 1,100 peacekeepers to southern Iraq to join the
British-led multinational stabilization force.
(AP, 6/7/03)
2003 Aug 29, The board of Air
France approved a deal to combine with Dutch KLM under a holding
company to form the world's #3 airline.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R12)
2003 Sep 1, Marijuana went on sale
Monday at Dutch pharmacies to help bring relief to thousands of
patients suffering from cancer, AIDS or multiple sclerosis.
(AP, 9/1/03)
2003 Sep 22, NATO selected Dutch
Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as the alliance's new secretary
general.
(AP, 9/22/03)
2003 Oct 27, Prosecutors in the
Netherlands said Momir Nikolic (48), a Bosnian Serb captain who
admitted participating in the mass killing of more than 7,000 Muslim
boys and men in Srebrenica, should serve up to 20 years in
prison. Nikolic accepted that he was on duty when 80-100
prisoners were decapitated and their corpses loaded onto trucks on July
12, 1995. In 2006 a UN appeals court reduced his 27-year sentence to 20
years.
(AP, 10/28/03)(AP, 3/8/06)
2003 Dec 12, Three Dutch
Protestant churches formally agreed to put aside their ideological
differences and merge, the culmination of a process that began more
than 40 years ago.
(AP, 12/12/03)
2003 Dec 23, The Dutch National
Flu Center said more than 15 of every 10,000 Dutch citizens have flu
symptoms, enough to qualify the current outbreak as an epidemic.
(AP, 12/23/03)
2003 The Groningen Academic
Hospital in Amsterdam, Netherlands, carried out 4 mercy killings of
terminally ill newborn children in this year. In 2004 the hospital
proposed guidelines for such procedures.
(SFC, 12/1/04, p.A17)
2004 Jan 5, Dutchman Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer took over as NATO's top official.
(AP, 1/5/04)
2004 Jan 13, A Dutch high school
student walked into his school's crowded cafeteria and shot Hans van
Wieren (49), an economics teacher, point-blank in the head, fatally
wounding him.
(AP, 1/13/04)
2004 Feb 17, The Dutch parliament
approved a measure to expel 26,000 people seeking political asylum,
despite objections from left-leaning political parties and human rights
groups.
(AP, 2/17/04)
2004 Mar 20, Former Netherlands
Queen Juliana (94), who presided over the dismantling of the
centuries-old Dutch empire and witnessed the birth of a social
revolution during her 32-year reign (1948-1980, died.
(AP, 3/20/04)(SSFC, 3/21/04, p.B7)
2004 Apr 11, Arjan Erkel, A Dutch
aid worker who headed the North Caucasus mission of Medecins Sans
Frontieres and was kidnapped in Russia nearly two years ago, was freed
in a police operation in Dagestan.
(AP, 4/11/04)
2004 Jul 2, The Dutch government
backed plans for "seals of quality" for well-run brothels and standard
contracts for prostitutes, as well as more support for those who want
to leave the world's oldest profession.
(Reuters, 7/2/04)
2004 Aug 29, Hans Vonk (63), Dutch
conductor, died in Amsterdam.
(SFC, 9/1/04, p.B7)
2004 Oct, Some 200,000 people
demonstrated in Amsterdam against government reforms planned by the
Christian-Democrat coalition under PM Jan Peter Balkenende.
(Econ, 10/9/04, p.47)
2004 Nov 2, Dutch filmmaker Theo
van Gogh (47), the great-grandnephew of the painter Vincent, was shot
and stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street after receiving death
threats over “Submission,” a movie he made criticizing the treatment of
women under Islam. A death threat to a Dutch politician was found
pinned with a knife to Gogh’s body by his Islamic attacker. Somali-born
Ayaan Hirsi Ali collaborated with Van Gogh on the film. In January
prosecutors said Mohammed Bouyeri (26), the alleged killer of Dutch
filmmaker Theo van Gogh, ignored his victim's pleas for mercy and
calmly shot him at close range before slitting his throat. In his trial
in July, 2005, Bouyeri said he killed van Gogh for insulting God. In
2006 Ian Buruma authored “Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van
Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance,” an account of the van Gogh murder.
(AP, 1/26/05)(SFC, 7/13/05, p.A10)(WSJ, 9/9/06,
p.P8)(Econ, 9/2/06, p.74)
2004 Nov 10, Dutch police mounted
a major anti-terror raid against suspects holed up in an apartment in
The Hague. 2 North African men were arrested following a daylong siege.
(AP, 11/10/04)(SFC, 11/11/04, p.A12)
2004 Nov 12, Dutch police raided a
suspected Kurdish separatist training camp in a small village in the
southern Netherlands, arresting 29 people. 38 members of the group were
arrested nationwide. Jason Walters threw a hand grenade and injured
several police officers in a standoff at a barricaded house in The
Hague. Walters was one of 7 men later convicted for belonging to a
terrorist group associated with Mohammed Bouyeri, who killed filmmaker
Theo van Gogh on Nov 2. In 2008 Their conviction was overturned, but a
15-year sentence against Walters was upheld. The court also reduced the
sentence for Ismail Aknikh, who was with Walters during the standoff,
from 13 years to 15 months.
(AFP, 11/12/04)(SFC, 11/13/04, p.A18)(AP, 1/23/08)
2004 Dec 1, Prince Bernhard (93),
father of Queen Beatrix, died in Utrecht. It was soon reported that he
had acknowledged in a series of secret interviews 2 illegitimate
children and the acceptance of bribes in 1976 from Lockheed to persuade
the Dutch government to purchase its planes. The money was reportedly
passed to charities.
(SFC, 12/15/04, p.A12)
2004 Frits Hoekstra, a former
Dutch security official authored “In the Service of the BVD” (In Dienst
van de BVD), a book on Dutch secret service operations. It included an
account of “Project Mongol,” the use of a mock Maoist movement to
gather intelligence during the cold war, which the CIA called
“Operation Red herring.”
(WSJ, 12/3/04, p.A1)
2004 Geert Mak (b.1946), Dutch
journalist, authored “In Europe: Travels through the Twentieth
Century.” An updated version in English was published in 2007.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.96)
2005 Jan 1, Netherlands was
forecast for 2% annual GDP growth with a population at 16.4 million and
GDP per head at $38,950.
(Econ, 1/1/05, p.89)
2006 Jan, In the Hague Col. Vidoje
Blagojevic (56), Bosnian Serb wartime commander of the Bratunac
brigade, was convicted of war crimes and complicity in genocide by the
Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal. In 2007 an appeals panel overturned the
charge of complicity in genocide.
(AP, 5/9/07)
2005 Mar 30, Dutch bank ABN Amro
announced a 6.3 billion euros ($8.1 billion) bid for the 87 percent of
Italian bank Antonveneta it does not already own, the second foreign
offer for an Italian bank in as many days.
(AP, 3/30/05)
2005 Apr 19, Dutch authorities
arrested a Chechen citizen in the Netherlands in connection with the
November 2 slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. A 2nd suspect was
arrested May 18 in Tours, France. Both were believed to have ties to a
group of Islamic fundamentalists which prosecutors dubbed the Hofstad
network.
(AP, 5/27/05)
2005 May 8, President Bush paid
homage in the Netherlands to the "terrible price" paid by World War II
soldiers who never came home from their fight against tyranny.
(AP, 5/8/05)
2005 Jun 1, Dutch voters worried
about social benefits and immigration overwhelmingly rejected the
European Union constitution in what could be a knockout blow for a
charter meant to create a power rivaling the United States. Slow
economic growth in the Netherlands was seen as a key reason for the
massive rejection of the EU constitution
(AP, 6/1/05)
2005 Jun 6, The International
Criminal Court at the Hague formally announced the opening of a war
crimes investigation in Sudan's Darfur region after receiving a list of
51 potential suspects from UN.
(AP, 6/6/05)
2005 Jun 9, In the Netherlands
thousands of civil servants went on strike to protest declining social
benefits and low wages.
(WSJ, 6/10/05, p.A6)
2005 Jul 11, The Dutch market
research firm, VNU, announced its acquisition of IMS Health, the
leading supplier of research to pharmaceutical firms, for $7 billion.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.60)
2005 Jul 12, Mohammed Bouyeri, a
Muslim extremist on trial in the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo van
Gogh, unexpectedly confessed in court, saying he was driven by
religious conviction. Bouyeri was convicted and sentenced to life in
prison.
(AP, 7/12/06)
2005 Jul 26, A Dutch court
sentenced Mohammed Bouyeri (27), the killer of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh,
to life in prison. He was linked to the “Hofstad Group,” some of whom
were accused of wild plans to blow up Schiphol airport, the Dutch
parliament and a nuclear reactor.
(AP, 7/26/05)(Econ, 7/16/05, p.13)
2005 Jul 27, The US charged
Iraqi-born Wasem al Delaema (32), a Dutch citizen, with conspiring to
kill Americans in Iraq and asked the Dutch government to extradite him
for prosecution. Authorities alleged al Delaema was one of several men
calling themselves the Fighters of Fallujah who plotted attacks near
that Iraqi city in October 2003.
(AP, 7/30/05)
2005 Jul 30, Wim Duisenberg
(b.1935), Dutch-born first chief of the European Central Bank who
helped create the euro currency, was found dead at a home in
southeastern France.
(AP, 7/31/05)
2005 Aug 3, Dutch authorities
seized 5 tons of cocaine, valued at $275 million, hidden in reels of
steel cable in the Port of Rotterdam in what was described as one of
the country's biggest drug busts. 13 suspects (aged 15-50) from the
Netherlands, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Greece and the US, were
arrested later.
(AP, 9/5/05)
2005 Sep 12, Armed men broke into
an upscale Amsterdam home and kidnapped Claudia Melchers (37), the
daughter of a millionaire whose fortune came from selling chemicals,
including to Iraq in the 1980s. Her children were left unharmed. The
kidnappers demanded 660 pounds of cocaine. Melchers was released 2 days
later. It was not clear whether any ransom was paid.
(AP, 9/13/05)(AP, 9/15/05)
2005 Sep 13, The Dutch government
said it plans to open an electronic file, effective Jan 1, 2007, on
every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of
the future.
(AP, 9/13/05)
2005 Sep 26, Dutch bank ABN Amro
said it had signed a contract with Banca Popolare Italiana and its
allies to buy their 39.37 percent stake in Banca Antonveneta for a
total outlay of 3.2 billion euros (3.85 billion dollars).
(AP, 9/26/05)
2005 Sep 28, In Australia a team
from Holland, known more for its windmills than its sunshine, won a
four-day, 1,860 mile, international solar-powered car race across
deserts, notching up their third straight victory. The "Challenge," to
design and build a car capable of crossing Australia on the power of
daylight, was launched in 1987 and teams and individuals from
corporations and universities throughout the world take part.
(AP, 9/29/05)
2005 Sep, Philips Corp. unveiled
new LED technology for consumer lighting in Paris.
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.58)
2005 Oct 6, A UN official said the
International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued arrest warrants
for Joseph Kony and 5 henchmen of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a
Ugandan cult notorious for raping, maiming and killing children.
(Reuters, 10/6/05)(Econ, 10/22/05, p.48)
2005 Oct 12, A Dutch court blocked
the extradition of a Dutch terror suspect to the United States, saying
his legal rights in U.S. custody could not be guaranteed.
(AP, 10/12/05)
2005 Oct 14, Dutch police detained
seven suspects in an anti-terrorism operation in three cities,
including the capital, aimed at thwarting a suspected plot to attack
politicians and a government building.
(AP, 10/14/05)
2005 Oct 17, Dutch police arrested
45 members of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang and seized an
assortment of weapons during nationwide raids on the group's
clubhouses. Prosecutors said those arrested face charges of murder,
extortion, intimidation and weapons and drug trafficking.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 27, In the Netherlands a
fire roared through a prison complex at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport,
killing 11 illegal immigrants awaiting deportation and injuring 15
other people.
(AP, 10/27/05)
2005 Nov 1, A trade union said a
strike at the Dutch operations of Royal Dutch Shell PLC over pensions
will be broadened to include the company's natural-gas production in
the north of the Netherlands.
(AP, 11/1/05)
2005 Nov 14, It was reported that
India's top oil exploration firm Oil & Natural Gas Corp. and the
world's largest steel maker, the Netherlands-based Mittal Group, plan
to build an oil refinery in Nigeria. They offered to invest another $6
billion in building a power plant and railroads there.
(AP, 11/14/05)
2005 Nov 18, A Dutch television
show claimed to have knocked down a chain of 4,155,476 dominoes in a
new world record, but organizers conceded the event was overshadowed by
the earlier shooting of an errant sparrow. The bird caused some 23,000
dominoes to fall on Nov 14. The record was later adjusted to 4,002,146
after a legal expert ruled that a person had illegally caused 153,340
dominoes to fall.
(AP, 11/18/05)(SFC, 11/23/05, p.A2)(www.dodemus.nl/)
2005 Dec 2, In the Netherlands a
broad coalition of political parties unveiled a pilot program to
regulate marijuana farming on the model of tobacco, which opponents say
would be tantamount to legalizing growing the drug.
(AP, 12/02/05)
2005 Dec 5, Frits Philips (100),
Dutch businessman, grandson of the founder of Philips, died. He turned
a family business into Philips Electronics in 40 years of leadership.
(WSJ, 12/7/05, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/dfnu4)
2005 Dec 7, The Hague war crimes
tribunal sentenced Miroslav Bralo (aka Cicko), a former Bosnian Croat
soldier, to 20 years in jail on eight counts of war crimes and human
rights abuses committed during the 1993 Muslim-Croat war in central
Bosnia.
(Reuters, 12/07/05)
2005 Dec 16, A Dutch court
sentenced Henk Slebos, a Dutch businessman who oversaw the sale of
dual-use nuclear technology to Pakistan (1999-2002), to a year prison.
(AP, 12/16/05)
2005 Dec 19, US federal
authorities fined Dutch bank ABN Amro Holding NV $80 million for
violating US money-laundering laws and sanctions against Iran and
Libya. Nearly a decade of violations involved billions in transactions
passing through bank offices in NY and Dubai, UAR.
(WSJ, 12/20/05, p.A3)
2005 Dec 22, The Dutch government
said it planned to send up to 1,400 additional troops to Afghanistan
for expanded NATO peacekeeping.
(AP, 12/22/05)
2005 Dec 23, In the Netherlands a
court jailed Frans van Anraat (63), a Dutch businessman, for 15 years
after finding him guilty of complicity in war crimes for selling
chemicals to Iraq used to carry out gas attacks, but acquitted him of
genocide charges.
(Reuters, 12/23/05)
2006 Jan 19, Lifeline Systems Inc.
announced that it has signed a definitive merger agreement with Royal
Philips Electronics under which Philips will acquire Lifeline, a leader
in personal emergency response services. Royal Philips Electronics NV
paid $750 million for Massachusetts based Lifeline.
(WSJ, 1/11/07, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/334w4c)
2006 Feb 1, In Amsterdam an
experimental ban on smoking marijuana went into effect intended to
reduce loitering and petty crime. “No toking” signs appeared as part of
the ban on the street in "De Baarsjes," one of the city's poorer
neighborhoods. Amsterdam soon began selling the "no toking" signs to
prevent the official ones from being stolen as collector's items.
(AP, 2/4/06)
2006 Feb 3, Foreign Minister Ben
Bot said Netherlands will send 1,200 additional troops to Afghanistan,
the day after parliament gave the green light to the deployment.
(AP, 2/3/06)
2006 Feb 9, Some 58 containers
were swept from the P&O Nedlloyd ship Mondriaan, which got caught
in a storm about 9 miles off the coast of the island of Terschelling,
in the North Sea. The next day thousands of tennis shoes, aluminum
briefcases and children's toys washed onto the beach of a Dutch island,
drawing crowds of treasure-hunting residents.
(AP, 2/10/06)
2006 Feb 14, Bilal Lamrani (21), a
Dutch Muslim, was sentenced to three years in prison for plotting
murder and attempting to recruit prison inmates to carry out terrorist
attacks.
(AP, 2/14/06)
2006 Feb 24, Japan suspended all
French poultry imports and threatened a similar ban on the Netherlands
following reported cases of H5N1 bird flu.
(Reuters, 2/25/06)
2006 Feb 27, In the Netherlands
the International Court of Justice heard arguments by Bosnia accusing
Serbia of genocide, the first time a state has faced trial for
humanity's worst crime.
(AP, 2/27/06)
2006 Mar 5, Milan Babic (50), the
Serb leader of a rebel republic in Croatia and one of the key figures
in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, committed suicide in prison in the
Netherlands.
(AP, 3/6/06)
2006 Mar 10, A Netherlands court
convicted 9 Muslims of belonging to a terrorist group because they
incited hatred for non-Muslims. Among the defendants was Mohammed
Bouyeri, the convicted killer of filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
(AP, 3/10/06)
2006 Mar 11, In the Netherlands
former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic (b.1941), the so-called
"butcher of the Balkans" being tried for war crimes after orchestrating
a decade of bloodshed during his country's breakup, was found dead in
his prison cell. Milosevic spent nearly five years at a UN detention
facility in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague. An autopsy showed that
he died of a heart attack. A Dutch toxicologist said he took
unprescribed pills that neutralized heart medication.
(SFC, 3/13/06, p.A3)(WSJ, 3/14/06, p.A1)(Econ,
3/18/06, p.83)
2006 Mar 15, In the Netherlands 2
Bosnian Muslim army commanders were convicted of war crimes for failing
to rein in foreign Muslim volunteers who murdered and tortured Bosnian
Croats and Serbs in a 1990s "holy war."
(AP, 3/16/06)
2006 Mar 17, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo,
a Congolese militia leader accused of conscripting and enlisting
children aged under 15 for warfare (1998-2002), became the first
suspect sent for trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the
Netherlands.
(Reuters, 3/17/06)(WSJ, 3/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Mar 21, Royal Dutch Shell
said it paid $465 million Canadian dollars for the rights to explore
219,000 acres in Alberta’s oil sands.
(WSJ, 3/22/06, p.A14)
2006 Mar 22, In the Netherlands an
appeals chamber of the UN war crimes court dropped the life sentence of
Bosnian Serb Milomir Stakic and instead sentenced him to 40 years for
overseeing detention camps in Bosnia.
(AFP, 3/22/06)
2006 Mar 27, The Dutch Equal
Treatment Commission ruled that a Muslim woman who refuses to shake
men's hands for religious reasons cannot be barred from a Dutch
teacher-training program.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Apr 19, US Immigration agents
arrested 7 executives and 1,187 illegal immigrants employed by IFCO
Systems, a Netherlands-based manufacturer of crates and pallets, as
part of a crackdown on employers of illegal workers.
(AP, 4/19/06)(SFC, 4/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Apr 27, A Dutch agency said
the number of reported cases of legal euthanasia and doctor-assisted
suicide in the Netherlands increased in 2005 for the third year in a
row. Doctors reported 1,933 cases in 2005, up from 1,886 in 2004 and
1,815 in 2003.
(AP, 4/27/06)
2006 May 8, In the Hague the UN
war crimes court sentenced Ivica Rajic, a Bosnian Croat former militia
leader, to 12 years in prison. Rajic admitted that forces under his
command operating in the Muslim village of Stupni Do in central Bosnia
in October 1993 "forced Bosnian Muslim civilians out of their homes and
hiding places, robbed them of their valuables, willfully killed Muslim
men, women and children and sexually assaulted Muslim women".
(AFP, 5/8/06)
2006 May 16, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a
Somali-born member of Parliament, said she will resign and leave
Holland after the government said she was improperly granted
citizenship. She became an internationally known opponent of some
violent types of Islam.
(AP, 5/16/06)
2006 May 17, Under withering
criticism, the Dutch immigration minister Rita Verdonk agreed to
rethink her threat to revoke the citizenship of a Somali-born former
lawmaker known for her opposition to fundamentalist Islam.
(AP, 5/17/06)
2006 May 22, A court found the
former chief executive and chief financial officer of Dutch retailer
Royal Ahold NV guilty of fraud, but ruled the pair will not have to
serve prison time.
(AP, 5/22/06)
2006 May 23, The Dutch parliament
approved new anti-terrorism measures that make it easier to arrest
suspects without strong evidence and hold them longer without charge.
(AP, 5/23/06)
2006 May 31, Dutch pedophiles
registered a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for
sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child
pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage.
(Reuters, 5/31/06)
2006 Jun 6, The Spanish interior
ministry said that 67 suspects had been arrested for accessing child
porn on the Internet over the past five days. The international police
operation arrested 38 in France, 10 in Spain, 9 in Slovakia, 7 in
Belgium and 3 in the Netherlands.
(AP, 6/6/06)
2006 Jun 7, A Dutch court
convicted Guus Kouwenhoven (64) of violating a UN arms embargo imposed
on the regime of former Liberian President Charles Taylor and sentenced
him to eight years in prison. The court found that he had traded guns
for timber rights and used his lumber company to smuggle weapons that
were later used by militias to commit atrocities against civilians in
West Africa.
(AP, 6/7/06)
2006 Jun 16, A Russian state vodka
company won Stolichnaya brand rights back from a Dutch firm.
(WSJ, 6/17/06, p.A1)
2006 Jun 27, Netherlands’
Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk reversed a politically divisive
decision of six weeks earlier, when she announced Hirsi Ali's 1997
naturalization was invalid because she lied on her asylum application.
(AP, 6/28/06)
2006 Jun 30, The Dutch PM Jan
Peter Balkenende and his Cabinet resigned after a split in its ranks
over the citizenship case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a prominent Somali-born
critic of Islam.
(AP, 6/30/07)
2006 Jul 21, The Netherlands’
military chief said Dutch commandos had killed 18 enemy fighters who
set up positions in rugged hills overlooking a Dutch camp in southern
Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/21/06)
2006 Jul 28, Dutch retail giant
Ahold has announced that its 1.1 billion-dollar (941,000-euro)
settlement with US and Dutch investors over the company's accounting
scandal that broke in 2003 and sent share prices plummeting, is now
final.
(AFP, 7/29/06)
2006 Aug 1, Dutch Cardinal
Johannes Willebrands (96), a key figure in the Roman Catholic Church's
efforts to improve relations with other Christians and Jews, died.
(AP, 8/2/06)
2006 Aug 7, Dutch police arrested
a Rwandan immigrant, identified as Joseph M. (38), and charged him with
war crimes and torture for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide that
tore apart his home country.
(AP, 8/10/06)
2006 Aug 17, An outbreak of strain
of bluetongue, a disease transmitted to sheep by insects but which is
not contagious nor known to affect humans, was detected in the southern
Netherlands. Belgium and Germany soon reported cases.
(AFP, 8/28/06)
2006 Aug 28, In the Netherlands
prosecutors at the International Criminal Court filed their first
indictment, charging Thomas Lubanga, a former Congolese warlord, for
allegedly abducting and recruiting children as young as 10 to fight in
Congo's brutal civil war.
(AP, 8/29/06)
2006 Sep 27, At the Hague,
Netherlands, a UN tribunal sentenced Momcilio Krajisnik (61), the
former speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament, to 27 years in prison
for war crimes, but acquitted him of the harsher charge of genocide.
(AP, 9/27/06)
2006 Oct 20, Corus, an Anglo-Dutch
steel-maker, accepted an $8.1 billion buyout bid from Tata Steel, a
smaller Indian firm.
(Econ, 10/28/06, p.74)
2006 Nov 4, Swathes of Austria,
Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands
and went dark for up to an hour in the late evening as cold Germans
rushing to switch on heaters sucked up electricity from Europe's
interconnected networks.
(AP, 11/5/06)
2006 Nov 6, In the Netherlands 6
people were arrested on suspicion of recruiting volunteers for jihad,
or Islamic holy war, prosecutors said after a year-long investigation.
(AFP, 11/7/06)
2006 Nov 22, Dutch voters picked a
new parliament in an election that could determine whether the
country's tight immigration rules get even tougher or follow what the
opposition calls a more humane path. Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende’s
center-right Christian Democrats won the most seats in elections, but
nearly complete returns showed a sharply splintered parliament with no
alliance winning a clear mandate to govern.
(AP, 11/22/06)(AP, 11/23/06)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.50)
2006 Nov 30, Amsterdam city
officials said they are shutting down nearly a third of the 350
prostitution "windows" in the famed Red Light District as part of a
crackdown on crime.
(AP, 11/30/06)
2006 Dec 1, In the Netherlands a
court convicted four Dutch Muslims of plotting terrorist attacks
against political leaders and government buildings and sentenced them
to up to eight years in prison. A man in a hooded coat killed an
8-year-old boy in the corridor of a Dutch grade school. Police said
they arrested a 22-year-old suspect.
(AP, 12/1/06)
2006 Dec 4, Against a backdrop of
protests, the defense minister gave citations to Dutch troops who
served in the UN peacekeeping force that failed to prevent the
slaughter of Muslims in the Srebrenica enclave during the Bosnian war.
(AP, 12/4/06)
2006 Dec 11, The Netherlands ended
transmission of "free to air" analog television, becoming the first
nation to switch completely to digital signals.
(AP, 12/11/06)
2006 Some 2,000 Netherlands’
forces took control of Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province.
(Econ, 3/14/09, p.48)
2000 Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a
Lady” (1632) was sold in London to Dutch art dealer Robert Noortman
(1946-2007) for $28.6 million.
(WSJ, 1/27/06, p.A6)
2006 The $100-million Betuwe Line,
a high-speed freight line from Rotterdam to Germany, was expected to be
completed at a cost of some $5.87 billion.
(WSJ, 11/3/04, p.A12)
2007 Jan 27, The Netherlands'
government extradited Iraqi-born Wesam al Delaema (32), a naturalized
Dutch citizen, to the US. He was charged with involvement in terror
attacks on US troops in Iraq. In 2009 Delaema was sentenced in
Washington DC to 25 years in prison. His actual term was up to the
Netherlands.
(AP, 1/28/07)(SFC, 4/17/09, p.A6)
2007 Feb 6, Dutch media reported
that the parties of the incoming centre-left Dutch government agreed to
grant amnesty for some 30,000 failed asylum seekers who came to the
Netherlands before April 2001.
(AP, 2/6/07)
2007 Feb 13, Officials in the
Ivory Coast said that Trafigura, a Dutch-based oil trading company,
agreed to pay $197 million to secure the release of three executives
from an Ivory Coast prison and settle claims that it dumped toxic waste
that killed at least 10 people in the West African nation.
(AP, 2/14/07)
2007 Feb 27, The International
Criminal Court's prosecutor in Netherlands named Ahmed Muhammed Harun,
a former Sudanese junior minister, and Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahmann
(aka Ali Kushayb), a janjaweed leader, as suspects in war crimes and
crimes against humanity in the Darfur region. Sudan rejected the
legitimacy of the ICC, insisting it would try Darfur war criminals.
(Reuters, 2/27/07)(AFP, 2/27/07)(Econ, 7/19/08, p.55)
2007 Mar 5, Kosovo's former PM
Ramush Haradinaj went on trial in the Netherlands at the UN tribunal on
war crimes charges related to his time as a guerrilla leader in the war
against Serb forces between 1998-99. Haradinaj, a former regional
commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), resigned as prime
minister in 2005 after being indicted for murder, rape and torture
allegedly committed by forces under his command.
(Reuters, 3/5/07)
2007 Mar 6, Dutch judges ruled
that a chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang is not a criminal
organization, rejecting prosecutors' attempts to have the group
outlawed.
(AP, 3/6/07)
2007 Mar 8, The Netherlands said
it has ratified an accord to open to a long-secret archive of Nazi
death camp records in Germany, another step toward giving scholars
access to a vast collection of historically invaluable Holocaust
documents.
(AP, 3/8/07)
2007 Mar 12, New Jersey based
Schering-Plough Corp. said it will buy the pharmaceuticals division of
Akzo Nobel NV for 11 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in cash, acquiring
the Organon brand of birth control and strengthening its drug pipeline
with an anti-schizophrenia medication.
(AP, 3/12/07)
2007 Mar 21, In Afghanistan Dutch
ministers urged the Afghan government to step up its presence and
development in the troubled south, where Taliban insurgents are most
entrenched, saying NATO cannot do it alone.
(AFP, 3/21/07)
2007 Apr 13, In Tanzania the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) ordered that Michel
Bagaragaza, the former head of Rwanda's national tea industry who is
accused of involvement in the mass slaughter, be tried by a court in
the Netherlands.
(AFP, 4/13/07)
2007 Apr 18, Scientists in the
Netherlands said they have discovered a fungus in elephant dung that
will help them break down fibers and wood into biofuel.
(Reuters, 4/18/07)
2007 Apr 20, In southern
Afghanistan separate explosions killed two NATO soldiers. A Dutch
soldier was killed in one explosion, the first fatality from hostile
action among Dutch troops serving with NATO forces in the country.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2007 Apr 23, British bank Barclays
Plc has agreed to buy Dutch rival ABN AMRO for about 67 billion euros
($91 billion) in shares as it attempts to fight off rivals to clinch
the world's biggest bank takeover.
(Reuters, 4/23/07)
2007 Apr 25, Royal Bank of
Scotland, Fortis, a Belgian-Dutch lender and Santander of Spain
launched a blockbuster 72-billion-euro takeover battle for Dutch group
ABN Amro, outgunning by far an agreed offer by Barclays.
(AFP, 4/25/07)(Econ, 4/28/07, p.85)(Econ, 7/19/08,
p.84)
2007 May 1, Thirty people were
arrested in raids across Belgium, England, and the Netherlands
targeting suspected animal rights extremists.
(AP, 5/1/07)
2007 May 2, The International
Criminal Court in the Hague said it has issued arrest warrants
for the Sudanese government's humanitarian affairs minister and a
janjaweed militia leader suspected of committing war crimes in Darfur.
(AP, 5/2/07)
2007 May 18, In the Netherlands a
400-pound gorilla escaped from his enclosure and ran amok in a
Rotterdam zoo, biting one woman, dragging her around, and causing panic
among dozens of visitors before he was finally subdued.
(AP, 5/18/07)
2007 May 26, The newly installed
Dutch government said some 25,000 asylum-seekers whose applications for
refuge were rejected will be allowed to stay, reversing the previous
administration's hardline immigration policy. The amnesty will apply to
asylum-seekers who arrived before April 1, 2001 and were found not to
qualify but who remained in the country anyway.
(AP, 5/26/07)
2007 May 30, It was reported
that coffee shops licensed to sell marijuana in the southern
Dutch city of Maastricht will begin fingerprinting customers and
scanning their IDs this summer to help prove they're following rules
governing such sales.
(AP, 5/30/07)
2007 May 31, The Dutch news agency
ANP reported that almost half of Rotterdam's coffee shops will be
forced to stop selling cannabis because they are too close to secondary
schools.
(AP, 5/31/07)
2007 Jun 3, Some 2,000 men and
women participated in a series of four nude group photos in Amsterdam
in the early hours of the morning as part of the latest project of US
photographer Spencer Tunick.
(AP, 6/3/07)
2007 Jun 3, Pope Benedict XVI
named four new saints from France, Malta, the Netherlands and Poland at
a ceremony in St. Peter's Square. Among those honored was Sister Marie
Eugenie de Jesus Milleret, a French nun who in 1839 founded the
Religious of the Assumption to educate young girls; the Rev. George
Preca of Malta, who founded the Society of Christian Doctrine in 1932
as a group of lay people who teach the faith to others; the Rev. Szymon
z Lipnicy of Poland, a Franciscan monk who comforted Poles afflicted by
the plague that broke out in Krakow from 1482-83 and died of it
himself; and the Rev. Charles of St. Andrew (Dublin), who was born
Karel Van Sint Andries Houben in the Netherlands in 1821.
(AP, 6/3/07)
2007 Jun 4, Thousands of survivors
of Europe's worst massacre since World War II filed a lawsuit against
the UN and the Dutch government for their failure to protect civilians
in the Srebrenica safe haven when Bosnian Serb forces overran it in
1995 and slaughtered some 8,000 men.
(AP, 6/4/07)
2007 Jun 6, It was reported that
Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol which they say can be
sold legally to minors. The latest innovation in inebriation, called
Booz2Go, is available in 20-gramme packets that cost 1-1.5 euros
($1.35-$2). Alcohol powder, classified as a flavoring, was sold in the
United States three years ago.
(Reuters, 6/6/07)
2007 Jun 11, In the Netherlands an
international conference on endangered species banned almost all trade
in sawfish, large shark-like rays, whose long snouts bristling with
teeth are in high demand among collectors.
(AP, 6/11/07)
2007 Jun 12, In the Netherlands
the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted Milan Martic (52), a wartime
leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs, of murder, torture and persecution and
sentenced him to 35 years in prison for the 1991-1995 brutal ethnic
cleansing campaign of non-Serbs in Croatia.
(AP, 6/12/07)(WSJ, 6/13/07, p.A1)
2007 Jun 14, In the Netherlands
four African states (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe),
after an 18-year ban, were allowed to put their ivory stocks on the
market in a one-time sale as part of a hard-fought compromise reached
with other Africans who tried to block the sale. The 171-member
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES,
approved the deal by consensus.
(AP, 6/14/07)
2007 Jun 20, A Dutch
government-funded agency said China has overtaken the United States as
the top emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, because of
surging energy use amid an economic boom. However consumption and
emission levels per head remained a mere fraction of America’s.
(AP, 6/20/07)(Econ, 6/13/09, p.45)
2007 Jun 25, In the Netherlands
former Liberian president Charles Taylor boycotted the resumption of
his war crimes trial.
(AP, 6/25/07)
2007 Jul 12, Authorities announced
a major crackdown on organized crime in Amsterdam's Red Light District,
for the first time bringing national police investigators and tax
authorities to bear on what had long been seen as a local problem.
(AP, 7/13/07)
2007 Aug 2, In the Netherlands
Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch maker of consumer goods and food products,
announced that it would cut 20,000 jobs worldwide, 11 percent of its
total workforce, over the next four years.
(AP, 8/2/07)
2007 Aug 10, A Dutch cruise ship
rescued 14 African migrants after their boat capsized in rough
Mediterranean waters as they tried to reach Europe, while authorities
searched for 11 other passengers who were feared drowned.
(AP, 8/11/07)
2007 Aug 13, AkzoNobel, a Dutch
chemicals group under Hans Wijers, made a cash offer for the British
firm ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) under John McAdam for $16
billion. The deal turned Akzo into the world’s biggest maker of paints.
(Econ, 10/04/08,
p.72)(www.ici.com/main/cms/cmRender.asp?i=2162)
2007 Aug 17, The UN announced that
the Netherlands has agreed to host the tribunal that will prosecute
suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.
(AP, 8/17/07)
2007 Aug 27, An official said the
Dutch government will spend $38 million over the next four years to
prevent both the growth of Islamic fundamentalism and right-wing
nationalism.
(AP, 8/27/07)
2007 Aug 28, Jose Maria Sison
(68), a Philippine communist leader, accused of commanding a rebel
uprising from exile for more than 20 years was arrested by Dutch police
in Utrecht on suspicion of ordering the murder of two former allies in
his home country. He was accused of ordering the killings in 2003 and
2004 of Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara, who were gunned down in the
Philippines.
(AP, 8/29/07)
2007 Aug, Dutch schools were
forced to offer afternoon child-care following a government effort to
get house-bound Dutch mothers to work.
(Econ, 9/8/07, p.55)
2007 Sep 8, In the Netherlands
Carlos Hartmann (41), of Tecumseh, Mich., killed Thijs Geers (22), a
Dutch student, on a train platform in the southern city of Roosendaal.
Hartmann hoped to punish the Netherlands for its government's support
of the war in Iraq and confessed to axing the student to death after
failing to find a soldier to kill.
(AP, 9/11/07)
2007 Sep 26, Erik Hazelhoff
Roelfzema (b.1917), the Dutch World War II resistance hero better known
as the "Soldier of Orange," died at his home in Hawaii. His fame in the
Netherlands leaped after he published his book, "Soldaat van Oranje"
(Soldier of Orange) in 1971. He became known outside the country after
the book was made into a film of the same name by director Paul
Verhoeven in 1977, starring Rutger Hauer in the title role.
(AP, 9/29/07)(SFC, 10/9/07, p.B4)
2007 Oct 3, A Dutch court rejected
a prosecution appeal against the release of Philippine communist leader
Jose Maria Sison, accused of being involved in murders in the
Philippines.
(AFP, 10/3/07)
2007 Oct 4, Dutch authorities said
their customs officers had found 100 dead beetles stuffed with cocaine
whilst examining a parcel from Peru.
(Reuters, 10/4/07)
2007 Oct 12, The Netherlands said
it will ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, rolling back one
element of the country's permissive drug policy after a teenager on a
school visit jumped to her death after taking the narcotic.
(AP, 10/12/07)
2007 Oct 13, Dutch police arrested
11 Greenpeace activists who boarded a cargo ship to stop it unloading
newsprint paper they suspected was made from ancient trees felled in
Canadian forests.
(AP, 10/13/07)
2007 Oct 8, A consortium of
Belgian, Scotch and Spanish banks announced that shareholders of ABN
AMRO, a Dutch bank, had accepted a $101 billion offer in the world’s
biggest banking transaction ever.
(Econ, 10/13/07, p.17)
2007 Oct 30, Nordin Benallal (27),
a Belgian gangster dubbed "The Eel" for his skill at slipping away from
Belgian prison authorities, was caught in the Netherlands two days
after his latest jailbreak.
(AP, 10/31/07)
2007 Nov 26, High school students
clashed with riot police in Amsterdam and demonstrated in cities across
the Netherlands to protest a national increase in classroom hours.
(AP, 11/26/07)
2007 Nov 26, Amsterdam based Royal
Philips Electronics announced the purchase of Genlyte Group, based in
Louisville, Kentucky, for $2.7 billion. The deal made Philips the
biggest lighting firm in the American market.
(www.newscenter.philips.com/about/news/press/20071126.page)
2007 Nov, Geert Wilders, Dutch
member of Parliament, revealed plans to air on television an expose of
the wickedness of the Koran.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.57)
2007 Ayaan Hirsi Ali (b.1969),
Somalia born writer and resident at the American Enterprise Institute
in Washington DC, authored her autobiography “Infidel.” In the
Netherlands it was published under the title “My Freedom.”
(WSJ, 2/3/07, p.P12)(Econ, 2/10/07, p.87)
2008 Jan 12, In southern
Afghanistan Dutch troops killed two of their own men during a nighttime
battle in Uruzgan province, and separately two allied Afghan soldiers
they mistook for enemies. About 1,650 Dutch troops were deployed in
Uruzgan as part of the NATO mission there. 14 Dutch troops have died
since their mission began last year.
(AP, 1/13/08)
2008 Feb 5, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,
a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental
meditation, died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop.
(AP, 2/6/08)(Econ, 2/16/08, p.95)
2008 Mar 11, Three generals
regarded as national heroes in Croatia went on trial at the Hague,
accused of orchestrating the killing of at least 150 Serbs in a 1995
military campaign that unleashed widespread murder and pillage.
(AP, 3/11/08)
2008 Mar 13, The Dutch parliament
voted unanimously to outlaw bestiality and pornography involving
animals.
(AP, 3/14/08)
2008 Mar 15, Alitalia, Italy’s
state-owned national airline, accepted a takeover offer worth $217 made
by air France-KLM, a French-Dutch airline group. The Italian government
accepted the offer on March 17.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.73)
2008 Mar 20, In the Netherlands a
new attraction officially opened in Oegstgeest called Corpus. The $31
million project organized led by businessman Henri Remmers featured a
115-foot seated human shape on the outside and large-scale exhibits of
the human anatomy inside.
(SSFC, 4/6/08, p.E7)
2008 Mar 23, Network Solutions, an
American network provider, said it had suspended a website that Dutch
MP Geert Wilders had reserved to post his anti-Islamic film, which has
sparked wide condemnation and fears of a backlash.
(AP, 3/23/08)
2008 Mar 27, Geert Wilders, a
Dutch lawmaker, released his 15-minute film “Fitna,” which linked
verses of the Koran to violent images from terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 3/28/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 31, Malaysia's Islamic
opposition party delivered a protest note to the Netherlands' embassy
over the release of an anti-Islam movie by a maverick Dutch lawmaker,
while hard-line Muslims in neighboring Indonesia demanded the death of
the filmmaker.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Apr 3, Alitalia edged closer
to bankruptcy protection after Air France-KLM abruptly broke off talks
to buy the struggling national airline and Alitalia's chairman of seven
months resigned in frustration.
(AP, 4/3/08)
2008 Apr 3, The UN tribunal in The
Hague, Netherlands, ruled that there was not enough evidence to convict
former Kosovo PM Ramush Haradinaj of murder, torture and rape of Serbs
and non-Albanians during the Kosovo war.
(AP, 4/4/08)
2008 Apr 18, In Afghanistan the
son of the Netherlands' top military officer was killed by a roadside
bomb, the day after his father assumed command of the Dutch armed
forces.
(AP, 4/18/08)
2008 Apr 29, The International
Criminal Court in The Hague published an arrest warrant for Bosco
Ntaganda (35), known as "the Terminator," a Congo militia leader wanted
for allegedly using child soldiers.
(Reuters, 4/29/08)
2008 May 23, The International
Court of Justice awarded Singapore sovereignty over a disputed island
at the eastern entrance of the Singapore Straits. The ICJ ruled in
favor of Singapore in the 28-year dispute with Malaysia over a tiny but
strategic uninhabited island the size of half a football field. The
court, however, gave Malaysia ownership of a smaller uninhabited
outcropping. Sovereignty over a third disputed cluster of rocks was
left to be determined later between the countries when they sort our
their territorial waters.
(AP, 5/23/08)
2008 May 25, The Amiya Scan, a
Dutch freighter, was hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. The
ship and its crew of 4 Russians and 5 Filipinos were freed on June 25.
(AP, 6/26/08)
2008 May 26, Dutch scientists
claimed they have completed the first sequencing of an individual
woman's DNA.
(AP, 5/26/08)
2008 Jun 5, Dutch police arrested
Aqueel Ur Rehman Abbasi, a 26-year-old Pakistani man, sought in Spain
on terrorism charges. He was arrested in his prison cell in Vught where
he was being held by the immigration and naturalization services.
(AFP, 6/6/08)
2008 Jul 1, A smoking ban went
into effect in cafes, restaurants and bars across the Netherlands, as
the country joins a growing list of European countries to tighten rules
on tobacco use in public places. Smoking marijuana in the Netherlands'
infamous "coffee shops" is still permitted under the new law, as long
the drug is not mixed with tobacco.
(AFP, 7/1/08)
2008 Jul 2, Deutsche Bank acquired
the Dutch corporate banking arm of ABN AMRO from Fortis, a Benelux
bank, for $1.1 billion in cash.
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.83)
2008 Jul 3, Former Congolese rebel
leader Jean-Pierre Bemba arrived in the Netherlands to face war crimes
charges before the International Criminal Court.
(AP, 7/3/08)
2008 Jul 11, In the Netherlands
health authorities announced a Dutch woman, infected during a holiday
to Uganda by the contagious Marburg virus, had died overnight. The
Marburg virus is similar to Ebola and causes heavy bleeding. About 100
people who may have had contact with the woman were under surveillance.
(AFP, 7/11/08)
2008 Jul 30, Former Bosnian Serb
leader Radovan Karadzic sat in a UN jail cell after being flown to the
Netherlands in the dead of night to face charges of genocide against
Muslims and Croats during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
(AP, 7/30/08)
2008 Aug 12, Georgia's Pres.
Mikhail Saakashvili said his government will declare that its breakaway
regions are occupied territories and will designate Russian
peacekeepers as occupying forces. Russia ordered a halt to military
action in Georgia, after five days of air and land attacks sent
Georgia's army into headlong retreat and left towns and military bases
destroyed. More than 2,000 people were reported killed. A Dutch
television journalist was killed overnight when Russian warplanes
bombed the central Georgian city of Gori. Russia later counted 133
civilian deaths in South Ossetia. Rights activists later said fewer
than 100 civilians were killed in South Ossetia.
(AP, 8/12/08)(Econ, 8/23/08, p.43)(WSJ, 9/12/08,
p.A1)
2008 Aug 19, The Dutch Navy and a
squad of US Coast Guard raiders seized 4.6 tons (4,200 kilograms) of
cocaine from a Panamanian-flagged freighter that had set sail from
Venezuela. The freighter was boarded on Aug 17 and it took 36 hours of
searching to find the drugs.
(AP, 8/23/08)
2008 Aug 23, Italian police said a
gang of men badly beat a Dutch couple and raped the woman while they
camped in an isolated field outside Rome during a cycling tour of
Europe. The attackers also stole some US$2,200.
(AP, 8/23/08)
2008 Sep 9, The Iraqi oil ministry
said Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to a gas
joint venture with Iraq worth up to four billion dollars, becoming the
first Western oil major to gain access to the violence-wracked
country's vast energy reserves.
(AP, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 10, A Dutch court
dismissed a bid by Bosnian Muslim survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica
massacre to hold the Netherlands liable for its troops' failure to
protect the so-called safe haven.
(AP, 9/10/08)
2008 Mar 26, TimeRime BV was
founded by Marijn Bom, Jaap Joziasse, Gerard Pastwa and Pico
Wilbrenninck, as a spin-off of the Dutch webdevelopment company
Hoppinger.com.
(www.timerime.com/)
2008 Sep 28, The governments of
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg took partial control of
struggling bank Fortis NV.
(AP, 9/29/08)
2008 Oct 15, The Shell Anglo-Dutch
group said a Nigerian court has ordered it to hand over land around its
giant Bonny oil terminal to the local population, a key demand of armed
rebels in the volatile region. Shell said ruling was given some months
ago but we have appealed.
(AFP, 10/15/08)
2008 Nov 1, In southern
Afghanistan Dutch Major General Mart de Kruif replaced Canadian Major
General Marc Lessard as head of 19,000 mostly British, Canadian, Dutch
and US NATO-led soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF).
(AP, 11/1/08)
2008 Nov 7, An environmentalist
group and four Nigerians filed suit against Royal Dutch Shell PLC in
the Netherlands, claiming the company was negligent in cleaning up oil
spills in Nigeria.
(AP, 11/7/08)
2008 Nov 21, Amsterdam said it
will order the closure of dozens of coffee shops that sell cannabis
near schools in accordance with new legislation.
(AP, 11/21/08)
2008 Nov 22, Dutch electronics
giant Philips said it will cut "about five percent" of its 32,000
strong workforce in the medical division worldwide, affecting 1,600
workers.
(AP, 11/22/08)
2008 Dec 6, Amsterdam unveiled
plans to close brothels, sex shops and marijuana cafes in its ancient
city center as part of a major effort to drive organized crime out of
the tourist haven.
(AP, 12/6/08)
2008 Dec 19, Three Danish soldiers
and one from the Netherlands were killed in separate incidents in
Afghanistan, losing their lives just as the commitment of some
countries to the fight in Afghanistan begins to wane.
(AP, 12/19/08)
2009 Jan 5, Ahmed Aboutaleb (47),
a Moroccan immigrant, was installed as mayor of Rotterdam, the
Netherlands' second largest city, in a move hailed as a significant
step for the integration of minorities in the European Union nation.
(AP, 1/5/09)
2009 Jan 19, The International
Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that the United States defied its
order when authorities in Texas on Aug 5, 2008, executed a Mexican
convicted of rape and murder.
(AP, 1/19/09)
2009 Jan 21, Germany banned the
production, sale or possession of a synthetic marijuana-like drug known
as "Spice," effective as of Jan 22, becoming the 4th nation to ban the
substance, marketed as an herbal room-freshener, after Austria, the
Netherlands and Switzerland.
(AP, 1/21/09)
2009 Jan 26, In the Netherlands
the first-ever trial of the International Criminal Court began at The
Hague with Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese militia commander, denying he
committed war crimes by recruiting hundreds of child soldiers to kill
and rape.
(AP, 1/26/09)
2009 Feb 10, The British
government banned Dutch right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders from visiting
the country to show his anti-Islam film "Fitna" at the Houses of
Parliament. In a telephone interview Wilders called the government's
decision "cowardly" and vowed to defy it.
(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 11, Judges at the
Yugoslav war crimes tribunal voted to suspend the trial of
ultranationalist Serb leader Vojislav Seselj after the prosecution said
its case was being undermined by witness intimidation. The decision
came after 71 prosecution witnesses had already been heard and with
only a handful still to testify.
(AP, 2/11/09)
2009 Feb 23, Swedish power company
Vattenfall said it had made a friendly 8.5-billion-euro
(10.9-billion-dollar) offer for Nuon of the Netherlands in a takeover
aimed at creating one of Europe's biggest energy groups.
(AP, 2/23/09)
2009 Feb 25, A Turkish Airlines
plane with 135 people aboard slammed into a muddy field while
attempting to land at Amsterdam's main airport. Nine people were killed
and more than 50 were injured, many in serious condition.
(AP, 2/25/09)
2009 Feb 26, At The Hague UN
judges in the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal acquitted former Serb
President Milan Milutinovic of ordering a deadly campaign of terror by
Serb forces against Kosovo Albanians in 1999. The court convicted five
other senior Serbs and gave them prison sentences of between 15 and 22
years. The marathon trial started July 10, 2006.
(AP, 2/26/09)
2009 Mar 4, The International
Criminal Court at The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against
humanity in Darfur. He is the first sitting head of state the court has
ordered arrested. The French medical aid organization Doctors Without
Borders (MSF) said it was pulling staff out of Darfur after the
Sudanese government ordered them to leave. Sudan ordered at least 10
humanitarian groups expelled from Darfur.
(AP, 3/4/09)(AFP, 3/4/09)
2009 Mar 12, Dutch police arrested
Giovanni Strangio (30), an Italian man wanted for the August 15, 2007,
mob killings of six people in the western German city of Duisburg.
(AP, 3/13/09)
2009 Mar 17, In the Netherlands
the UN criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia reduced the jail
sentence of Bosnian Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik from 27 to 20 years,
quashing some convictions from a 2006 judgment.
(AP, 3/17/09)
2009 Mar 23, In the Netherlands
Joseph Mpambara (40), a Hutu man, was convicted and sentenced to 20
years in prison for the slaying of two Tutsi mothers and at least four
of their children during Rwanda's 1994 genocide. The Hague District
Court acquitted Mpambara of involvement in the massacre of hundreds of
other Tutsis who had sought shelter in a church. He was also acquitted
of raping four women and killing one of them in a separate incident.
(AP, 3/23/09)
2009 Mar 30, Malaysia's national
car maker Proton and Detroit Electric, a Dutch-based company, signed a
$555 million deal to make zero emission electric cars that they said
would be more powerful that any existing model.
(AP, 3/30/09)
2009 Mar 31, At the Hague Afghan
President Hamid Karzai and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
offered an olive branch to Taliban fighters who reject al-Qaida and
pressed an international conference for help in strengthening
Afghanistan's security forces.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Yemen Jan and
Heleen Janszen, a Dutch couple, were kidnapped in a suburb of Sanaa and
taken to a mountainous area near the capital. They were released on
April 14 after Yemen's government paid more than a quarter million
dollars in ransom.
(AFP, 3/31/09)(SFC, 4/1/09, p.A2)(AP, 4/14/09)
2009 Apr 6, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel made an unannounced visit to northern Afghanistan to meet
with her country's troops and view rebuilding efforts. She pressed
President Karzai to review carefully a new law that critics say
legalizes marital rape. In southern Afghanistan an insurgent rocket
attack hit the Netherlands' main military base, killing one Dutch
soldier and wounding 5 of his colleagues and 2 Afghan soldiers.
(AP, 4/6/09)
2009 Apr 10, In the Netherlands a
man (44) pulled a gun in Rotterdam’s Laurenshof cafe after an argument
and shot a patron inside, then rushed outside where he shot three more
people. Several people chased the gunman when he ran outside,
overpowered and disarmed him, and wrestled him to the ground until
police arrived.
(AP, 4/11/09)
2009 Apr 18, Somali pirates
attacked two ships off the Horn of Africa, seizing the Belgian-flagged
Pompei carrying 10 crew. NATO forces intervened in the other assault,
chasing the pirates down. Dutch commandos then freed 20 fishermen on a
Yemeni dhow hijacked earlier. Seven pirates attempted to attack the
Norwegian-flagged MV Front Ardenne but fled after crew took evasive
maneuvers and alerted warships in the area. NATO warships and
helicopters pursued the Somali pirates for seven hours after they
attacked the tanker, and the high-speed chase only ended when warning
shots were fired at the pirates' skiff. NATO forces boarded the skiff,
where they found a rocket-propelled grenade, and interrogated, disarmed
and released the pirates. The Pompei and its crew were released on June
28.
(AP, 4/18/09)(AP, 4/19/09)(AP, 6/28/09)
2009 Apr 29, Lebanon released four
generals held for nearly four years in the 2005 truck-bomb
assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri after a UN-backed tribunal in
the Netherlands ordered them freed, setting off celebrations with
fireworks and dancing.
(AP, 4/29/09)
2009 Apr 30, In the Netherlands 5
people died when a car slammed into a crowd at the Queen's Day festival
attended by members of the royal family in the western city of
Apeldoorn. A policeman as well as the assailant died the next day from
their injuries. The suspect was identified by Dutch media as Karst
Tates (38). Neighbors said Tates recently was fired from his job as a
security guard and was to be evicted from his home in the small eastern
town of Huissen because he could no longer afford the rent. An injured
woman died a week later bringing the total to 7 victims.
(AFP, 4/30/09)(AP, 5/1/09)(AP, 5/9/09)
2009 May 1, In the Netherlands
robbers at the Scheringa Museum for Realism in Spanbroek stole
"Adolescence," a 1941 gouache by Salvadore Dali and "La Musicienne," an
oil painting from 1929 by Polish-born art deco painter Tamara de
Lempicka. The museum houses the art collection of wealthy Dutch banker
Dirk Scheringa and his wife.
(AP, 5/2/09)
2009 May 7, Somali pirates
captured the Netherlands Antilles-flagged MV Marathon in the Gulf of
Aden. The ship listed 19 Ukrainian crew members. One of the crew
members died from a gun shot wound. On June 23 the Dutch Defense
Ministry reported that the ship was released.
(AP, 5/7/09)(AP, 6/23/09)
2009 May 11, In the Netherlands
thieves pried open the emergency door of the IJsselstein City Museum
near Utrecht. They made off with six 17th- and 19th-century landscape
paintings, the second major art heist in 10 days in the Netherlands.
(AP, 5/12/09)
2009 May 15, Hugh Van Es (67), a
Dutch photojournalist, died in Hong Kong. He covered the Vietnam War
and recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975, a
group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop.
(AP, 5/15/09)
2009 May 17, The International
Criminal Court said Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, a Sudanese rebel leader, has
turned himself in to face war crimes charges for an attack that killed
12 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur in September 2007.
(AP, 5/17/09)
2009 Jun 4, About 375 million
voters across the 27-nation European Union began 4 days of voting, to
appoint candidates to 736 seats on the assembly in the second-largest
election in the world after India's. Voting began in Britain and the
Netherlands.
(AP, 6/4/09)
2009 Jun 7, Zimbabwe PM Morgan
Tsvangirai launched a three-week trip to the West. He spoke at The
Hague saying he is seeking re-engagement, not touring with a "begging
bowl" asking for aid. Pres. Robert Mugabe launched a new pact aimed at
tearing down trade barriers across 19 African nations with appeals for
external investors and an end to domestic conflicts.
(AP, 6/7/09)(AFP, 6/7/09)
2009 Jun 15, The Hague-based
International Criminal Court ordered former Congolese rebel warlord
Jean-Pierre Bemba to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity
and war crimes, including murder, rape and pillaging.
(Reuters, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 30, The Dutch Supreme
Court upheld the war crimes conviction of businessman Frans van Anraat
for selling chemicals to Iraq, which were turned into poison gas and
unleashed in 1988 by the regime of Saddam Hussein on Kurds and
Iranians. The court shaved six months off Anraat’s 17-year sentence
because his case took so long.
(AP, 6/30/09)
2009 Jul 20, A UN war crimes court
in the Hague convicted Milan Lukic and Sredoje Lukic, two Bosnian Serb
cousins, for a "callous" 1992 killing spree that included locking
scores of Muslims in two houses and burning them alive in Visegrad. He
sentenced Milan to life in prison and Sredoje to 30 years.
(AP, 7/20/09)
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Subject = Netherlands
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