Timeline Netherlands

Return to home
Holland Ring: http://www.thehollandring.com/
TravelDocs: http://www.traveldocs.com/nl/index.htm

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)

Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Netherlands
End of file.