the Netherlands
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This is a small deviation from my usual blogs, just a bit fun trivia. The Netherlands , a small country with a population of 17.1 Million. Famous for its flowers,vegetables,artists and industry. But I betcha you did not know these were Dutch. Bobby Farrell Dancer and singer with the 70s/80s disco band Bomey M. Van…
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To most of you the names of these 2 towns will mean virtually nothing but it is where my roots are. I was born and raised in Geleen. Sittard-Geleen is a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It was formed in 2001 from the former municipalities Sittard, Geleen and Born. The Netherlands was a neutral country, during WWI this neutrality had not been breached,…
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Lange Jan(Long John) was the name of the 135 meter(442ft) tall chimney of the former coal mine “Oranje Nassau 1” in Heerlen in the province of Limburg in the south east of the Netherlands. It had been erected in 1937/1938 and had been dominating Heerlen’s skyline. To put it in perspective the Big Ben tower…
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Waalsdorpervlakte, in the dunes by the Dutch seaside village of Scheveningen, was one of the most notorious spots during the Second World War in the Netherlands. On this desolate sand plain more than 250 people were killed by the Germans. Most were members of the Dutch Resistance who risked their lives in the struggle against…
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Dutch hero Marion Pritchard-Van Binsbergen died at the age of 96 in Washington on December 11th, 2016. Marion Pritchard, (née van Binsbergen; was a Dutch-American social worker and psychoanalyst, who distinguished herself as a savior of Jews in the Netherlands during the Second World War. Pritchard helped save approximately 150 Dutch Jews, most of them children, throughout the German occupation of the Netherlands.In…
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In the early hours of 10 November 1944, 8,000 German soldiers flooded the streets of Rotterdam. They lay a cordon around the city, took up position on the bridges and squares and shut down the telephone service. They distributed pamphlets ordering all men ages 17 to 40 years to report for tewerkstelling (employment in the…
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The Dutch famine of 1944–45, known as the Hongerwinter (“Hunger winter”) in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces north of the great rivers, during the winter of 1944–45, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas.…
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Freedom! Suddenly Dutch flags were hanging all over the place and people were singing and dancing arm-in-arm in the streets. But pent-up emotions were also unleashed: ‘Kraut whores’, girls and women who had consorted with the Germans during the war, were targeted. They were dragged from their homes, marched through the streets, jeered and spit…
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On the 29th of July, 1018, the Battle of Vlaardingen was fought. The German emperor sent an army towards western Frisia to subdue the rebellious Count Dirk III. However, the imperial army was defeated by the Vlaardingers and fled in panic. This is an interesting event because a superpower of the time was vanquished by…
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As the threat of war increased in Europe in August 1939, the Dutch army was placed at a heightened state of alertness. In early 1940, as a precautionary measure, the firm of Kiekens built two gasproof baby buggies as protection against the possibility of a poisonous attack. This one for the then two-year-old Dutch Princess…
History of Sorts 
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