Netherlands History Timeline

Netherlands History Timeline

160BC–220CE
The Weerdinge Couple, 2 men dating to this period, were found in a Holland bog in 1904.

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.

50BCE
Maastricht, Netherlands, began as a Roman settlement.

1-100AD
A Teutonic tribe known as the Frisians (or Friesians) settled in what is now the Netherlands in the first century A.D.

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.

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.

30-5-727
Hubertus (72), bishop of Tongeren-Maastricht, saint, died.

7-11-739
Willibrord (81), [Clemens], 1st bishop of Utrecht (695-739) and saint , died.

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.

1-3-918
Balderik became bishop of Utrecht.

21-4-953
Otto I, the Great, granted Utrecht fishing rights.

6-5-988
Dirk II, West Frisian count of Holland, died.

3-5-1010
Ansfried (~69), 9th bishop of Utrecht (995-1010), saint, died.

22 (or 26)-2-1076
Godfried III, with the Hump, duke of Lower Lorraine, was murdered. [see Feb 26]

14-4-1099
Conrad, bishop of Utrecht, was stabbed to death.

1100
Wittem Castle in Limburg dates to this time.

2-3-1121
Dirk VI became count of Holland.

2-3-1122
Floris II, the fat one, count of Holland, died.

1190
Emo of Friesland entered Oxford and was later remembered as Oxford’s first recorded foreign student.

16-1-1219
Floods followed a storm in Northern Netherlands and thousands were killed.

5-9-1235
Henry I, duke of Brabant, died. Brabant was a duchy later divided between Netherlands and Belgium.

26-3-1258
Floris the Guardian, count-regent of Holland, died.

1280
Muiden Castle, 10 miles east of Amsterdam, dates to this time.

14-12-1287
The Zuider Zee seawall collapsed with the loss of 50,000 lives.

3-5-1294
Jan I, duke of Brabant (Belgium-Netherlands), Limburg, poet, died.

1299
The Count of Holland gained control of the County of Zeeland, which had been under contention between Holland and Flanders.

1300
The Oude Kerk church in Amsterdam dates to this time.

4-7-1301
Battle at Breukelen: Holland vs. Lichtenberg.

1345
The Frisian victory over the Dutch on the beach at Warns was their last before the Dutch took over.

1366
Records indicate that cheese was weighed in Alkmaar at this time.

1400
Roger Van Der Weyden (d.1464), Flemish painter, was born.

1404
Netherlands experienced a severe flood.

18-11-1421
to:
19-11-1421
In the St. Elizabeth flood the Southern sea flooded 72 villages killing some 10,000 in Netherlands.

1432
Zeeland became part of the Low Countries possession of Phillip the Good (1396-1467) of Burgundy.

14-4-1433
Liduina van Schiedam (53), Dutch mystic (Christ's Bride), saint, died.

c1450-1516
Hieronymus Bosch, painter was born. Hieronymus van Aken was born in the small Dutch Brabant city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in Flanders.

21-9-1451
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa ordered the Jews of Holland to wear a badge.

2-3-1459
Adrian VI [Adriaan F Boeyens], Pope (1522-23), was born in the Netherlands.

9-5-1460
In the Netherlands the courtyard Episcopal palace at Atrecht had witch burnings.

18-6-1464
Roger Van Der Weyden (b.1400), Flemish painter, died. He had mastered the new technique of oil painting and served as the official painter to the city of Brussels.

26-10-1466
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.

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."

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.

6-4-1483
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. .

1487
Hans Memling (c.1440-1494), Flemish painter, painted the diptych “Virgin and Child” and “Maarten van Nieuwenhove” (1463-1500), who was his patron.

1489-1490
The plague ravaged the Netherlands.

15-5-1492
Cheese and Bread rebellion: German mercenaries killed 232 Alkmaarse.

20-10-1496
Spain’s Juana of Castile (1479-1555) married Philip the Handsome, the Duke of Burgundy, in Lier (later a part of Belgium). Philip's parents were Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and his first wife, Duchess Mary of Burgundy. Juana had sailed from Spain with 15,000 men to the Habsburg Netherlands. Between 1498 and 1507, she gave birth to six children: two emperors and four queens.

1507
Margaret of Austria was appointed Regent by the States-General (parliament) of the Netherlands until the Archduke Charles came of age.

1510 Jun 9,
Nicolaas van Nieuwland, corrupt 1st bishop of Harlem, was born.

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."

1512 Nov 16,
Jemme Herjuwsma, Fries rebel, was beheaded.

1512 Nov 17,
Kempo Roeper, Frisian rebel, was quartered.

1517 Jul 1,
The 1st burning of Protestants at stake in Netherlands.

1517
Archduke Charles left the Netherlands for Spain and entered Valladolid in triumph.

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.

1520 Oct 7,
The 1st public burning of books took place in Louvain, Netherlands.

1521 May 28,
Willem van Croij (~62), duke of Soria, died.

1521 Oct 25,
Emperor Charles V banned wooden buildings in Amsterdam.

1522 Apr 29,
Emperor Charles V named Frans van Holly inquisitor-gen of Netherlands.

1523 Nov 30,
Amsterdam banned the assembly of heretics.

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.

1524 Apr 19,
Pope Clemens VII fired the Netherlands inquisitor-general French Van de Holly.

1524 Dec 11,
Henry Van Zutphen, Dutch Protestant martyr, was burned at stake.

1525 May 10,
Church reformer John Pistorius was caught in the Hague.

1525 Sep 15,
Jan de Bakker (26), Roman Catholic priest also known under the name Pistorius, was burned during the Reformation in the Netherlands.

1527 Nov 20,
Wendelmoet "Weyntjen" Claesdochter, became the 1st Dutch woman to be burned as heretic.

1528 Nov 30,
Great Wierd, Dutch Gelderland army commander, was beheaded.

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.

1530
Erasmus (1469-1536), Dutch Renaissance humanist, authored “On Good Manners for Boys” (De civilitate morum puerorum).

1531 May 31,
"Women's Revolt" in Amsterdam: wool house in churchyard.

1531 Dec 6,
John Volkertsz Trimaker, Dutch Anabaptist leader, was beheaded.

1534 Feb 26,
Pope Paul III was affirmed George van Egmond as bishop of Utrecht.

1534 Mar 26,
Lübeck, Hanseatic League port in the Baltic, accepted free Dutch ships into East Sea.

1535 Feb 10,
12 nude Anabaptists ran through the streets of Amsterdam. [see 1534]

1535 May 21,
Imperial authorities in Antwerp captured and imprisoned William Tyndale for heresy over his translation of the Bible into English.

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.

1535 Jul 10,
Jacob Van Campen, Anabaptist bishop of Amsterdam, was beheaded.

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.

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.

1550 Apr 28,
Powers of Dutch inquisition were extended.

1550 Apr 29,
Emperor Charles V gave inquisitors additional authority.

1555 Oct 25,
Emperor Charles V put his son Philip II in charge of Netherlands, Naples, and Milan.

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).

1557
Pieter Breughel the Elder created his painting "The Drunkard Pushed Into the Pigsty." [see Flanders]

1558
Hendrick Goltzius (d.1617), Dutch Master painter, was born.

1564 Dec 31,
Willem of Orange demanded freedom of conscience and religion.

1564-1651
Abraham Bloemaert, artist and teacher of Hendrick ter Brugghen.

1566 Aug 25,
Iconoclastic fury began in the Dutch province of Utrecht. Fanatical Calvinists instigated religious riots in the Netherlands.

1566-1638
Joachim Wytawael (Wtewael), Dutch mannerist painter.

1566-1640 Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Dutch painter.

1567 Apr 11,
Dutch Prince William of Orange fled from Antwerp to Breda.

1567 May 1,
Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, Dutch royal painter, was born.

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.

1568 Jan 24,
In Netherlands Duke of Alba declared (future King) William of Orange an outlaw.

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.

1568 Oct 5,
Willem of Orange's army occupied Brabant.

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.

1569 Sep 5,
Pieter Breughel, South Netherlands (Flemish) painter, died at about 44.

1570 Mar 4,
Spain’s King Philip II banned foreign Dutch students.

1570 Nov 2,
A tidal wave in the North Sea destroyed the sea walls from Holland to Jutland. Over a thousand people are killed.

1572 Apr 1,
The Sea Beggars under Guillaume de la Marck landed in Holland and captured the small town of Briel.

1572 Jun 9,
Willem van Orange's army occupied Gelderland.

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).

1572 Jul 9, In Gorinchem, Netherlands, 19 Catholics were executed during the Dutch war for independence. They became known as “The Martyrs of Gorkum.”

1572 Jul 18,
William of Orange was recognized as viceroy of Holland, Friesland and Utrecht.

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.”

1572
Dutch warships, Beggars of the Sea, effectively harried Spanish shipping in the English Channel and fueled the Dutch War of Independence.

1572
The Dutch used carrier pigeons during the Spanish siege of Haarlem.

1573 Jul 20,
Lancelot of Brederode (Netherlands), water beggar, was beheaded.

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.

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.

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.

1576
Mutinous Spanish forces sacked Antwerp in "the Spanish Fury."

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."

1577 Sep 23,
William of Orange made his triumphant entry into Brussels, Belgium.

1578 Jan 28,
Cornelis Haga, Dutch lawyer, ambassador to Constantinople (1611-39), was born.

1578
Don John of Austria died of fever. He was succeeded as Governor of the Netherlands by Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma.

1579 Jan 6,
The Union of Atrecht (French: Arras) was an accord signed in Atrecht (Arras), under which the southern states of the Spanish Netherlands, today in Wallonia and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais (and Picardy) regions in France, expressed their loyalty to the Spanish king Philip II and recognized the landlord, Don Juan de Austria. It is to be distinguished from the Union of Utrecht, signed later in the same month. 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.

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.

1579 Mar 23,
Friesland joined the Union of Utrecht.

1580 Jun 18,
States of Utrecht outlawed Catholic worship.

c1581
Franz Hals (d.1666), painter, was born.

1581
The seven northern provinces of the Netherlands renounced their allegiance to Philip II of Spain.

1582 Nov 1,
Maurice of Nassau, the son of William of Orange, became the governor of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht.

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.

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.

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.”

1584
A Dutch trading post was established at the Russian port of Archangel.

1585 Apr 5,
Clemens Crabbeels became bishop of Hertogenbosch.

1585
Antwerp was sacked by the Duke of Parma, resulting in long-lasting loss of trade for that port.

1585
Simon Stevin, Dutch mathematician and military and civil engineer, introduces decimals into the mathematical calculations of his physics in Die Thiende.

1585
The Dutch used the first time-bombs in floating mines actuated by clockwork at the siege of Antwerp.

1587
Giles Everard, a Dutch doctor, authored “Panacea,” extolling the virtues of tobacco. The Latin version was made available in English in 1659.

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.

1590 Mar 4,
Mauritius of Nassau's ship reached Breda, Netherlands.

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.

1595 Apr 2,
Cornelis de Houtman's ships departed to Asia around Cape of Good Hope.

c1595-1624
Dirck van Baburen was an artist of the Utrecht School. He traveled to Rome and was influenced by the work of Caravaggio.

1596 May 18,
Willem Barents left Amsterdam for Novaya Zemlya.

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.

1597
In Amsterdam the Spinhuis (spinning house) was opened as a workhouse for fallen women.

1597-1665
Pieter Saenredam, Haarlem painter of architectural motifs.

1597/8-1671
Jan van Bijlert, painter. He traveled to Rome and was influenced by the work of Caravaggio.

1598 Jun,
A 5-ship Dutch expedition to Japan departed Rotterdam with Will Adams, English ship pilot, as chief navigator.

1599
The Dutch East India Company dates to this time.

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.

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.

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]

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.

1600-1700
West Timor was seized by the Netherlands.

1600-1800
A mass migration of nearly 1 million people in the 17th and 18th century led to the decline of this small nation.

1601
Joachim Wtewael painted "Mars and Venus Discovered by Vulcan."

1602 Mar 20,
The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) was chartered to carry on trade in the East Indies. The VOC traded to 1798 whereupon its possessions were dissolved into the Dutch empire. In 2010 a student found a share in the company issued to an official named Pieter Harmenz dating to Sep 9, 1606. As a result, continuous trade in company stock emerged on the Amsterdam Exchange.

1602
Japan’s Shogun Ieyasu seized the Dutch ship Liefde and granted its crew allowances to live in Japan.

1603
The Dutch East India Company seized a Portuguese ship laden with raw silk and gold near the straight of Malacca and hired Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) to defend its action. In 1625 Grotius authored “Mare Liberum” (The Free Sea) arguing that the seas were international territory and should be open to all.

1604 Sep 20,
After a two-year siege, the Spanish retook Ostend [NW Belgium], the Netherlands, from the Dutch.

1604-1667
Christiaen van Couwenbergh, Dutch painter.

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.

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.

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.

1608
The Oudemannenhuis almshouse was built in Haarlem.

1609 Mar 25,
Henry Hudson embarked on an exploration for Dutch East India Co.

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.

1609
Dutchman Huig de Groot authored a treatise titled “Mare Liberum” (The Open Sea) in which he argued that seas were open to anyone.

1610
The Dutch ousted the Portuguese from Indonesia by this time, but the Portuguese retained the eastern half of Timor.

1610
The first cargo of Asian tea arrived in Amsterdam

1610-1650
Painters from Utrecht worked in the style of Caravaggio.

1611
Joachim Wtewael painted "Andromeda." He and Bloemaert helped transmit the Italian mannerist influence and a preference for figure painting over landscape

1613 Apr 7,
Gerard Dou, Dutch painter (Night School), was born.

1613-1675
Gerrit Dou, Dutch artist. He was a student of Rembrandt.

1614
Crispijn de Passe the Younger published "Hortus Floridus" in Holland.

1615
Joachim Wtewael painted the "Judgement of Paris."

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.

1616
The Dutch became the first to establish colonies in Guyana with Essequibo. Berbice followed in 1627, and then Demerara in 1752.

1616-1691/92
Emanuel de Witte, Dutch painter.

1617 Feb 4,
Louis Elsevier (~76), Dutch publisher, died.

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.

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.

1618
Hendrick Goltzius (b.1558), Dutch Master painter, died. His work included "Danaë."

1619 May 13,
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (b.1547), Dutch lands advocate, was beheaded.

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.

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.

1619
Amsterdam opened a stock exchange.

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.

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.

1621-1622
Dutch artist Dirck van Baburen painted "The Mocking of Christ."

1622 Feb 27,
Rembrandt Carel Fabritius (d.1654), Dutch painter, was born.

1622 Mar 22,
Hugo Grotius escaped from Loevestein Castle.

1622
Dirck van Baburen painted: "The Procuress."

1622
In Aklmaar the cheese market officially opened. [see 1366]

1623
Apr 29, 11 Dutch ships departed for the conquest of Peru.

1623
Dirck van Baburen painted "Prometheus Chained."

1624
Cafe Chris opened in Amsterdam and served the construction workers of the nearby Westerkerk.

1624
The Dutch conquered Salvador, Brazil.

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.

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.

1625
Hendrick ter Brugghen painted "Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene."

1625
Rembrandt depicted himself as a bit player in his painting "The Stoning of St. Stephen."

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."

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

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.

1626
Rembrandt depicted part of himself in his painting "History Piece."

c1626-1627
Hendrick ter Brugghen painted "The Concert."

1626-1679
Jan Steen, Dutch painter.

1627 Mar 3,
Piet Heyn conquered 22 ships in Bay of Salvador, Brazil.

c1627-1628
Hendrick ter Brugghen painted "Melancholia."

1628 Mar 10,
Constantine Huygens Jr., Dutch poet, painter, cartoonist, was born.

1628
Abraham Bloemaert painted his "Virgin and Child."

1628
Rembrandt Harmenszoom van Rizn (Rijn) (1606-1669), Dutch painter, painted "Self Portrait Leaning Forward."

1628
Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish painter, was called upon to broker a peace between Catholic Spain and Protestant England.

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.

1629 Jun 18,
Piet Heyn (51), lt.-admiral (Spanish silver fleet), died in battle.

1629 Oct 13,
Dutch West Indies Co. granted religious freedom in West Indies.

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.”

1629-1684
Pieter de Hooch, Dutch painter of contemplative scenes of everyday life.

1632 Oct 24,
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch naturalist, was born.

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.

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."

1632
Rembrandt painted his work "Europa" and "Portrait of a Lady Aged 62." The portrait sold for $28.7 million in 2000.

1633 Dec 18,
Willem van de Velde the Younger, Dutch marine painter, was baptized.

1633
Rembrandt van Rijn painted the "Portrait of a Bearded Man in a Red Coat." It sold for $9.1 million in 1998.

1634
Rembrandt van Rijn painted "Portrait of a Woman." It hangs in the Speed Museum of Louisville, Ky.

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.

1635 Apr 16,
Frans van Mieris, the Elder, Dutch painter, was born.

1635-1637
Rembrandt Harmenszoom van Rizn (Rijn) (1606-1669), Dutch painter, painted "Two Studies of Saskia Asleep."

1636 Mar 26,
University of Utrecht held its opening ceremony.

1636 Nov 17,
Henrique Dias, Brazilian general, won a decisive battle against the Dutch in Brazil.

1636
Rembrandt made his etching "Self-portrait with Saskia."

1636
Pieter Saenredam, Haarlem painter of architectural motifs, spent 3 months in Utrecht where he drew the interiors of the gothic churches.

1637 Mar 5,
John van der Heyden, Dutch painter, inventor (fire extinguisher), was born.

1637 Nov 20,
Peter Minuit & 1st Dutch and Swedish immigrants to Delaware sailed from Sweden. Peter later purchased Manhattan Island for 60 guilders.

1637
The Dutch tulip bulb craze crashed as futures prices became too high for speculators to pay off and take delivery.

1637
The Dutch attacked and captured Elmina (Ghana), which up to that point was the centre of Portuguese activity in West Africa.

1638 Mar 23,
Frederik Ruysch, Dutch anatomist, was born.

1638 Aug 9,
Jonas Bronck of Holland became the 1st European settler in the Bronx.

1638
Rembrandt painted the "Portrait of Willem Bartolsz Ruyter," a Dutch actor.

1638
Joachim Wytawael (Wtewael, b.1566) , Dutch mannerist painter, died. His work included "The Adoration of the Shepherds."

1640
Rembrandt painted his "Portrait of a Man Seated in an Armchair" about this time.

1641 Sep 23,
Adrian "Aart" van Wijck, theologian, was born. He fought Jansenism.

1641
The Dutch pushed the Portuguese out of Malacca and renamed Our Lady of the Hill church to St. Paul’s.

1642 Aug 13,
Christian Huygens discovered the Martian south polar cap.

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.

1642
Rembrandt van Rijn painted "Night Watch."

1642
Curacao became a colony of the Netherlands.

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.”

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.

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."

1647 Nov 10,
The all Dutch-held area of New York was returned to English control by the treaty of Westminster.

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.

1648
Van Ruisdael painted "Dunes at Haarlem." His work this year also included his print "Christ Preaching (The Hundred Guilder Print).

1649
Salomon van Ruysdael (1602-1670), Dutch landscape artist, created his painting “Ferry on a River.”

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.

1650 Nov 4,
William III, Prince of Orange and King of England, was born. [see Nov 14]

1650 Nov 14,
William III, King of England (1689-1702), was born. [see Nov 4]

c1650
Jan Baptist Weenix painted "Mother and Child in an Italian Landscape."

1652 Apr 7,
The Dutch established settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.

1652 May 29,
English Admiral Robert Blake drove out the Dutch fleet under Lieutenant-Admiral Tromp.

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).

1652
War broke out between the Netherlands and England.

1653 May 18,
Carel Reyniersz (48), Governor-General of Netherlands and East Indies, died.

1653 Rembrandt painted his "Aristotle With a Bust of Homer."

1654 Oct 12,
Carel Fabritius (b.1622), Dutch painter, died in a gunpowder explosion in Delft. He was one of Rembrandt’s most gifted pupils.

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.”

1654-1656
Rembrandt van Rijn painted a medallion portrait of Muhammed Adil Shah of Bijapur.

1655 Apr 26,
Dutch West Indies Co. denied Peter Stuyvesant's desire to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam.

1655 Sep 26,
Peter Stuyvesant recaptured Dutch Ft. Casimir from Swedish in Delaware.

1655
Rembrandt painted "Polish Rider."

1655
Jan Steen painted "A Burgher of Delft and His Daughter." In 2004 it sold for $14.6 million to the Dutch National Museum.

1655
Vermeer painted his Saint Praxedis. [see Vermeer, 1632-1675]

1655
Pieter de Hooch moved to Delft and painted there for 5 years.

1655 Mar 25,
Christiaan Huygens, Dutch inventor and astronomer, discovered Titan, Saturn's largest satellite.

1655-1660
Rembrandt painted his picture called "The Auctioneer."

1656 Jan 8,
Oldest surviving commercial newspaper began in Haarlem, Netherlands.

1656 Jul 26,
Rembrandt declared he is insolvent.

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.

1657
Vermeer painted his "The Little Street" about this time (1658-1660).

1658
Vermeer (1632-1675), Dutch artist, completed his painting “The Milkmaid” about this time.

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.

1660 May 7,
Isaack B. Fubine of Savoy, in The Hague, patented macaroni.

1660
Rembrandt painted "The Old Woman Cutting Her Nails" about this time.

c1660
The Dutch crafted an early version of a boat they called a "yacht."

1660
Pieter Claesz (b.ca.1597), Dutch still-life painter, died.

1661 Aug 6,
Holland sold Brazil to Portugal for 8 million guilders.

1661
Rembrandt depicted himself in the painting "Self-Portrait as St. Paul." His work this year also included "James the Apostle."

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.

1662 Apr 27,
Netherlands and France signed a treaty of alliance in Paris.

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.”

1662
Dutch fortune seekers killed over 400 members of the Nayar warrior caste in Kerala, India.

1663
Rembrandt depicted himself as a bit player in his painting "The Raising of the Cross."

1663
The Amsterdam attic church, later known as the Museum Amstelkring, was built after the monarchy banned the public practice of Catholicism.

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.

1664 Apr 4,
Adam Willaerts, Dutch seascape painter, died.

1664 Aug 29, Adriaen Pieck/Gerrit de Ferry patented a wooden fire spout in Amsterdam.

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.

1664 Sep 8,
The Dutch formally surrendered New Amsterdam to 300 English soldiers. The British soon renamed it New York.

1664-1667
The Second Anglo-Dutch War.

1665 Mar 4,
English King Charles II declared war on Netherlands.

c1665
Gerrit Dou painted "Woman at the Clavichord" and a "Self-Portrait" in which he resembled Rembrandt.

1665
Jacob van Ochtervelt (1634-1682), Dutch artist, painted his “Street Musicians in the Doorway of a House.”

1665
The British briefly recaptured the Banda Island of Run from the Dutch.

1665
Dutch artist Johannes 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.

1666
Franz Hals (b.1581?), painter, died in the Oudemannenhuis almshouse in Haarlem. The almshouse later became the Frans Hals Museum.

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.

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.

1668 Feb 7,
The Netherlands, England and Sweden concluded an alliance directed against Louis XIV of France.

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."

1669
Vermeer painted "The Art of Painting." The 3' by 4' work was larger than most of his paintings.

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.

1670
Spinoza (1632-1677), Dutch philosopher, authored "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" an enlightened assessment of the Old Testament and a plea for religious toleration.

1671
Vermeer painted his "Allegory of Faith." [see Vermeer, 1632-1675]

1672 Apr 29,
King Louis XIV of France invaded the Netherlands.

1672 Jun 15,
The Sluices were opened in Holland to save Amsterdam from the French.

1672 Jul 4,
States of Holland declared "Eternal Edict" void.

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.

1673 Mar 28,
Adam Pijnacker (51), Dutch landscape painter, etcher, was buried.

1673 May 29,
Cornelis van Bijnkershoek, lawyer, president of High Council, was born.

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.

1673 Aug 9,
Dutch recapture NY from English. It was regained by English in 1674.

1673 Dec 28,
Joan Blaeu (77), Dutch cartographer, publisher (Atlas Major), died.

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.

1674 Feb 9,
English reconquered NY from Netherlands.

1674 Feb 19,
Netherlands and England signed the Peace of Westminster. NYC became English.

1674 Nov 10,
Dutch formally ceded New Netherlands (NY) to English. [see 1664]

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.

1675 Mar 2,
Prince William III was installed as Governor of Overijssel.

1675
Johannes Vermeer (b.1632), Dutch painter, died in poverty. In 2001 Anthony Bailey authored "Vermeer: A View of Delft."

1676 Apr 29,
Michiel A. de Ruyter (69), Dutch rear-admiral, (Newport), was killed.

1676 Jun 1,
The Swedish ship Svardet, armed with 86 bronze canons and under command of Claes Uggla, went under when Sweden was defeated by a Danish-Dutch fleet in the Battle of Öland. In 2011 Deep Sea Productions said it believed it had found the ship off the island of Oland.

1677 Feb 15,
King Charles II reported an anti-French covenant with Netherlands.

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.

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).

1683 Sep 17,
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek reported the existence of bacteria.

1683-1707
Adriaen Coorte (b.1665), a Dutch Golden Age painter of still lifes, signed his work during this period. His work included “Still Life With Sea Shells” (1698).

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.”

1688 Nov 5,
William of Orange landed in southern England and marched with his army nearly unopposed to London.

1688 Nov 26,
Louis XIV declared war on the Netherlands.

1688 Dec 10 or 11,
King James II fled London as "Glorious Revolution" replaced him with King William (of Orange) and Queen Mary. [see Dec 11]
James II abdicated the throne because of William of Orange landing in England.

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.

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.

1690 Jul 1,
Led by Marshall Luxembourg, the French defeated the forces of the Grand Alliance at Fleurus in the Netherlands.

1690 Oct 23,
There was a revolt in Haarlem, Holland, after a public ban on smoking.

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.

1691 Oct 3,
English and Dutch armies occupied Limerick, Ireland.

1692 Mar 14,
Peter Musschenbroek, Dutch physician, physicist (Leyden jar), was born.

1692 Mar 26,
King Maximilian was installed as land guardian of South Netherlands.

1692 May 29,
Battle at La Hogue: An English & Dutch fleet beat France.

1692 Aug 3,
French forces under Marshal Luxembourg defeated the English at the Battle of Steenkerke in the Netherlands.

1693 Jul 4,
Battle at Boussu-lez-Walcourt: French-English vs. Dutch army.

1693 Jul 29,
The Army of the Grand Alliance was destroyed by the French at the Battle of Neerwinden in the Netherlands.

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.

1695
Portugal established colonial rule in the eastern half of Timor Island. The western side was incorporated into the Dutch East Indies.

1696 Jan 31,
An uprising of undertakers took place after funeral reforms in Amsterdam.

1696 Mar 7,
English King William III departed Netherlands.

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.
---------------------------------------------------------

1700 May 7,
Gerard van Swieten, Dutch botanist, was born.

1701 Sep 7,
England, Austria, and the Netherlands formed an Alliance against France.

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.

1703 May 18,
Dutch and English troops occupied Cologne.

1704 Aug 4,
In the War of Spanish Succession, an Anglo-Dutch fleet captured Gibraltar.

1707 Apr 6,
Willem Van de Velde (b.1633) the Younger, Dutch marine painter, died. His work included “fishing Boats by the Shore in a Calm” (1660-1605).

1708 Jul 11,
The French were defeated at Oudenarde, Malplaquet, in the Netherlands by the Duke of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy.

1709 Oct 20,
Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy took Mons in the Netherlands.

1712 Oct 4,
Utrecht banished poor Jews.

1714
Bernard de Mandeville, Dutch philosopher, achieved widespread fame with his lengthy poem "The Fable of the Bees: Private Vice, Publick Benefits."

1714 Mar 6,
the Treaty of Rastatt ended the war between Austria and Spain. It complemented the Treaty of Utrecht, which had, the previous year, ended hostilities with Britain and the Dutch Republic. The Spanish Netherlands became the Austrian Netherlands, and Spain gave up her possession in Italy, Luxembourg and Flanders. A third treaty, the Treaty of Baden (Sep 7,1714), was required to end the hostilities between France and the Holy Roman Empire.

1718
Dutch planters introduced coffee to their Suriname colony.

1722 Apr 5
On Easter Sunday Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovered a Polynesian Island 1400 miles from the coast of South America and named it Easter Island. He noted that the island was treeless and wondered how its 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.”

1723 Aug 26,

Anton van Leeuwenhoek (b.1632), Dutch biologist, inventor (microscope), died in Delft, Netherlands. [some sources say Aug 30]

1724 May 18,
Johann K. Amman (54), Swiss-Dutch doctor for deaf-mutes, died.

1726 Feb 26,
Maximilian II, M. Emanuel, elector of Bavaria, governor of Netherlands, died.

1729 May 25,
Jean de Neufville, Dutch-US merchant (started 4th English war), was born.

1730 Jul 21,
States of Holland put a death penalty on "sodomy."

1731
Luis Berrueco, Mexican painter, painted “The Martyrs of Gorkum,” a detailed work depicting the 1572 martyrdom of 19 Catholics in Gorinchem, Netherlands, during the Dutch war for independence.

1732 Jun 3,
Pieter Vuyst, Dutch gov-gen. of Ceylon, was executed.

1736 Mar 23,
Iman Willem Falck, Dutch Governor of Ceylon (1765-83), was born.

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.

1741 Apr 13,
Dutch people protested the bad quality of bread.

1744-1828
Eisa Eisinga, knitting-wool processor. He devoted his spare time to astronomy and mathematics and built a small planetarium in Franeker (1781).

1745 Jan 8,
England, Austria, Saxony and the Netherlands formed an alliance against Russia.

1745 May 11,
French forces defeated an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army at Fontenoy.

1745 Oct 11,
The Leyden jar, capable of storing static electricity, was invented by German cleric Ewald Georg von Kleist. Also about this time Dutch scientist Pieter van Musschenbroek of Leiden (Leyden) independently came up with the same idea.

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.

1747 Dec 9,
England and Netherlands signed a military treaty.

1747 Sep 16, The French captured Bergen-op-Zoom, consolidating their occupation of Austrian Flanders in the Netherlands.

1748 Jun 28,
A riot followed a public execution in Amsterdam and over 200 were killed.

1749 Feb 8, Jan van Huysum (66), Dutch still life painter, died.

1751 Sep 12,
Amsterdam refused to establish a Jewish ghetto.

1751 Sep 13,
Henry Kobell, Dutch painter and cartoonist, was born.

1756 Nov 4,
Anthony van Hoboken, Rotterdam merchant-ship owner, was born.

1757 Feb 13,
John C. Hespe, Dutch journalist, politician, was born.

1761 Mar 23,

Jhn W. de Winter, Dutch Vice-Admiral (Battle at Kamperduin), was born.

1761 May 13,
Adrian Loosjes Pzn (1818, Dutch publisher, writer (Mauritius Lijnslager), was born.

1765 Mar 18,
David H. Chass, Dutch baron, general (fought Napoleon at Waterloo), was born.

1772 May 11,
Joseph Kerckhoff, Limburg surgeon, robber captain, was hanged.

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.

1776 Apr 26,
Joan M. Kemper, Dutch lawyer (designed civil code law book), was born.

1776
The Dutch built a slave house on Goree Island off the coast of Senegal.

1779 May 25,
Henry M. Baron de Kock, Dutch officer, politician, was born.

1780-1783
A 4-year war with England was fought.

1781
Eisa Eisinga ( 1744-1828), knitting-wool processor, built a small planetarium in Franeker.

1782 Apr 19,
Netherlands recognized the United States.

1783 Apr 10,
Hortense E. de Beauharnais, French queen of Netherlands (1806-10), was born.

1784 Jun 16,
Holland forbade orange clothes.

1784 May 20,
Peace of Versailles ended the war between France, England, and Holland.

1784
The Teyler Museum opened as the country’s first public collection.

1786
Capt. Francis Light landed in Penang (Malaysia) and built Fort Cornwallis. Light, acting on behalf of the East India Company, swindled the island from the ruling sultan with a promise of protection. The British usurped the land to break the Dutch monopoly on the spice trade.

1788 Sep 15,
An alliance between Britain, Prussia and the Netherlands was ratified at the Hague.

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.

1793 Feb 1,
France declared war on Britain and the Netherlands.

1793 Mar 4,
French troops conquered Geertruidenberg, Netherlands.

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.

1796 Mar 1,
The 1st National Meeting was held in the Hague.

1799
The Dutch East India Company liquidated and the Dutch government took control over the islands of Indonesia.

1801 Oct 6,
Napoleon Bonaparte imposed a new constitution on Holland.

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.

1803 Feb 21,
The British return the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch (Batavian Republic) under the Treaty of Amiens.

1806 Jan 10,
The Capitulation of Papendorp: The Dutch in Cape Town surrendered to a British fleet.

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]

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]

1815 Mar 1,
Sunday observance in Netherlands was regulated by law.

1815 Mar 16,
William I (1772-1843),
prince of Orange-Nassau, proclaimed the Netherlands a kingdom at the urging of the powers gathered at the Congress of Vienna. In 1813 he had proclaimed himself 'Sovereign Prince' of the "United Netherlands."

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.

1815 May 29,
Cornelis de Gijselaar (64), politician, patriot, died.

1817 Feb 19,
William III, King of the Netherlands, was born.

1817
The Dutch and French agreed on a final pact to divide the control of St. Martin Island. The southern Dutch half comprises the Eilandgebied Sint Maarten (Island Territory of St. Maarten) and is part of the Netherlands Antilles. The northern French half comprises the Collectivité de Saint-Martin (Collectivity of St. Martin) and is an overseas collectivity of France.

1819 Oct 6,
Willem A. Scholten, Dutch potato flour manufacturer, was born.

1819
The British claimed Malacca from the Dutch. They used St. Paul’s church as an ammunition dump and put a lighthouse in front.

1820 Mar 5,
Dutch city of Leeuwarden forbade Jews to go to synagogues on Sundays.

1824 Mar 29,
ABN AMRO incorporated in the Hague. Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (Netherlands Trading Society, NTS) was established by Royal Decree of King Willem I. With effect from 3 October 1964 after the merger with Twentsche Bank, NTS changed her name to Algemene Bank Nederland (ABN Bank). After the merger with Amro Bank in 1991, ABN changed its name to ABN AMRO.

1825
A disastrous breach of Dutch coastal defenses occurred.

1828 Apr 4,
Casparus van Wooden patented chocolate milk powder (Amsterdam).

1830 Aug 25,
Belgium rebelled against Netherlands. Among the reasons for rebelling were heavy taxes on beer.

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.

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.

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."

1837 May 29,
Alexander F. de Savornin Lohmann, Dutch minister, party leader (CHU), was born.

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.

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.

1840
Niels Gade, Dutch composer, wrote the overture "Echoes of Ossian."

1840 Oct 8,
King William I of Holland abdicated.

1841
Barend Cornelis Koekkoek authored "Thoughts and Recollections of a Landscape Artist."

1844 Jul 25,
Louis Napoleon (b.1779), French king of the Netherlands ( 1806-10), died.

1846
Barend Cornelis Koekkoek painted his "Portrait of a Young Lady."

1849 May 25,
Andreas Michiels (52), Dutch Military Governor of West Sumatra, died in battle.

1850
In the Netherlands Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), a Dutch version of St. Nicholas, made his debut as an African servant in a book. By 2012 he was being described as a racist caricature of a black person. In 2013 Amsterdam officials were asked to revoke a permit for a children’s festival that featured the caricature.

1851 May 18,
The Amsterdam-Nieuwediep telegraph connection linked.

1853 Mar 4,
Pope Pius IX recovered Catholic hierarchy in Netherlands.

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.

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.

1857 May 10,
Hendrik Zwaardemaker, Dutch physiologist (olefactometer), was born.

1858 Oct 9,
Gerard L.F. Philips, Dutch engineer and manufacturer, was born.

1860 May 21,
Willem Einthoven, Dutch physiologist, inventor of the electro-cardiogram, was born.

1863 Jul 1,
The Dutch abolished slavery in Suriname. The Dutch were among the last Europeans to abolish slavery.

1864
Gerard Adriaan Heineken founded a beer brewery. In 2002 it was the world’s 3rd largest brewery.

1864 May 18,
Jan P. Veth Bayern, Dutch painter, etcher, lithographer, art historian, was born.

1864 May 29,
A.H. Borgesius, Dutch amateur astronomer, was born.

1864 Sep 5,
British, French & Dutch fleets attacked Japan in Shimonoseki Straits.

1865 May 25,
Pieter Zeeman, Dutch physicist (Zeeman effect, Nobel 1902),was born.

1870 Jul 11(Jun 11),
1st-stone Amstel Brewery opened in Amsterdam.

1871 Mar 28,
Willem Mengelberg, conductor (NY Philharmonic 1922-30), was born in Utrecht, Neth.

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.

1873
From the Netherlands the Holland America cruise line began operations.

1873
The Dutch began colonization efforts in Aceh province (Indonesia), which led to a decades-long war.

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.

1877 Feb 26,
Carel S. Adama van Scheltema, Dutch poet, writer (socialism), was born.

1877 May 29,
John Lothrop Motley (63), (History of United Netherlands), died.

1880
Vincent Van Gogh ended his career as a theology student and began painting.

1880-1962
Queen Wilhelmina Of Netherlands (b.Aug 31, d.Nov 28 at 82). She reigned 1890-1947.

1881 Apr 1,
Kingdom post office in Netherlands opened.

1882
Vincent Van Gogh painted "The Wounded Veteran.'

1883 May 29,
WFLC Marianne princess of Orange-Nassau, died.

1885
The façade of the Rijksmuseum was completed.

1885
Vincent Van Gogh painted "The Potato Eaters" and "A Pair of Shoes."

1886- 1888
Vincent Van Gogh made his Paris sojourn.

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

1887-1888
Van Gogh painted "Self-Portrait with Felt Hat" and "Self-Portrait as an Artist."

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.

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.

1890 Apr 6,
Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker (d.1939), aircraft pioneer, was born in Java.

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.

1890 Nov 23,
Grand Duchy of Luxembourg separated from the Netherlands.

1890
The Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. was founded.

1891 May 15,
Gerard and Anton Philips began their Philips & Co. operations in Eindhoven, Holland, with the production of light bulbs.

1891 May 25,
Robert W.P. Peereboom, Dutch editor in chief (Haarlem Newspaper), was born.

1894
A disastrous breach of Dutch coastal defenses occurred.

1894
Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918), Swiss painter, created a painting 10 meters high for the Exposition in Antwerp. It depicted the story of the 1865 descent of Edward Whymper ( 1840-1911) after he became the first man to climb the Matterhorn. Four of his party died. Hodler allowed the painting to be cut up and it’s now in a museum in Berne.

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.

1897
Wolves disappeared from the Netherlands. In 2011 a wolf was again spotted in the country.

1898 Jun 17,
Maurits C. Escher, Dutch graphic artist, was born.

1898
A painting titled "Golden Carriage," by Nicolaas van der Waay, was given to Queen Wilhelmina from the people of Amsterdam as a gift. The painting was intended to recreate the style of the country's 17th-century "Golden Age," in which Amsterdam became wealthy as the hub of a naval empire. The work depicts half-naked, brown-skinned women and men in servile poses bearing gifts to an enthroned white woman.

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.

1902 Mar 3,
Isaac D. France van de Putte (79), Dutch premier (1866), died.

1902 May 29,
Dutch State Mine law formed.

1902 Jul 18,
Charles W.J. Mengelberg, Dutch composer, conductor, was born.

1903 Jan 21,
Harry Houdini escaped from police station Halvemaansteeg in Amsterdam.

1903 Mar 26,
American Hotel opened in Amsterdam.

1904 Apr 24,
Willem de Kooning (d. 1997), abstract impressionist artist, was born in Rotterdam.

1904 Aug 10,
Dutch newspaper Volk fired gay journalist Jacob de Cock.

1904
The Weerdinge Couple, 2 men, were found in a Holland bog and dated from 160BC - 220AD.

1905 May 29,
Jan [Johannes] Teulings, Dutch actor, director (That Joyous Eve), was born.

1905 Dec 7,
Gerard Kuiper, Dutch-US astronomer (moons of Uranus, Neptune), was born.

1906 Apr 28,
Bartholomeus J "Bart" Bok, Dutch-US astronomer (Milky Way), was born.

1907
Royal Dutch combines its oil operations with Shell Transport & Trading Co.

1907
The Hague Convention of this year prohibited the taking of war booty and instituted what some considered the first wartime environmental protections.

1908 Dec 13,
The Dutch took two Venezuelan Coast Guard ships.

1908
Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, Dutch physicist, was the first to liquefy helium. He cooled helium gas to below its boiling point of -269°C, just 4 degrees above absolute zero. Three years later he observed the resistance of mercury vanished when it was cooled by liquid helium, thus discovering superconductivity.

1908
The first bus line to link the Jordaan section with the rest of Amsterdam opened.

1909 Apr 30,
Juliana, queen of the Netherlands, was born. She fled during the Nazi occupation and abdicated in favor of her daughter Beatrix.

1909
The Elfstedentocht, a 125-mile ice skating race, officially began.

1911 Jun 10,
Queen Wilhelmina opened the Rembrandt house in Amsterdam.

1912 May 18,
Maurits Binger established 2 Dutch movie companies.

1912 May 29,
John Hanlo, Dutch poet (Go to the Mosque), was born.

1912 Aug 13,
Jan Peeters, Dutch water colors painter, monumental artist, was born.

1912 Nov 25,
Johannes D. De Jong, Frisian poet and photographer (Kar £t twa), was born.

1912
A ban on brothels was enacted. It was overturned in 1999.

1913 May 14,
Franz Hals museum opened in Haarlem, Netherlands.

1913
The Peace Palace was built at the Hague, Netherlands, by the Carnegie Foundation. It is often called the seat of international law because it houses the International Court of Justice (which is the principal judicial body of the United Nations), the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the Hague Academy of International Law, and the extensive Peace Palace Library.

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."

1914 Mar 1,
H. Colijn, Dutch Minister of war, was named director of British Petroleum.

1914 Aug 24,
German Zeppelins bombed Antwerp.

1914 Sep 2,
German Zeppelins again bombed Antwerp.

1915 Mar 4,
Petrus de Jong, Dutch premier (KVP, 1967-71), was born.

1915 Aug 26,
Gre [Gerarda D] Brouwenstijn, Dutch opera soprano, was born.

1916
A disastrous breach of Dutch coastal defenses occurred.

1917 Jan 6,
Hendrik P.G. Quack (82), lawyer and economist (Bank of Netherlands), died.

1917 Feb 26,
Utrecht Harbor, Netherlands, held its 1st Annual fair.

1917 Mar 8,
Ferdinand von Zeppelin (78), Dutch count, air pioneer, died.

1917 Oct 15,
Mata Hari, a Dutch dancer who had spied for the Germans, was executed by a firing squad outside Paris.

1917
Piet Mondrian and three other painters founded the movement known as De Stijl, which became synonymous with Mondrian.

1918 May 18,
The Netherlands Indian Volksraad was installed in Batavia (later Djakarta).

1918 Nov 10,
Retired German Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands.

1919 Jul 21,
Anthony Fokker established an airplane factory at Hamburg and Amsterdam.

1919 Sep 6,
Pier Pander (b.1864), Dutch sculptor, died.

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.

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.

1920
The plane maker NV Fokker firm was founded. By 1996 it was in trouble and seeking protection from its creditors.

1920 Dec 13,
League of nations established the Int’l. Court of Justice in The Hague.

1921 Apr 5,
Alphons Diepenbrock (b.1862), Dutch composer, died in Amsterdam. His work included “Wandering Through the Woods” (1910).

1922 May 18,
Dutch 2nd Chamber agreed to a 48 hour work week over the previous 45 hours.

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."

1923 Mar 3,
US Senate rejected membership in International Court of Justice, The Hague.

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).

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.

1925 Mar 2,
SDAP-Second-Faction (Dutch Socialists) of parliament demanded drastic disarmament.

1926 Mar 4,
De Geer government in Netherlands took office.

1926 Mar 26,
ACD de Graeff was appointed Governor-General of Dutch East-Indies.

1927 Apr 30,
Princess Juliana got a seat in Dutch Council of State.

1927 May 29,
Dick Hillenius, Dutch biologist, writer, was born.

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.

1928 Aug 3,
Ray Barbuti saved the US team from defeat in Amsterdam Olympics track events by winning 400 m (47.8 sec).

1928 Aug 10,
The Univ. of California crew won the rowing championship at the Olympics in Holland.

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.

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

1930 Jan 3,
The second conference on war reparations began in the Hague.

1930
British detergent maker Lever Bros. merged with Margarine Unie of the Netherlands to form Unilever. William Hulme Lever (1888-1949), 2nd Viscount Leverhulme, co-founded Unilever. Lever brothers had operated from the Belgian Congo from 1911.

1932 Apr 5,
A Dutch textile strike was broken by trade unions.

1932 May 10,
Government of Netherland declared "Wilhelmus" the national anthem.

1932
Netherlands passed a blasphemy law that mandated a maximum sentence of three months in prison for a convicted "scornful blasphemer."

1932
The Afsluitdijk dam was completed. It sealed the Zuider Zee from the ocean and formed the freshwater Lake IJssel.

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.

1933 Feb 8,
Elly Ameling, soprano (Ilya-Idomeneo), was born in Rotterdam, Holland.

1933 Apr 22,
Dutch government forbade a left-wing radio address.

1933 Dec 3,
Paul Crutzen, Dutch chemist, was born.

1934 Jan 10,
Marinus van der Lubbe (24), Dutch communist, was guillotined in Berlin.

1934 Jul 4,
Jordanians revolted in Amsterdam after reduction in employment.

1934 Aug 12,
Hendrik Petrus Berlage (b.1856), the father of modern Dutch architecture, died at The Hague.

1935
In the Netherlands the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the Art Deco final masterwork of H.P. Berlage (1856-1934), was completed.

1935 Mar 3,
Dutch Revolutionary Socialist Worker's party (RSAP) was formed.

1935 May 29,
Hague local museum opened.

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.

1936
The Dutch film "The Trouble With Money" was directed by Max Ophuls.

1938 Jan 10,
Eduard van Beinum became the 1st conductor of Amsterdam Concert orchestra.

1938 May 6,
Dutch writer Maurits Dekker was sentenced to 50 days for "offending a friendly head of state" (Hitler).

1938 May 12,
In Holland, the 4-day convention at Utrecht ended. A Provisional Constitution for the World Council of Churches was adopted.

1939 Dec 23,
Anthony H.G. Fokker (49), Dutch airplane builder (Spider), died in America.

1938
Alfred Flatow (1869-1942), Jewish gymnast and three-time, first-place medalist in the 1896 Olympics, fled to the Netherlands. He was later arrested by the Nazis for possession of guns following their occupation of the Netherlands. Flatow was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 where he was starved to death.

1939 Mar 28,
Dutch hunter shot English bombers down.

1939 Nov 18,
The Netherland KNSM passenger ship Simon Bolivar hit a German mine and 86 died.

1940 May 8,
German commandos in Dutch uniforms crossed the Dutch border to hold bridges for the advancing German army.

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.

1940 May 13,
British bombed a factory at Breda, Netherlands.

1940 May 13,
Dutch Queen Wilhelmina fled to England.

1940 May 14,
The Netherlands (Holland) surrendered to Nazi Germany after the bombing of Rotterdam that left 600-900 dead.

1940 May 15,
German troops occupied Amsterdam. Gen Winkelman surrendered.

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.

1940 May 18,
German forces under Field Marshal Georg von Kuchler (1881-1968) occupied Antwerp, Netherlands.

1940 May 19,
Amsterdam time became MET (Middle European Time).

1940 May 29,
Arthur Seyss-Inquart was installed as Reich Commissioner of Hague, Netherlands.

1940 Jun 11,
Princess Juliana of the Netherlands arrived in Canada as an exile.

1940 Jun 21,
German occupiers disbanded the Dutch States-General, Council of State.

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.

1941 Feb 9,
Nazi collaborators destroyed the pro-Jewish cafe Alcazar Amsterdam. Alcazar had refused to hang "No Entry for Jews" signs in front.

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.

1941 Feb 26,
Utrecht and Zaandam struck against raid on Jews.

1941 Mar 3,
Netherlands NSB-leader Mussert visited Göring in Berlin.

1941 Mar 4,
18 Geuzen resistance fighters were sentenced to death in The Hague.

1941 Mar 8,
Martial law was proclaimed in Holland in order to extinguish any anti-Nazi protests.

1941 Mar 20,
D.A. van den Bosch, anti-Nazi clergyman (Amersfoort Camp), died.

1941 Apr 24,
Dutch Prince Bernhard became an RAF pilot.

1941 May 15,
Nazi occupiers in Netherlands forbade Jewish music.

1941 May 19,
German occupiers in Holland forbade bicycle taxis.

1941 Jun 4,
Wilhelm II von Hohenzollern (b.1859), the last German emperor (1888-1918), died in the Netherlands.

1941 Jul 11(Jun 11),
The 2nd great roundup of Jews of Amsterdam took place.

1941 Aug 18,
The concentration camp at Amersfoort, Netherlands, opened.

1941 Nov 25,
German Jews in Netherlands were declared stateless.

1942 Jan 11,
Japan declared war against the Netherlands, the same day that Japanese forces invaded the Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia).

1942 Feb 16,
German submarines attacked an Aruba oil refinery and sank the tanker Pedernales.

1942 May 3,
Nazis executed 72 in reprisal in Sachsenhausen, Netherlands. Johan H. Westerveld, lt.-Col, leader Order Service, was among the executed.

1942 May 17,
Dutch SS vowed loyalty to Hitler.

1942 Jun 9,
German-Neth press reported that 3 million Dutch were sent to East-Europe.

1942 Jun 12,
Anne Frank received her diary as a birthday present in Amsterdam.

1942 Jun 14,
Anne Frank began her diary.

1942 Jun 20,
Adolf Eichmann proclaimed the deportation of Dutch Jews.

1942 Jul 6,
Anne Frank's family went into hiding in After House, Amsterdam.

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.

1942 Jul 16,
Jews were transported from Holland to an extermination camp.

1942 Jul 26,
Roman Catholic churches protested the Dutch bishops’ stand against the spread of Judaism.

1942 Aug 25,
German SS began transporting Jews of Maastricht, Neth.

1942 Oct 15,
Dirk Bannink, nurse and local councilor Deventer, Netherlands, was executed.

1942
The Catholic hierarchy of Amsterdam spoke against the Nazi treatment of Jews. This led to a redoubling of roundups and deportations.

1943 Feb 17,
Dutch churches protested to Artur Seyss-Inquart against persecution of Jews.

1943 Mar 1,
In Amsterdam a Jewish old age home for disabled was raided.

1943 Mar 2,
1st transport of Jews from Westerbork, Netherlands, to Sobibor concentration camp.

1943 Mar 18,
The ships James Oglethorpe (US) and Terkolei (Neth.), were torpedoed and sank.

1943 Mar 31,
US Army Air Force bombers attacked harbor facilities in the west of Rotterdam. A combination of strong wind and overcast conditions also caused great damage to the nearby residential areas, especially in the Bospolder-Tussendijken District. The death toll rose to 401 casualties and around 16,500 people lost their homes.

1943 Apr 30,
Dutch struck against forced labor in Nazi Germany's war industry.

1943 Apr 30,
Etty Hillesum, Dutch diarist, died in Auschwitz.

1943 May 26,
Jews rioted against Germans in Amsterdam.

1943 Jun 25,
Arthur Seyss-Inquart ordered a mass arrest of Dutch physicians.

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.

1943
Willem Kolff invented the 1st dialysis machine in Holland.

1944 Feb 1,
Piet Mondrian (b.1872), Dutch artist, died in NYC 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.

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.

1944 May 19,
240 gypsies were transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork Neth.

1944 Jun 6,
Gerrit John van de Peat (41), artist, resistance fighter, was executed.

1944 Jun 6,
Nazi troops executed 96 prisoners by firing squad.

1944 Jun 9,
99 inhabitants of Tulle were hanged by the SS.

1944 Jul 14,
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. In 2010 a German court convicted Boere (88) of murdering the three Dutch civilians. He was given the maximum sentence of life in prison for the killings.

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.

1944 Jul 19,
Carl Bock, Danish Gestapo agent, was liquidated.

1944 Aug 1,
Anne Frank's last diary entry; 3 days later she was arrested.

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. Miep Gies (1909-2010), secretary to Anne’s father Otto, collected the scattered pages of Anne’s diary and returned them to Otto Frank after the war.

1944 Sep 3,
The 68th & last transport of Dutch Jews, which included Anne Frank, left for Auschwitz.

1944 Sep 5,
"Mad Tuesday" 65,000 Dutch Nazi collaborators fled to Germany.

1944 Sep 8,
Germany's V-2 offensive against England began. The 1st V-2 rockets landed in London & Antwerp.

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.

1944 Sep 21,
The last British paratroopers at bridge of Arnhem surrendered.

1944 Sep 22,
Aldert Klaas Dijkema, a Dutch resistance fighter, was executed by the Nazi Waffen SS shortly after he was captured. In 2012 Dutch-born Siert Bruins (91) was charged with Dijkema’s murder. In 2014 a German court dropped the case against Bruins ruling that there are too many gaps in the evidence to deliver a verdict.

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.

1944 Sep 28,
At the Battle of Arnhem the Germans defeated the British airborne in Netherlands.

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.

1944 Nov 28,
The first Allied supplies reached Antwerp by convoy.

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.

1945 Mar 3,
RAF bombing error hit The Hague and killed 511.

1945 Mar 3,
Roermond-Venlo, Netherlands, was freed.

1945 Mar 5,
Allies bombed The Hague, Netherlands.

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.

1945 Mar 8,
53 Amsterdammers were executed by Nazi occupiers.

1945 Mar 11,
Flemish Nazi collaborator Maria Huygens was sentenced to death.

1945 Mar 12,
In Amsterdam 30 people were executed by Nazi occupiers.

1945 Mar 13,
Queen Wilhelmina returned to Netherlands.

1945 Apr 8,
Nazi occupiers were executed. Nazi general Christiansen fled the Netherlands.

1945 Apr 12,
Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Westerbork, Neth.

1945 Apr 14,
Arnhem and Zwolle were freed from Nazis.

1945 Apr 17,
Canadian lead tanks roll into Apeldoorn, Netherlands, loudly cheered by relieved residents.

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.

1945 May 1,
Arthur Seys-Inquart, Nazi overlord of Netherlands, fled to Flensburg.

1945 May 4,
German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany agreed to surrender.

1945 May 5,
Netherlands and Denmark were liberated from Nazi control. The Liberation of the Netherlands was completed by the First Canadian Army.

1945 May 7,
SS opened fire on a crowd in Amsterdam and killed 22.

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.

1945 Jun 6,
Meinoud M. Rost van Tonningen, anti Semite, NSB (1937-41), committed suicide.

1945 Aug 17,
Indonesian nationalists declared independence from the Netherlands.

1945 Oct 6,
Gen Eisenhower was welcomed in Hague on Hitler's train.

1945 Dec 27,
The Dutch formally relinquished sovereignty to Indonesia.

1946 Mar 1,
In the Netherlands Felix Gulje, head of a construction company, was murdered at his door front. Rumors had circled that Gulje worked with occupation authorities during the war. After his death it emerged that Gulje had sheltered Jews and given money to hide others. In 2011 Atie Ridder-Visser (96), former resistance member, confessed to the killing.

1946 Mar 2,
Dutch troops landed on East Bali.

1946 May 29,
KVP won the Provincial National elections in Netherlands.

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.

1947 Dec 9,
In western Java up to 430 men were rounded up and shot by Dutch troops in the village of Rawagedeh. The Dutch called the incident a "police action" to quell an uprising. The Dutch government conceded in 1995 that summary executions had taken place in Rawagedeh, now known as Balongsari, but said prosecutions were no longer possible. In September, 2011, a Dutch court ordered the government to compensate the widows of Indonesian villagers, to apologize for the killings and to give each of the 10 plaintiffs $27,000. Old friends and neighbors cajoled, bullied and intimidated the plaintiffs and their families until local officials jumped in, forcing them to part with half their cash.

1947 Dec 29,
Hans van Meegeren (b.1889), Dutch painter and forger, died. In 2006 Frank Wynne authored “I Was Vermeer.”

1947
“The Diary of Anne Frank” was first published. In her diary Anne Frank (1929-1945) chronicled the details of her teenage life hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944, when the Nazi secret police discovered her and her family's hiding place. Miep Gies (1909-2010), had guarded Anne's memoirs and presented it to the girl's father, Otto, when he returned from the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of World War II, the only one of his family to survive.

1947
Gerard Kuiper of Holland and Texas discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars.

1947
Klaas Carel Faber (1922-2012) was convicted of murder and aiding the enemy in time of war for helping the Netherlands' Nazi occupiers during World War II. He had worked for the death squad code named "Silbertanne," or "Silver Fir," which carried out killings of resistance members, Nazi opponents, and people who hid Jews. He was given a death sentence that was later commuted to life in prison, but he escaped and fled to Germany in 1952, where he was granted citizenship. In 2010 the Dutch government issued a European arrest warrant for Faber (88). In 2011 a German court ruled that the Dutch request cannot be granted as Faber’s consent was mandatory due to his German citizenship. Klaas Faber died in Germany in 2012.

1948 Mar 18,
France, Great Britain and Benelux signed the Treaty of Brussels.

1948 Apr 18,
International Court of Justice opened at Hague, Netherlands.

1948 May 4,
The Hague Court of Justice convicted Hans Rauter (SS) of war crimes.

1948 May 12,
Queen Wilhelmina resigned. [see Sep 4]

1948 Aug 23,
The World Council of Churches (WCC) was formed in Amsterdam to help reconcile differences among Christians. Delegates of 147 churches assembled to merge the Faith and Order Movement and Life and Work Movement. Church leaders had agreed in 1937 to establish a World Council of Churches, based on a merger of the Faith and Order Movement and Life and Work Movement organizations. Headquarters were later established in Geneva.

1948 Sep 4,
Queen Wilhelmina abdicated the Dutch throne for health reasons.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1949 Apr 4,
The (NATO) North Atlantic Treaty Organization pact was signed by the US, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada. It provided for mutual defense against aggression and for close military cooperation.

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.

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.

1950
West Timor (Dutch Timor), part of the former Dutch East Indies, became Indonesian territory when Holland transferred sovereignty.

1952 Feb 26,
A Netherlands-Indonesian Unity conference took place.

1952 Apr 3,
Dutch Queen Juliana spoke to the US Congress.

1952 May 6,
Maria Montessori (b.1870), Italian physician, educationist, died In Holland. She opened her 1st school in San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907.

1952 May 29,
A 2nd Round Conference between Dutch Antilles and Suriname ended.

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.

1952-1954
In the Netherlands 34 boys under 18 during this period died in a Catholic institute for the mentally disabled in the Roermond Diocese. A Dutch Catholic institute for disabled girls in the same town of Heel experienced 40 deaths during the same period. In 2011 prosecutors opened an investigation on the unusually high death rate. In 2012 Dutch prosecutors said Brother Andreas, now dead, may have been involved in the suspicious deaths of 37 patients. The deaths sharply declined after he was transferred to another institution.

1953 Jan 31
to: 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.

1954 Dec 15,
With the proclamation of the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles attained equal status with the Netherlands proper and Suriname in the overarching Kingdom of the Netherlands.

1954
The 5 islands of the Netherlands Antilles were federated. These included Bonaire, Curacao, St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius.

1954
The Bilderberg Group was set up in to support military and economic co-operation between Europe and North America during the Cold War. Its first meeting was at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland.

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.

1955 May 18,
Queen Juliana opened the E55 fair in Amsterdam.

1956 Apr 10,
Philips broadcasted the 1st Dutch color TV programs.

1956 May 18,
Queen Juliana opened the Rembrandt fairs in Amsterdam.

1956 Nov 6,
Holland and Spain withdrew from Olympics, to protest Soviets in Hungary.

1957 May 4,
The Anne Frank Foundation formed in Amsterdam.

1957 May 9,
Heinrich Campendonk (b.1889), German-born Dutch artist and a member of the Der Blaue Reiter group (1911-1912), died.

1957 Jul 4,
Dutch 2nd Chamber accepted temporary tax increase.

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.

1958 Aug 14,
KLM Flight 607-E, a Lockheed Super Constellation, crashed west of Ireland, killing 99.

1959
Aldo van Eyck (d.1999 at 80) designed the State Orphanage in Amsterdam.

1959 Apr 13,
Eduard A van Beinum (57), Dutch musician, conductor, died.

1959 Oct 13,
K. Rudolf Mengelberg, Dutch composer (Amsterdam Concertgebouw), died at 67.

1959
The massive Groningen gas field was discovered in the Netherlands.

1961 Dec 1,
The Territory of New Guinea declared independence from the Netherlands.

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.

1962 Jun 3,
Lee Harvey Oswald arrived by train in Oldenzaal, Netherlands.

1962 Jun 4,
Lee Harvey Oswald departed Rotterdam on SS Maasdam to US.

1962 Jun 28,
Thalidomide was banned in Netherlands.

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.

1964 Aug 25,
Singapore limited imports from Netherlands due to Indonesian aggression.

1965 May 25,
Remco Prins, Dutch rock guitarist/vocalist (Burma Shave-Stash), was born.

1965 May 25,
Roef-Ragas, Dutch actor (Missing Link, Red Rain, Juju, Mykosch), was born.

1966
Dutch courts prosecuted a blasphemy case putting a novelist on trial for a story about wanting to have sex with God, who had taken the form of a donkey. Gerard Reve was acquitted. The 1932 blasphemy law barred scorn against any religion.

1968 Mar 3,
Greece, Portugal and Spain's embassies were bombed in the Hague.

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.

1968 Sep 1,
Pirate Radio Marina in the Netherlands began transmitting.

1968
The Rembrandt Research Project was formed and funded by the government to act as the gatekeepers of Rembrandt’s work.

1968
In the Netherlands the 56 square km of Oostvaardersplassen was reclaimed from the sea and was intended for industrial use. It lay vacant and became a nature reserve.

1969 Mar 25,
John and Yoko Ono staged a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam.

1969 Mar 26,
The Nuclear reactor in Dodewaard, Netherlands, went into use.

1969 May 30,
Refinery workers on Curacao set fires in Willemstad. Marines from the Netherlands restored order.

1969 Oct,
Economists Jan Timbergen (1903-1994) of the Netherlands and Ragnar Frisch of Norway were awarded the first 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.

1970 Jul 15,
Frederik Lugt (b.1884), Dutch founder of the Fondation Custodia (1947), died in Paris. The foundation, which he founded with his wife, kept intact his collection of Old Master drawings at the Institut Neederlandais, the Dutch cultural center in Paris.

1971
Cornelis van Houten (1920-2002), Dutch astronomer, discovered an asteroid and named it Asteroid 1877 Marsden after British astronomer Brian Marsden.

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).

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.

1973
The Dutch government built the Van Gogh Museum.

1974 Apr 6,
Willem Dudok (b.1884), Dutch architect (Hilversum Town Hall), died.

1974 Sep 1,
In the Netherlands laws prohibiting pirate radio came into effect.

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.

1975 Sep 14,
Rembrandt's "Nightwatch" was slashed and damaged in Amsterdam.

1975 Dec 14,
Six South Moluccan extremists surrendered after holding 23 hostages for 12 days on a train near the Dutch town of Beilen.

1975
Suriname gained Independence from the Netherlands.

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.

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.

1976 Dec 6,
Dutch War criminal Pieter Menten (1899-1987) was arrested in Switzerland after fleeing there in November.

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."

1976
Amnesty International received Netherlands’ Erasmus-prize.

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.

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.

1977 May 25,
Dutch social democratic party won parliamentary election.

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.

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).

1978 Jun 25,
Argentina, host to the World Cup, beat Netherlands in the soccer World Cup championship in Buenos Aires. It was later alleged that the ruling military junta bribed an opposing team to ensure Argentina’s progress and eventual victory.

1980 Apr 30,
Juliana Z(1909-2004), Queen of the Netherlands, abdicated. Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard, was crowned queen of Netherlands.

1980 Jul 9,
Pieter Menten (81), Dutch war criminal and art collector, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

1980 Sep 5,
The opera “Satyagraha” by Philip Glass, commissioned by the city of Rotterdam, was first performed by the Netherlands Opera.

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.

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.

1981 Apr 12,
Hendrik F. Andriessen (b.1892), Dutch organist, composer (Te Deum), died.

1981
Antoine W. van Agtmael of the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank coined the term “emerging market.” He coined the term to attract investors in a “Third World Equity Fund.” The emerging, or developing, market economy (EME) is defined as an economy with low-to-middle per capita income. Emerging markets constitute approximately 80% of the global population, representing about 20% of the world's economies.

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.

1983 Mar,
Compact Disc recordings, introduced by Phillips and Sony in Europe in 1982, were introduced to the US.

1983 Nov 1,
Anthony van Hoboken (b.1887), Dutch musicologist, died in Zurich. He is best known for his Haydn Catalog (1957).

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.

1983 Nov 30,
Police freed kidnapped beer magnate Alfred Heineken in Amsterdam.

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.

1984 May 25,
Piet Ketting (b.1904), Dutch pianist, conductor, composer, died.

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.

1986 Oct 4,
In the Netherlands Queen Beatrix officially opened the Oosterscheldekering for use by saying the well-known words: De stormvloedkering is gesloten. De Deltawerken zijn voltooid. Zeeland is veilig. (The flood barrier is closed. The Delta Works are completed. Zealand is safe.) It was the world's largest movable flood barrier.

1987 Nov 14,
Pieter Menten (b.1899), Dutch war criminal, died at an old people's home in Loosbroek, southern Netherlands.

1987
Heavy floods inundated the town of Valkenburg as the Geul River overflowed.

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.

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.

1988 Mar 2,
Dutch Liberal Party merged with SDP.

1988 Apr 11,
In Amsterdam the Royal Concert building (Concertgebouw) reopened.

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.

1988
The Dutch film "The Vanishing" was directed by George Sluizer. An American remake was also directed by Sluizer.

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.

1990
Toy company FAO Schwartz sold out to Dutch Company Koninklijke Bijenkorf Beheer.

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.

1991 Dec 9,
European Community leaders meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht tentatively agreed to begin using a single currency by 1999.

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.

1991
Klaas Bruinsma, gangster and drug baron, was gunned down near an Amsterdam hotel.

1992 Feb 7,
The Treaty on the European Union was signed in Maastricht by the Foreign and Finance Ministers of the Member States.

1992 Apr 13,
An earthquake rocked Germany and the Netherlands.

1992 Apr 13,
The opera "Life With an Idiot" by Alfred Schnittke had its world premier at the Netherlands Music Theater in Amsterdam.

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.

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.

1992 Dec 15,
The Netherlands ratifies the Treaty on the European Union.

1992 Dec 21,
A Dutch DC-10 burst into fire at landing on Faro, Portugal, and 56 died.

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.

1993
Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom won the European Literary Prize for best novel for his work: "The Following Story."

1993
Prosecution stopped against physicians giving lethal drugs to patients to help them commit suicide. In 2000 euthanasia was legalized.

1994 May 21,
John Henry Weidner (81), Dutch-US resistance fighter, died.

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.

1995
A river flood forced the evacuation of 200,000 people and millions of animals.

1995 Jun 3,
In Bosnia Mladic forces seized a Dutch observation post.

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.

1995 Jul 8,
Shelling resumed and the Dutch abandoned 3 posts under direct fire. 30 Dutch troops were taken by the Serbs to Bratunac.

1995 Jul 9,
The Dutch again asked for air support but it was refused.

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.

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.

1996 Feb,
The last Dutch draft notices were sent out.

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.

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.

1996 Jun 9,
The latest unemployment rate was 7%.

1996 Jul 7,
The average cost of a Big Mac in the Netherlands was $3.21.

1996 Sep 25,
A DC-3 aircraft went into the North Sea near Den Helder and killed all 32 people on board.

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.

1996 Dec,
Wim Duisenberg of the Netherlands was approved to run the European Monetary Institute in Frankfurt, Germany.

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.

1996
Wijnand van der Sanden, curator of the Drents Museum in Holland, authored "Through Nature to Eternity: The Bog Bodies of Northwest Europe."

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.”

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.

1997 Mar 25,
An arson attack left a Turkish woman and 5 children dead in the Hague.

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.

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.

1997
The Dutch film "Character" was set in Rotterdam in the 1920s. It won an Oscar for best foreign film.

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.

1998
Ernst Langhout, a singer-songwriter, increased his sales when he began singing in his native Frisian language.

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.

1998 Aug 1,
The 5th quadrennial Gay Games began in Amsterdam with some 15,000 competitors. The games closed Aug 8.

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.

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.

1998 Sep 19,
The worst storm in a century hit the Netherlands and Belgium over the past week.

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."

1998 Nov 13,
The cabinet approved a plan to let homosexuals adopt Dutch children by Jan 1, 2000.

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.

1998
The 245 minute film "Amsterdam Global Village" was directed by Johan van der Keuken and showed at the SF Film Fest.

1998
The documentary film "Sex, Drugs and Democracy" was produced.

1998
The Dutch film "The Dress" starred Hanri Garcin and Ariane Schluter. It was written and directed by Alex van Warmerdam.

1999 Jan 1,
Netherlands along with 10 other European Union nations made the transition to the new Euro monetary system.

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.

1999 Apr 5,
Libya handed over to UN officials 2 men accused in the1988 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.

1999 May 16,
The 1956 Picasso painting, "Woman Nude Before Garden," was slashed by a mental patient in Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum.

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.

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.

1999 Oct 26,
The Parliament overturned a 1912 ban on brothels.

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.

1999
The Netherlands documentary film "I Love Money" (the title used symbols for "love" and "money") was directed by Johan van der Keuken.

1999
A leftist coalition toppled the long-ruling Christian Democrats.

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