Tomorrow is remembrance day in the Netherlands, as the dead and victims of World War II and beyond are honoured. Each year at the national memorial service at the Dam square in Amsterdam a poem is read by the winner of the school competition organised by the remembrance committee. This year there was controversy
as the winning poem was about a Dutch volunteer for the Waffen SS, which was not appreciated by the Auschwitz survivors organisation, which threated to boycott the procedings. In the end therefore the poem was scrapped, but it had already laid bare a sore spot in Dutch history.
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posted by MartinWisse
on May 3, 2012 -
38 comments
Should you find yourself wandering around the city of Leiden, the Netherlands sometime, you may
notice some curious markings on the city's walls.
These
Muurgedichten ("Wall Poems") adorn many of the town's streets
(clickable map), and many English-language poets are represented:
one John Keats, for instance, inside a bookshop;
Dylan Thomas,
E. E. Cummings,
W.B. Yeats, some guy
called William Shakespeare, or this
ode to Charlie Parker by American
William Waring Cuney.
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posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Apr 5, 2009 -
15 comments
The Evoluon was a museum dedicated to science and technology, and the place of technology in society. It was closed for the public in 1989 and has not been re-opened as a public museum since. Watch the wonderfully 60s
promotion (worth it just for the soundtrack).
[via]
posted by tellurian
on Dec 5, 2008 -
12 comments
The Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Costume Illustration has drawings of uniforms and regimental regalia from all over the world. Assembled by one of these great, eccentric collectors of the late 19th Century, Dr. H. J. Vinkhuijzen, a Dutch medical doctor who started out as an army physician and eventually rose to the position of official court physician to Prince Alexander of Netherlands. He pulled plates out of books, colored in black and white drawings and painted his own watercolor illustrations. His collection includes pictures of the soldiers of
many different nations and eras, from military superpowers like the
Roman Empire,
France and
Great Britain, to lesser known, but no less formidable forces, like
Byzantium and
Persia and even taking in such minnows as
Luxembourg,
Monaco and Montenegro. Due to Vinkhuijzen's unusual classification system it can be hard to find some of the more interesting images, such as pictures of
Etruscan cavalry,
Spanish military musicians and
1830's Belgian ambulance.
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 4, 2008 -
11 comments
Just lately I was thinking of the Dutch Invasion. No, not
this one. Not
this one either. I mean
this one. There was, of course,
Shocking Blue, with their
classic hit,
Venus, and their lesser-known
Never Marry a Railroad Man and
Mighty Joe. Then there was the
George Baker Selection, with
Little Green Bag and
Una Paloma Blanca. Then you've got the very, er...
unique Ma Belle Amie, by
Peter Tetteroo and the
Tee Set. And how 'bout that
Golden Earring, eh?
Radar Love? Amirite? And of course, the inimitable
Focus, with their mega-hit instrumental,
Hocus Pocus. By now you're probably asking yourself "Why didn't they ever put a bunch of these Dutch bands out on little platforms sticking out of the ocean, and throw in some go-go girls, and film the whole thing from helicopters?" Well,
THEY DID! Those crazy Dutch!
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posted by flapjax at midnite
on Oct 19, 2007 -
52 comments
Last weekend's
PICNIC'07 conference in Amsterdam featured a
Green Challenge: to come up with the best marketable green idea that could be developed and sold to consumers within two years. Dutch decentralized renewable energy company
Qurrent took down the big €500,000 prize for the
Qbox: a device which creates optimizing energy algorithms for all devices in a home.
See also:
Green Thing.
posted by chuckdarwin
on Oct 1, 2007 -
10 comments
Secret agent Huub Lauwers was
parachuted into occupied Holland in 1941 to relay intelligence back to London. His capture by the Germans marked the beginning of the
Englandspiel, a deadly game of cat-and-mouse intelligence that cost the lives of over fifty agents. Lauwers frantically tried to inform the
SOE that he had been caught, but the
Baker Street Irregulars just didn't get it. Or
did they? [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Aug 6, 2006 -
16 comments
Dutch broadcast station VPRO's
website is Holland’s biggest platform for alternative music. Here's a
link to a shitload of streaming live concerts and tracks.
You'll have to do a bit of cut and paste once there, but it's the easiest way for me to link to the list. For the cut-and-paste-inept, there's a standard
interface, but the site's not in english.
posted by dobbs
on Jul 8, 2006 -
11 comments
