Louis de Vries

Levie "Louis" de Vries (January 5, 1905, Groningen - September 5, 1935, Zwolle) was a Dutch jazz trumpeter.
Louis de Vries was the eldest son of amateur trumpeter Arend de Vries. Just like his brothers Jacob (1906-1976) and Izaac and his sister Clara Johanna Suzanna, Louis was taught to play the trumpet by his father. He played as a teenager with the Tuschinski Theatre Orchestra. This was an orchestra which played music during silent films shown in the famous Tuschinski movie theater in Amsterdam until the Nazi occupation 1940-1945. Owner and managing director was Abraham Tuschinski.
In the second half of the 1920s Louis de Vries worked with the Excellos Five, Marek Weber and The Ramblers together with his brother Jacob. In 1930 he played with Ben Berlin and in 1931-1932 with Juan Llossas. From 1933 onwards he worked with his brother once more, almost up until his death. In 1935 he played with Valaida Snow in England. On his way to a concert in Groningen on 31 August 1935, he got involved in a car accident as a result of which he died on 5 September 1935.
His sister Clara Johanna Suzanna de Vries (Schoonhoven, 31 December 1915 - Auschwitz, 22 October 1942) was a well-known Dutch jazz trumpeter and from 1938 onwards until her death in 1942 the bandleader of an all-women jazz band, The Rosian Ladies.
After a visit to the Netherlands, Louis Armstrong remarked: "That Louis de Vries, he had a sister Clara with a ladies-band. Oh boy, she could play that horn".


Angel-Warrior Monument

Angel-Warrior Monument () is a monument dedicated to Czechs and Slovaks, who were taken prisoner during World War I and Russian Civil War. It is situated in the city of Taganrog, Rostov Oblast, Russia at Taganrog Old Cemetery.
Description.
In 1918, 1700 Czechs and Slovaks who were captured during the First World War, worked at the Russian-Baltic Plant (Combine Plant, JSC) in Taganrog. A large number of these workers died during the Civil War, fighting on the side of Bolsheviks. To honor their memory, in 1927 a monument made of red sandstone was erected on the project of J. Navrat. Above the gravestone, there is the sculpture of an Angel warrior. One of his wings is broken, and with the other one he tries to cover the grave of his fallen comrades. The sculptor wanted to express pride in those who set foot in battle.
On the pedestal are engraved words in Russian and Czech:
This text, written in the style of revolutionary Romanticism, however, has only been partially preserved. The fragment of the angel-warrior's head is lost: soft sandstone slowly collapses when snow melts after winter. The monument was temporarily preserved with cement milk, because of what the color was distorted, so an urgent restoration work is necessary.
As of 2009, almost nothing remained out of the conservation layer, so the monument was painted by enthusiasts with façade paint in pink-beige color. In 2010 and subsequent years it was repainted in white. In the spring of 2016, on the site of the Russian part of the epitaph, a black marble slab was installed with a replica of the text.


Geertruida Carelsen

Amy Geertruida de Leeuw (10 April 1843 – 4 June 1938), known by the pen name Geertruida Carelsen, was a Dutch author and journalist.
Life and works.
Provenance and early years.
Amy Geertruida de Leeuw was born at the family home alongside the in Haarlem, the oldest of her parents' four children. Her mother was Maria Cornelia Elisabeth Penninck Hoofd (1815/1816–1876), half-niece (following the re-marriage of Geertruida's widowed grandmother) of the landscape architect , and a professional translator of English provenance. Johan Carel de Leeuw (1816–1880), her father, was a water engineer who was in charge of the draining of the Anna Paulownapolder north of Alkmaar. In 1848 the company that had been set up to drain the Anna Paulownapolder filed for bankruptcy and her father lost a large part of his savings and the handsome salary which he had hitherto earned. The family's circumstances were suddenly much diminished, and a sense of shock formed the background for this part of Geertruida's childhood. In 1855 her father accepted a job as a , becoming a senior administrative official with a water company. This meant relocating to the newly available drained lands of the Anna Paulownapolder. It was no longer possible for Amy Geertruida, by now aged 12, to attend the school in Haarlem where she had received her early education. Instead she and her younger sister Albertina Carolina were educated by her mother in the evenings. Their two brothers were sent away to boarding school for their educations. Thanks to her mother's English background, Amy Geertruida de Leeuw was able to master the English language relatively young.
She herself would remain unmarried.
As a child, de Leeuw developed a passion for gardening which would never leave her. This was encouraged by her step-grandfather (her grandmother's second husband), the landscape architect who lived nearby and gave her access to a piece of land where she could create and develop a little garden of her own. After the family relocated, in 1855, she frequently accompanied her father on the walks he took in the course of his work, to inspect the conditions of dikes that drained and protected the Anna Paulownapolder. As a teenager she also came increasingly to help her father with his work back in the house, organising his work-diary and handling some of his office correspondence.
Writer.
When she was 20, de Leeuw decided to become a writer, "not because I particularly wanted to [write]. But because I had stuff to say". Along with Henriëtte van der Meij, de Leeuw came from the first generation of women few of whom turned to journalism as a way to earn a living: she was acutely aware of being a woman in a man's world. Initially her contributions appeared simply under the by-line, "from a country girl" ("... een landmeisje"), but she was told she should use a name, so chose the pseudonym George Zeemeeuw. This generated with objections that a woman should not be writing under a name that implied she was a man. Following discussion of the matter with her father she switched to writing under the name Geertruida Carelsen. "Geertruida" was already her second real name, which she had been given because it was the second name of her paternal grandmother: the name "Carel" was her father's second name.
She began in 1863, writing letters reflecting on nature, with the intention of bringing a greater knowledge of nature to "city girls". In 1874 these letters were bundled into a single compilation and published under the title "In 't vrije veld. Brieven van een Landmeisje aan jonge dames" ("loosely, "In the open field. Letters from a country girl to young ladies""). She celebrated the birth of Princess Wilhelmina in 1880 with a poem "On the birth of a princess", which was published in , an Amsterdam-based mass circulation daily newspaper. Over the next twenty years she followed this up with a number of further novellas, poems and short "impressions" that were published in various newspapers and magazines. She became a regular contributor to in 1881 when the paper published the first in her series of ten lengthy, readable and scholarly pieces on "botanical city walks", in which she demonstrated literary talent and a botanical knowledge that was both broad and deep, evidently acquired from her mother's kinsman, the landscape architect . It was as a journalist - a female journalist - that she would later become more widely known.
Nurse.
Carelsen's mother died in 1876 and her father in 1880. Her siblings had already left home, and finding herself, for the first time, alone, she took work in an Amsterdam hospital as a trainee nurse. There was no preliminary requirement to study for any sort of diploma, but she evidently brought commitment and energy to her hospital training and duties, possibly supported by the experience gained looking after her own parents during their final years.
London.
She worked at the hospital till 1888, which was when "family circumstances" called her to London where for not quite three years, she lived with maternal-side relatives. Her English kinsfolk appear to have moved in politically left-wing circles: life in London made a deep impression on her still youthfully receptive soul. She was struck by the way that in England great affluence and gut-wrenching poverty could be found side by side. Great industry brought both great benefits and great destruction. She was no doubt influenced by the intensely spiritual and deeply intellectual circles into which, through her cousins' network, she was welcomed. She found she was forced to think deeply: looking back, she would later recall that it was mainly during her time in England that she learned to be a journalist.
She attended numerous stage performances in the English capital, as well as signing up for various courses and attending lectures. In 1890, shortly before returning from London, she published a travel guide to the city.
Journalist.
By the time she left London she was in regular contact with a number of important Dutch newspapers. It was and the Utrechts Dagblad which sent her to Berlin at the end of 1890 to work as their correspondent there. One of the first pieces of written work that she produced after arriving in Berlin was a travel guide to the city, which was published in 1891. She would spend seventeen years in Berlin, and to judge by the proportion of her memoires devoted to those years, Carelsen regarded her time in Berlin as by far the most important part of her professional career. J. P. Thijsse would later write that Carelsen was one of the best Dutch journalists, irrespective of gender. in 1893 she accepted membership of the Leiden-based Dutch Literary Society ("Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde"/ MNL) which had, up till this point, been an all-male association.
Final years.
Increasingly troubled by blindness, Geertruida Carelsen lived out her final fourteen years in Haarlem, the city of her birth. He public profile was by now diminished, but she continued to write for a number of magazines until well into her old age. Her themes were frequently horticultural or otherwise concerned with nature. She was also over many years a persistent advocate of improved vocation training for women, and promoted the need to open horticultural schools for girls. She also continued to attend meetings of the Dutch Literary Society. She devoted much of her time to tending and developing her garden. She published her memoires in 1928, and then a second volume of memoires which appeared in 1933. She wrote of it in 1932 in a letter to her friend, the playwright-businessman , "It may well be my final book, but my soul is in it 100%"..
The writer A. G. de Leeuw, better known under her pen-name as Geertruida Carelsen, died aged 95 at Haarlem on 4 June 1938.
Output (selection).
A more detailed version of this listing has been placed online by the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL).


Battle of Maastricht

The Battle of Maastricht was one of the first battles that took place during the German Campaign on the Western Front during World War II. Maastricht was a key city in order to capture the Belgian Fort Eben-Emael and split the allied armies in half.
Prelude.
The German goal of the operation was to take the bridges over the river Maas intact, in order to have an easier road to France. Therefore, the Germans sent in teams disguised as civilians whose jobs were to sabotage the bridge charges. However, they were spotted and arrested, and when they attempted to run, shot.
Battle.
The sluice complex at Borgharen—just north of Maastricht—was another waterworks that could not be destroyed. A section of infantry was stationed there. Close to the bridge, a casemate with a machine gun could assist. In the early morning hours, a patrol of six motorised infantrymen approached the eastern guard post. They were a reconnaissance party of the Hocke squad. They were ordered to stop, and four of them were taken prisoner. The other two were able to escape. The Dutch Lieutenant was confident that more would be coming, and he ordered his men to remain prepared. Not much later, more German soldiers appeared on motorcycles. The Dutch let them approach to within , then opened fire with two machine guns and every rifle available. The Germans temporarily retreated. However, when the Germans brought in reinforcements, the squad was overwhelmed. The defenders tried to draw back to the sluice. The move was difficult under ever-increasing German fire. The men at the sluice itself were able to resist the Germans, but the southeastern squad—which defended the northern entrance into Maastricht—had to give in when their machine gun failed. The gap that now existed in the outer defences of the city was soon penetrated by the majority of the Germans that had agitated against the sluice.
The 4. "Panzerdivision" encountered resistance around Gulpen, delaying them for hours. A column instructed to advance against Maastricht from the south was able to move forward faster. It appeared in front of the outer defences at Heugem. There, the barricades had been sealed and locked as instructed. The defending unit was ordered to move back behind the Maas once it become clear that the outer defences had been penetrated.
It was now up to the rearguard of the outer defences to slow down the German advance. The rearguard managed to destroy two armored cars and block the road for the remaining cars. When the German infantry had almost reached its position the commanding Dutch sergeant ordered an organised retreat. The squad safely reached the west bank of the Maas a little later.
By this time, only the railway bridge remained intact. The Germans felt that it could be a very useful crossing point for tanks, and only 35 Dutch soldiers defended it. As the Germans advanced to the bridge, they were briefly held off by the Dutch defenders. A few German soldiers were killed. However, the Dutch soon fell back because of overwhelming numbers. As the Germans began to cross the bridge, the charges were planted and the bridge fell into the river. After all of the bridges over the Maas River were destroyed, the only task that remained was to hold off the Germans as long as possible.
At the destroyed bridges in Maastricht, stray Dutch units continued piecemeal attacks on the Germans; the Dutch had spread over many strategic points, including a sniper squad in the towers of the bridge. When the Germans boldly placed an anti-tank gun in front of the bridge, aimed at the adjacent St. Servaasbrug, the Dutch instantly killed the crew. A new crew shared the same fate. A small number of rubber boats tried to cross the Maas but were shot to pieces. Then the Germans retreated from this location.
At the destroyed railway bridge, the heaviest fighting would be seen. What remained of the German squad that had tried to take the bridge was soon reinforced by the main German force. Two armored cars tried to approach the east bank but were destroyed by two anti-tank rifles. A light tank was also put out of action by the AT rifles. The German losses were high. However, soon after, three more German armored cars approached. The situation for the light Dutch infantry had become critical. Many defenders were killed or wounded by the German fire, and soon one of the two anti-tank rifles was destroyed. The headquarters were contacted to report the situation. From this contact, it became clear that the Dutch resistance at Maastricht had been ordered to cease.
"Luitenant-Kolonel" Govers, Territorial Commander (TC) of Limburg, had called a meeting later in the day. The German battle plans had been found on a German POW in the morning. All German units were mentioned in the plans and maps with directions had been part of the catch. It was clear that all bridges had been destroyed. It was also clear than an entire German tank division was deployed in southern Limburg. The TC had only two companies left under his command, without anti-tank guns or artillery. The ancient city of Maastricht, with all its cultural heritage, should not suffer more than necessary. The outcome of the meeting was that all further opposition to the Germans in and around Maastricht, the last standing defences in Limburg, would cease. The TC himself went to the Wilhelminabrug under a truce flag. Soon, contact was established. A few hours later, all Dutch troops in Maastricht and its surroundings capitulated.
Aftermath.
The battle in South-Limburg (Sector Roosteren – Maastricht) had cost the lives of 47 Dutch soldiers (two officers, seven NCOs, 38 corporals and soldiers). The German losses are again not known in detail, although at some scenes accurate figures are available. It is estimated that between 130–190 Germans died due to the fighting in the south. After the battle, it was reported that 186 German bodies were found. It is confirmed from German material-states that nine armored cars and tanks were destroyed in Limburg. Also, 10 German aircraft—mainly Junkers Ju 52s and Ju 87s—crashed or were shot down in Zuid-Limburg.


Eltek

Eltek is a global electric power conversion specialist that develops and markets systems for telecommunications and industrial applications. The company is based in Drammen, Norway. As of 2018 it has approximately 2000 employees, with offices in 40 countries,
History.
The company dates back to 1970. In 1998 it was listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. under the name Eltek ASA. In 2007 the company bought the Texas-based Valere Power.
In 2015, Eltek ASA was acquired by Delta Electronics, was delisted from the Oslo Stock Exchange, and changed its name to Eltek Power Systems AS. It is now simply known as Eltek, and continues as a division of Delta Group.


Jacques Beckers

Jacques Maurice Beckers (born 14 February 1934, died 26 February 2021) is a Dutch-born American astronomer. He was director of the National Solar Observatory between 1993 and 1998. Beckers worked mainly in the field of astrophysics and astronomical optometry.
Career.
Beckers was born on 14 February 1934 in Arnhem. He studied at Utrecht University, where he obtained a PhD under Marcel Minnaert in 1964. Beckers then moved to the United States, where he obtained American nationality in 1968. He was director of the Multiple Mirror Telescope at Mount Hopkins in Arizona from 1979 to 1984. Afterwards Beckers served as head of the National New Technology Telescope (NNTT) project. Although initially enthusiastic Beckers became frustrated when the director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory limited the scope of his project. In 1988 he started as research leader of the Interferometry Group at the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. In 1993 Beckers moved back to the United States to become director of the National Solar Observatory, which he was between 1993 and 1998. He worked a further three years as researcher at the observatory. In 2001 Beckers started as scientist at the University of Chicago.
As a researcher Beckers worked mainly in the field of astrophysics and astronomical instrumentation in the field of optometry.
Awards and honors.
Beckers was awarded the Arctowski Medal by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States in 1975. In 1988 he became a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Beckers was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989. In 2004 Lund University awarded Beckers an honorary degree. One year later was made a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.


Jan Schilt

Jan Schilt (3 February 1894, Gouda – 9 January 1982, Englewood, New Jersey) was a Dutch-American astronomer, inventor of the Schilt photometer.
Biography.
Schilt was born in 1894 in the Netherlands, and educated there under Jacobus Kapteyn. He emigrated to the United States in 1933 as the Chair of Columbia University's astronomy department, a position which he filled until his retirement in 1962, when he was granted the title of Rutherford Professor of Astronomy Emeritus.
Schilt's astronomical work included the invention of the Schilt photometer, a device which measures the light output of stars, and, indirectly, their distances. He worked on the motions of star streams in the Milky Way Galaxy, and was director of the Yale-Columbia Southern Station in Johannesburg and Canberra, as well as Director of the Rutherford Observatory at Columbia.
Schilt was noted at Columbia for walking into his classes the first day after the launch of Sputnik 1 and commenting "Well, gentlemen, it is not every day we have something new in the sky to talk about", following which he devoted the entire class to proving that Sputnik had been deliberately launched into an orbit designed to make it invisible from the United States for as long as possible (six weeks).
13,500 items of his papers are contained in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University.
Honor.
Asteroid 2308 Schilt (1967 JM) was named in his honor.


SS Vigrid

SS "Vigrid" was a Norwegian steam-powered cargo ship built in 1915. Sailing during the First World War, she was torpedoed and sunk without warning by a German U-boat on 31 December 1917.
Construction.
A 1,617 gross register tonnes (951 net register tonnes) vessel, she was built by the shipyard "Bergens Mekaniske Verksted" in the Western Norwegian port city of Bergen. Having yard number 191, she was launched on 29 October 1915 and completed the next month. "Vigrid" was powered by a single triple-expansion 885 ihp steam turbine engine. She measured between perpendiculars, with a beam of and a draught of . After completion she was assigned the code letters MLRT.
First World War.
"Vigrid" sailed during the First World War, with H.M. Jensen as her captain. She belonged to the company of ship-broker Anton Barth von der Lippe in the port city Tønsberg, until she was bought by ship-broker Johan Waage's company "D/S A/S Vigrid" of Bergen in August 1917.
Although Norway remained officially neutral throughout the First World War, her large fleet of merchant ships, over 2,000 strong, served a vital role in keeping the United Kingdom with supplies. The Norwegian merchant navy suffered heavy losses to German U-boats during the war, losing close to half its ships, with an official death toll of 1,892 sailors.
Sinking.
On 31 December 1917 she was attacked and torpedoed without warning by the German U-boat , commanded by "Kapitänleutnant" Athalwin Prinz. "U-95" belonged to the German 4th U-boat Flotilla. "Vigrid" sank in the English Channel some west-north-west of Rundelstone Buoy, at . At the time of her sinking, she was "en route" from the port of Barry in Wales to Rouen in France with a cargo of 2,102 tons of coal. Five members of the crew were lost, while the captain and thirteen other crewmen survived the loss of the ship and landed at Penzance in Cornwall. Three of the sailors lost on "Vigrid" were Swedish citizens, the other two Norwegians.
Aftermath.
On 16 January 1918, 16 days after sinking "Vigrid", "U-95" was lost with all 36 crew members to unknown causes near Hardelot in France. Before being lost, "U-95" had managed to sink a total of 14 ships and damage another three vessels during the course of the six patrols she carried out in her career.


Agnes van Stolk

Agnes Johanna Elisabeth van Stolk (1898-1980) was a Dutch artist.
Biography.
Stolk was born on 16 November 1898 in Hof van Delft. She attended the "Vrije Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten" (Free Academy of Visual Art) in the Hague. She studied with , Francis de Erdely, , , and . Her work was included in the 1939 exhibition and sale "Onze Kunst van Heden" (Our Art of Today) at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. She was a member of the "Haagse Kunstkring" (The Hague Art Circle) and "" (Pictura drawing society).
Stolk died on 11 August 1980 in Wassenaar.


Gottfried van Swieten

Gottfried Freiherr van Swieten (29 October 1733 – 29 March 1803) was a Dutch-born Austrian diplomat, librarian, and government official who served the Holy Roman Empire during the 18th century. He was an enthusiastic amateur musician and is best remembered today as the patron of several great composers of the Classical era, including Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Life and career.
Van Swieten was born Godefridus Bernardus "Godfried" van Swieten in Leiden and grew up in the Dutch Republic to the age of 11. His father, Gerard van Swieten, was a physician who achieved a high reputation for raising standards of scientific research and instruction in the field of medicine. In 1745, the elder Van Swieten agreed to become personal physician to the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and moved with his family to Vienna, where he also became the director of the court library and served in other government posts. The young Van Swieten was educated for national service in an elite Jesuit school, the Theresianum.
As diplomat.
According to Heartz the young Van Swieten had "excelled in his studies" and was fluent in many languages. Thus it was natural that he would pursue (following a brief stint in the civil service) a career as a diplomat. His first posting was to Brussels (1755–1757), then Paris (1760–1763), Warsaw (1763–1764) and ultimately (as ambassador) to the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia in Berlin (1770–77).
The last posting involved serious responsibility. Frederick had previously defeated Austria in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), seizing from her the territory of Silesia; and had successfully defended his conquest in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Van Swieten was ambassador during the First Partition of Poland (1772), in which much of the territory of this nation was annexed by the more powerful neighboring empires of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Austria rather unrealistically wanted Silesia (and other territories) back as part of the terms of the partition. It was Van Swieten's "thankless task" (Abert) to negotiate on this basis; according to Abert the 60-year-old Frederick replied to him: "That's the sort of suggestion you could make if I had gout in the brain, but I've only got it in my legs." Van Swieten shifted the negotiations to his backup plan and the Partition went forward with Silesia remaining Prussian.
During this period of his career Van Swieten assiduously cultivated his musical interests. His supervisor in Brussels, Count Cobenzl, reported in 1756 that "music takes up the best part of his time." In Berlin Van Swieten studied with Johann Philipp Kirnberger, a former pupil of J. S. Bach, and was part of the musical circle of Princess Anna Amalia, where the music of Bach and Handel was played and admired.
As librarian.
On his return to Vienna in 1777 Van Swieten was appointed as the Prefect of the Imperial Library, a post which had been vacant for five years since the father's death. Van Swieten remained imperial librarian for the rest of his life.
As librarian Van Swieten introduced the world's first card catalog (1780). Libraries had had catalogs before, in the form of bound volumes. Van Swieten's innovation of using cards permitted new entries to be freely added in a conveniently searchable order. Card catalogs were soon adopted elsewhere, notably in Revolutionary France.
Van Swieten also expanded the library's collection, notably with books on science, as well as older books from the libraries of monasteries that had been dissolved under the decrees of Emperor Joseph II.
In politics.
In 1780, when Joseph II came to the throne, Van Swieten's career reached its peak of success. He was appointed a Councillor of State and Director of the State Education Commission in 1781, then also as Director of a new Censorship Commission in 1782. Van Swieten was strongly sympathetic to the program of reforms which Joseph sought to impose on his empire (see Josephinism, benevolent despotism), and his position in government was a critical one, considered by Braunbehrens (1990) to be the equivalent of being minister of culture.
Edward Olleson describes the political situation: "The projected reforms of the educational system ... were the most fundamental of all. Joseph's goal of building up a middle class with a political responsibility towards the State depended on great advances in elementary education, and on the universities. Van Swieten's liberal views fitted him to the task of implementing the Emperor's plans." Olleson adds that, because Joseph's reforms increased the freedom of the press, a "flood of pamphlets" was published critical of the Imperial government—thus increasing Van Swieten's responsibilities in supervising the censorship apparatus of the government. His letters of the time report an extremely heavy workload.
In 1784 Van Swieten proposed that the Holy Roman Empire should have a copyright law; such a law had already been in effect in England since 1709 ("see: History of copyright"). Van Swieten's suggestion was overruled by the Emperor. Nicholas Till suggests that had Van Swieten's law been implemented, the career of his protégé Mozart (see below) as an independent musician might have gone much more successfully.
Van Swieten's rise to power eventually met with obstacles and trouble. In 1787, the Emperor launched a "disastrous, futile, and costly" (Till) war against the Turks, which put Austrian society in turmoil and undermined his earlier efforts at reform. Till writes:
Joseph attempted to pass the blame for events on to ... Van Swieten. As President of the Censorship Commission, [he] had been more liberal than Joseph was willing to countenance. ... As Minister for Education [he] had aimed to strip education of any religious character; he was more concerned about the dangers of religious orthodoxy than heresy, and believed that students should be taught a system of secular values based upon 'philosophy'. But his reforms, which indicated a far more radical rejection of religious education than Joseph was really prepared to accept, had failed. In 1790, Joseph wrote to Chancellor Kolowrat expressing his discontent: 'since an essential aspect of the education of young people, namely religion and morality, is treated far too lightly, since ... no feeling for one's true duties is being developed, the state is deprived of the essential advantages of having raised right-thinking and well-behaved citizens.'
The Emperor was already terminally ill when he wrote the quoted letter, and died later that year. He was replaced by his more conservative brother Leopold, which further undermined Van Swieten's position. A "bitter" (Olleson) power struggle took place which Van Swieten ultimately lost. He was relieved of his commission post on 5 December 1791, coincidentally the day his protégé Mozart died.
As composer.
Van Swieten's strong interest in music extended to the creation of his own compositions. While in Paris he staged a comic opera of his own composition. He also composed other operas as well as symphonies. These works are not considered of high quality and are seldom if ever performed today. The "Grove Dictionary" opines that "the chief characteristics of [his] conservative, three-movement symphonies are tautology and paucity of invention ... As a composer Van Swieten is insignificant."
Known works include three comic operas: "Les talents à la mode", "Colas, toujours Colas", and the lost "La chercheuse d'esprit". He also wrote ten symphonies, of which seven survive.
Other.
Van Swieten was well off financially, though by no means as wealthy as the great princes of the Empire. He had inherited money from his father, and he was also well paid for his government posts. Braunbehrens estimates his income as about "ten times Mozart's", which would make it (very roughly) 20,000 florins per year.
Van Swieten never married. Unlike his father, who remained a Protestant after coming to Austria, Gottfried converted to Roman Catholicism, the state religion of the empire.
Like many other prominent male Viennese (for example, as of 1784, Mozart), Van Swieten was a Freemason.
Van Swieten owned a Vermeer, the now famous "Art of Painting", which he inherited from his father. At the time it was not known that the painting was by Vermeer.
Death.
Van Swieten died in 1803 in Vienna.
Relation to classical composers.
The evidence suggests that Van Swieten's relationship with the great composers of his day was primarily one of patronage. This means that the composers did not work for Van Swieten on salary or commission, but received payments from him from time to time in the manner of a tip. Thus, Joseph Haydn remarked to his biographer Griesinger that ""He patronized me occasionally with several ducats." This was a common way of paying musicians in the age of aristocracy; Haydn had received similar payments from his employer Nikolaus Esterházy, though he also drew a salary. The patronage system also financed the early travels of the Mozart family.
The relationship between patron and artist was not one of social equals. An 1801 letter of Haydn to Van Swieten, by then his longtime collaborator, used no second person pronouns, instead addressing the Baron as "Your Excellency"; presumably this reflected their everyday practice.
Mozart.
Van Swieten first met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1768, when he was 35 years old and Mozart a boy of 11. The Mozart family was visiting Vienna, hoping to achieve further fame and income following the earlier completion of their Grand Tour of Europe. According to Mozart's father Leopold, Van Swieten was involved in the early planning of Wolfgang's ill-fated opera "La finta semplice" (the opera was later blocked by intrigues, and could be performed only in Salzburg).
In 1781, shortly after Mozart had moved to Vienna, Van Swieten met him again: at the salon of Countess Thun, Mozart played extracts from his recent opera "Idomeneo", with Van Swieten and other important officials in the audience; this event helped instigate Mozart's commission for the opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail", his first great success as a composer.
Sharing works by Bach and Handel.
By 1782, Van Swieten had invited Mozart to visit him regularly, in order to inspect and play his manuscripts of works by J. S. Bach and Handel, which he had collected during his diplomatic service in Berlin. As Mozart wrote to his father Leopold (10 April 1782):
I go every Sunday at twelve o'clock to the Baron van Swieten, where nothing is played but Handel and Bach. I am collecting at the moment the fugues of Bach—not only of Sebastian, but also of Emanuel and Friedemann.
Others also attended these gatherings, and Van Swieten gave Mozart the task of transcribing a number of fugues for instrumental ensembles so that they could be performed before the assembled company. Mozart also sat at the keyboard and rendered the orchestral scores of Handel's oratorios in a spontaneous keyboard reduction (while, according to Joseph Weigl, also singing one of the choral parts and correcting errors of the other singers).
It appears that encountering the work of the two great Baroque masters had a very strong effect on Mozart. Olleson suggests that the process took place in two stages. Mozart responded first with rather direct imitations, writing fugues and suites in the style of his models. These works "have the character of studies in contrapuntal technique." Many were left incomplete, and even the completed ones are not often performed today; Olleson suggests they have "a dryness which is absent from most of [Mozart's] music." Later, Mozart assimilated Bach and Handel's music more fully into his own style, where it played a role in the creation of some of his most widely admired works. Of these, Olleson mentions the C minor Mass (1784) and the chorale prelude sung by the two armored men in "The Magic Flute" (1791).
The "Gesellschaft der Associierten".
The keyboard-accompanied, one-on-a-part performances of Handel oratorios in Van Swieten's rooms whetted the interest of Van Swieten and his colleagues in full-scale performances of these works. To this end, in 1786 Van Swieten organized the "Gesellschaft der Associierten" ("Society of Associated Cavaliers"), an organization of music-loving nobles. With the financial backing of this group, he was able to stage full-scale performances of major works. Generally, these concerts were first given in one of the palaces of the members or in the large hall of the Imperial Library, then in a public performance in the Burgtheater or Jahn's Hall.
Mozart took on the task of conducting these concerts in 1788. He had previously been too busy with other tasks, but with a decline in his career prospects elsewhere he was willing to take up the post. In addition to having him conduct, the Gesellschaft commissioned Mozart to prepare four works by Handel for performance according to contemporary taste:
Van Swieten was responsible for the translations from English into German of the libretti for these works, a task he would perform later on for Haydn (see below).
The Gesellschaft's concerts were an important source of income for Mozart during this time, when he was experiencing severe financial worries. Van Swieten's loyalty to Mozart at this time is also indicated by one of Mozart's letters of 1789, in which he reported that he had solicited subscriptions to a projected concert series (as he had previously done with great success in the mid-1780s) and found that—after two weeks—the Baron was still the only subscriber.
Mozart's death and aftermath.
When Mozart died (1:00 am on 5 December 1791), Van Swieten showed up at his home and made the funeral arrangements. He may have temporarily helped support the surviving Mozarts, as Constanze's correspondence in several places mentions his "generosity". On 2 January 1793, he sponsored a performance of Mozart's "Requiem" as a benefit concert for Constanze; it yielded a profit of 300 ducats, a substantial sum. He was also reported to have helped arrange for the education of Mozart's son Karl in Prague.
Haydn.
In 1776, during a visit home to Vienna from his posting in Berlin, Van Swieten offered encouragement to the 43-year-old Joseph Haydn, who at the time was vexed by the hostile reception his work was receiving from certain Berlin critics. Van Swieten told him that his works were nevertheless in high demand in Berlin. Haydn mentioned this appreciatively in his 1776 autobiographical sketch.
In 1790, with the death of Nikolaus Esterházy, Haydn became semi-independent of his long-time employers the Esterházy family. He moved to Vienna and thus became more free to accept Van Swieten's patronage. Olleson suggests that Haydn participated in the Handel concerts of the Gesellschaft der Associierten, and notes that already in 1793, Van Swieten was trying to get him to write an oratorio (to a text by ). In 1794, when Haydn set off for London on his second journey there, he rode in a carriage provided to him by Van Swieten.
On his return the following year, Haydn and Van Swieten developed a close working relationship, with Van Swieten serving as his librettist and artistic adviser. The collaboration began in 1795/1796 with the small oratorio version of "The Seven Last Words of Christ". This work was composed by Haydn as an orchestral piece in 1785. In the course of his second London journey, in Passau, he had heard a revised version amplified to include a chorus, prepared by the Passau Kapellmeister Joseph Friebert. Liking the idea, Haydn then prepared his own choral version, with Van Swieten revising the lyrics used by Friebert.
Haydn and Van Swieten then moved on to larger projects: the full-scale oratorios "The Creation" (1798) and "The Seasons" (1801). Van Swieten translated (from English to German) and adapted the source material, which came from John Milton's poem "Paradise Lost" and James Thomson's poem "The Seasons", respectively. He also translated in the reverse direction, putting the German back into English in a way that would fit the rhythm of Haydn's music. This reverse translation, though often awkward, enabled the first published editions of these oratorios to serve both German- and English-speaking audiences.
In the margins of his libretti, Van Swieten made many specific artistic suggestions to Haydn about how various passages should be musically set, suggestions which in general Haydn "observed closely" (Olleson). One example is the moving episode in "The Creation" in which God tells the newly created beasts to be fruitful and multiply. Van Swieten's paraphrase of Genesis reads:
<poem lang="de" style="float:left;">
Seid fruchtbar alle,
Mehret euch!
Bewohner der Luft, vermehret euch, und singt auf jedem Aste!
Mehret euch, ihr Flutenbewohner
Und füllet jede Tiefe!
Seid fruchtbar, wachset, und mehret euch!
Erfreuet euch in eurem Gott!</poem>
<poem style="margin-left:2em; float:left;">
Be fruitful all
And multiply.
Dwellers of the air, multiply and sing on every branch.
Multiply, ye dwellers of the tides,
And fill every deep.
Be fruitful, grow, multiply,
And rejoice in your God!</poem>
Haydn's musical setting stems from a suggestion of Van Swieten's that the words should be sung by the bass soloist over an unadorned bass line. However, he only partly followed this suggestion, and after pondering, added to his bass line a rich layer of four-part harmony for divided cellos and violas, crucial to the final result.
The premieres of the three oratorios "The Seven Last Words", "The Creation" and "The Seasons" all took place under the auspices of the "Gesellschaft der Associierten", who also provided financial guarantees needed for Haydn to undertake long-term projects.
Beethoven.
Van Swieten was a patron and supporter of Ludwig van Beethoven during his early years in Vienna. Beethoven's experience with Van Swieten was in some ways parallel to Mozart's about 12 years earlier. He visited the Baron in his home, where there were still regular gatherings centered around the music of Bach and Handel. Beethoven's early biographer Anton Schindler wrote:
The evening gatherings at Swieten's home had a marked effect on Beethoven, for it was here that he first became acquainted with the music of Handel and Bach. He generally had to stay long after the other guests had departed, for his elderly host was musically insatiable and would not let the young pianist go until he had 'blessed the evening' with several Bach fugues.
Schindler's testimony is not generally trusted by modern musicologists (for discussion, see Anton Schindler). Indeed, Swieten's soirées were not Beethoven's first encounter with Bach's fugues. Beethoven's teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe wrote in a letter promoting Beethoven's abilities: "a boy of eleven years ... plays chiefly "The Well-Tempered Clavier" of Sebastian Bach, which Herr Neefe put into his hands. Whoever knows this collection of preludes and fugues in all the keys – which might almost be called the non plus ultra of our art – will know what this means." However, in the case of Swieten's invitation there is concrete evidence preserved in the form of a letter from Swieten to Beethoven. The letter dates from 1794, when Beethoven was 23 years old:
<poem style="margin-left: 2em;">
Monday, 15 December
Herr Beethoven
Alstergasse" No. 15
c/o Prince Lichnowsky
If you are not hindered this coming Wednesday, I wish to see you at my home at 8:30 in the evening with your nightcap in your bag. Give me your immediate answer.
Swieten</poem>
Albrecht explains "nightcap" as follows: "This aspect of Swieten's invitation was as much practical and considerate as it was hospitable: if Beethoven had returned home after the citywide 9 p.m. curfew, he would have had to pay Lichnowsky's turnkey a fee to let him in the locked house doors."
Exposure to Bach and Handel's music seems to have been important to Beethoven just as it had been to Mozart. Ferdinand Ries later wrote, "Of all composers, Beethoven valued Mozart and Handel most highly, then [J.] S. Bach. ... Whenever I found him with music in his hands, or saw some lying on his desk, it was certain to be a composition by one of these idols."
In 1801, Beethoven dedicated his First Symphony to Van Swieten.
Other associations.
Earlier in his career, while in Berlin, Van Swieten had also supported the career of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Bach wrote the six Symphonies for String Orchestra (1773; H. 657–662) on commission from Van Swieten; according to Goodwin and Clark, the commission specified that "the composer's creative imagination might have free rein, unfettered by any regard for technical difficulties". The third set of Bach's "Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber" (1781) is dedicated to Van Swieten.
Johann Nikolaus Forkel, the first biographer of Bach, dedicated his book to Van Swieten.
Van Swieten and the social customs of music.
Van Swieten is thought to have played a role in changing the social customs of music. As William Weber points out, in Van Swieten's time, it was still the normal practice for performers to play mostly newly composed music; often music that had been written by the performers themselves. The practice of cultivating the music of previous decades and centuries only gradually increased. By about 1870, older works had come to dominate the scene.
This shift began in Van Swieten's own century. Some of the early cases of performers playing older music are pointed out by Weber: "In France the tragedies lyriques of Jean-Baptiste Lully and his successors were performed regularly up through the 1770s. In England music of the sixteenth century was revived in the Academy of Ancient Music, and many of the works of George Frideric Handel remained in performance after his death in 1759." As Weber notes, Van Swieten was one of the pioneers of this trend, particularly in his work reviving the music of Bach and Handel, and in his encouragement of contemporary composers to learn from the old masters and create new work that would be inspired by them.
Van Swieten expressed some of his own views about the value of earlier music in the pages of the first volume of the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung":
I belong, as far as music is concerned, to a generation that considered it necessary to study an art form thoroughly and systematically before attempting to practice it. I find in such a conviction food for the spirit and for the heart, and I return to it for strength every time I am oppressed by new evidence of decadence in the arts. My principal comforters at such times are Handel and the Bachs and those few great men of our own day who, taking these as their masters, follow resolutely in the same quest for greatness and truth.
DeNora describes the devotion to earlier masters as a "fringe" view during the 1780s, but eventually others were following Swieten's lead, particularly with the success of "The Creation" and "The Seasons". The music publisher Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld wrote in 1796:
[Van Swieten is], as it were, looked upon as a patriarch of music. He has taste only for the great and exalted. ... When he attends a concert our semi-connoisseurs never take their eyes off him, seeking to read in his features, not always intelligible to every one, what ought to be their opinion of the music.
A corollary of a "taste for the great and exalted" is the idea that concert audiences should maintain silence, so that each note can be heard by all. This was not the received view in the 18th century, but was clearly Van Swieten's opinion. In his 1856 Mozart biography, Otto Jahn reported the following anecdote from Sigismund Neukomm:
[He] exerted all his influence in the cause of music, even for so subordinate an end as to enforce silence and attention during musical performances. Whenever a whispered conversation arose among the audience, his excellence would rise from his seat in the first row, draw himself up to his full majestic height, measure the offenders with a long, serious look and then very slowly resume his seat. The proceeding never failed of its effect.
Assessment.
Van Swieten has not fared well in assessments of his personal demeanor. In a frequently reprinted remark, Haydn remarked to Georg August Griesinger that Van Swieten's symphonies were "as stiff as the man himself." He maintained a firm social distance between himself and the composers he patronized, a distance rooted in the system of aristocracy still in force in the Austria in his day. Sigismund Neukomm wrote that he was "not so much a friend as a very self-opinionated patron of Haydn and Mozart." Olleson suggests that "in his own time Van Swieten won little affection" (adding: "but almost universal respect."). He also was not close to his fellow aristocrats; although his public roles in music and government were prominent, he avoided salon society, and after 1795 expressed content that he lived in "complete retirement".
Concerning Van Swieten's contributions to music, posthumous judgment seems most critical of his role as librettist. Olleson observes that in the three successive oratorio libretti that Van Swieten prepared for Haydn, his own involvement in the writing was greater for each than in the previous one. According to Olleson, "many critics would say that this progressive originality was disastrous."
Even Van Swieten's musical taste has been harshly criticized,<ref>By Mozart biographer Hermann Abert, who suggests that Swieten's fondness for Baroque polyphony reflected a superficial, mechanical musical outlook


Tre Volost

Tre Volost () was a territorial division (a "volost") of the Novgorod Republic.
It was first mentioned in a 1265 treaty of Yaroslav Yaroslavich with Novgorod, and was later also mentioned in other documents dated as late as 1471.
Tre Volost bordered Kolo Volost approximately along the line between Kildin Island and Turiy Headland of the Turiy Peninsula. Tre Volost was situated to the east of that line, while Kolo Volost laid to the west of it.


Dyro

Jordy van Egmond (; born April 22, 1992, in Leiden), known professionally as Dyro (), is a Dutch DJ and EDM producer. Since 2010 he has released original singles and remixes on labels such as Revealed Recordings, Musical Freedom, and Def Jam, and has also released official remixes for tracks such as "Right Now" by Rihanna and "Iron" by Nicky Romero and Calvin Harris. He collaborated with Tiësto on a single titled "Paradise" in 2013, and also that year he collaborated with Hardwell on the single "Never Say Goodbye". Featuring Bright Lights, it peaked at No. 23 on the UK Dance Chart. In 2014 Dyro ranked No. 27 on the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs list.
Dyro has undertaken a number of international tours since signing to Revealed Recordings in 2011, performing at festivals such as Electric Zoo in 2013 and 2014, Barbarella in 2014, and Future Music Festival in 2014. Since 2014 he has headlined venues such as Ministry of Sound in London and Space in Ibiza. In 2014 Dyro founded the independent record label WOLV Records, which releases both his own material and that of other "up and coming" artists. After hosting the radio show "Daftastitc Radio" since around 2013, Dyro currently hosts "WOLV Radio with Dyro", which broadcasts on around 30 FM stations.
Music career.
Early life and first releases.
He started learning FL Studio and making music in his bedroom under the name Dyro. After being discovered by Laidback Luke on a forum, Dyro was one of the first artists signed to Revealed Recordings, which had been founded by Dutch DJ Hardwell in 2010. Revealed released Dyro's single "Daftastic" in 2011, and around that time Dyro also released singles on labels such as Mixmash Records, Spinnin' Records, and Strictly Rhythm. In 2012 he collaborated with Dannic on mixing "The Sound of Revealed 2012" compilation album. Also in 2012 Dyro's track "Top of the World" was released on Afrojack's Wall Recordings label, with Afrojack mixing the track into a number of live sets.
Early touring and radio shows (2013-2014).
While beginning to tour and perform, Dyro continued to study engineering at college, and would fly home to take part in exams. He started 2013 by joining Hardwell and Dannic on the "Hardwell presents Revealed: Canadian Bus Tour," performing twelve dates at Canadian clubs such as The Guvernment in Toronto. Dyro and Dannic also joined Hardwell on the "Revealed North American Tour" in the summer of 2013. While touring Dyro continued to produce original tracks and remixes, and the June 2013 album "Hardwell presents 'Revealed Volume 4"' features two of his songs. Among other remixes, Dyro's remix of the Wilkinson song "Afterglow" was officially released in October 2013. His collaborative track with Hardwell titled "Never Say Goodbye" peaked at No. 23 on the UK Dance Chart in 2013.
He collaborated with Tiësto on a single titled "Paradise" in 2013, which was included on Tiesto's album "". In 2013, Dyro was featured in Episode 310: Special Dyro on "Tiësto's Club Life" on Radio 538 in the Netherlands. He also mixed a session with Dannic for the "Mixmag Mix" lab series, and in late 2013, Dyro and Dannic co-hosted a night of the Amsterdam Dance Event at Jimmy Woo. The performance combined Dannic's and Dyro's radio shows and featured Tiesto and Hardwell as guests. He entered the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs chart in 2013 at No. 30, which was the highest new entry slot of the year.
In 2015, Dyro released a new track with Conro and singer Envy Monroe on Revealed Recordings called "Bittersweet".
WOLV releases and singles (2014-2017).
Since 2012, a number of Dyro's tracks have charted on Beatport, and his 2014 track "Calling Out" with Ryder reached the Beatport Top 10. In early 2014, Dyro supported the release of his track "Black Smoke" with a solo tour, before joining the Future Music Festival tour across Australia. He then performed at Ultra Music Festival in Miami, and in April 2014 he embarked on another Revealed bus tour with Dannic and Hardwell, this time traveling across the United States.
In August 2014 Dyro founded his own independent record label WOLV Records. The first release on the label was a Dyro single titled "Wolv". Well-received by "Complex", "Magnetic Magazine" dubbed the track "precision-cut, mechanically-engineered... industrial electro... though Dyro does add a touch of humanity with a subtle instrumental melody." "Billboard" described it as "a dynamic production that combines big room, electro and (believe it or not) acid techno influences." Dyro's third release on the label came out in October 2014. Titled "Against All Odds," it featured MC Dynamite.
Starting in October 2014 Dyro co-headlined the "Dyro & Bassjackers Present X Tour", which had a featured event at Amsterdam Dance Event on October 15. The thirty-date tour ended on December 15, 2014, which was the night Dyro and Bassjackers also released their collaborative track "X" on WOLV Records. Alongside Dannic and Martin Garrix, Dyro was a key speaker at "Kickstart Your Career" and "The New Breed" panels at the Amsterdam Dance Event in 2014. In 2014, Dyro ranked No. 27 on DJ Mag's top 100 Best DJs list.
In 2014 and 2015 he headlined venues such as LIV in Miami and Ministry of Sound in London, and in 2014 he held a residency at The Light in Las Vegas and Space in Ibiza. In 2014 and 2015, he also performed main-stage at festivals such as Dance Valley, Electric Zoo, TomorrowWorld, Spring Awakening in Chicago, Creamfields in the UK and EDC Las Vegas. After two years of hosting his own "Daftastic" radio station, Dyro currently hosts the "WOLV Radio with Dyro", which is broadcast on "Bigfish Radio" in the Philippines. as well as on around 30 FM stations worldwide.
WOLV Records.
In the summer of 2014 Dyro founded the independent record label WOLV, which releases both his own material and that of other "up and coming" artists. According to Dyro about his reasons for founding the label, "So when I first started out I got a lot of opportunities and a lot of people supported me and granted I could do whatever. First example Hardwell. I was allowed to do whatever I want on this label so that gave me a really creative-like environment to work in and develop myself. I want give back to young artists and upcoming DJs, and I want spot them myself and do what other people have done for me. Wolv should be like a platform for both established artists but also upcoming artists who help and develop themselves." Artists as of 2018 included Dyro, Dynamite MC, Bali Bandits, Bassjackers, Loopers, Naten, Conro, Sam O Neall, JuicyTrax, Switch Off, D.O.D, Joe Louis, Row Rocka, Prism, Jaycen A'mour, Funkz, Goja, NDS, Sam Lamar, Crossnaders and Bloqshot.


Michiel de Wael

Michiel de Wael (bapt. 9 May 1596 – buried 7 April 1659 in Haarlem), was a Dutch brewer and citizen of Haarlem, best known today for his portraits painted by Frans Hals. His grandfather, also a brewer, was one of the first Calvinists in the city and was involved in the Siege of Haarlem.
Biography.
Michiel was the son of the wealthy Haarlem brewer and burgomaster Jan Michielsz de Wael (1557–1618) and Cornelia Anthonisdr Juyst. In 1582 his father Jan de Wael had married Cornelia Anthonisdr Juyst in Delft, aka "Neeltje Thonis", from Brouwershaven. In 1588 his father moved from Amsterdam to Haarlem, where he was appointed in the vroedschap. In 1597 Jan M. de Wael was one of the burgomasters of Haarlem. After having been an arbiter he became involved as an investor in the development of the new Amsterdam city quarter, known as the Lastage. In 1605 his father remarried and Aechte Adriaensdr Van Hoorn became his stepmother.
Michiel had an elder brother Jan, a magistrate and burgomaster of Haarlem, involved in the tulip mania and in 1650 locked up in Loevestein; a brother Anthony, lawyer in Monnikendam and a sister Geertruyd , founder of Hofje van Guurtje de Waal.
Together with his elder brother, De Wael owned the breweries "De Son" and "'t Roode Hart".
Michiel served as commissioner in the local court of justice, and served in the St. George civic militia. Hals painted De Wael twice during his career with the civic guard company in Haarlem, as captain in "The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1627", and as "fiscaal" in "The Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1639". He was painted yet again by Pieter Claesz Soutman in the same role in 1644.
For a long time this painting was dated 1640, but the striking similarity of his face with the version from 1627 and especially his dress has recently led art historians to conclude that this painting was probably a wedding pendant. He married Cunera van Baersdorp (Leiden 1600-Haarlem 1640), who was the daughter of a mayor of Leiden, on 22 April 1625 and this portrait probably dates from that time, as does his wife's pendant. They were married exactly a half year after Cunera's mother died. That explains the bride's wedding dress in half mourning (a black skirt, white gloves and black and white bracelets but with lace).
In 1656 their 18-year-old, youngest daughter Josina married the 32-year-old Alkmaar writer Sierik Siersma in Haarlem. After Siersma died Josina moved back to Haarlem. She inherited the portraits by Frans Hals of her parents and they were handed down via her descendants until the beginning of the 1800s.


Dora Beets

Dora Beets (13 April 1812 – 16 April 1864) was a Dutch writer. She was the sister of Nicolaas Beets, who called her "Serena" in his works.
Life.
Provenance and early years.
Dorothea "Dora" Petronella Beets was born in Haarlem where Martinus Nicolaas Beets, her father, was an apothecary and her upbringing reflected her parents' adherence to the mainstream Protestant Dutch Reformed Church. She was the eldest of her parents' seven children, and continued to live with her parents at their home in the Koningstraat ("King Street") till she married the book dealer and publisher Pieter François Bohn in Haarlem on 6 July 1835: she took the name Dorothea Petronella Bohn-Beets. Dora was twelve years younger than her husband who was a Mennonite. The couple moved into the corner house where Pieter Bohn conducted his business, in the city centre at the point where Grote Houtstraat crosses one side of the . The marriage would produce at least eight children of whom two sons and two daughters are known to have reached adulthood. The fact that Beets came from the Reformed Church tradition while her husband came from the minority Mennonite community seems not to have been a problem. Intriguingly, as each of the children's births was registered with the city hall, their stated religious affiliations alternated. Only with the birth registrations for the youngest two children was the pattern broken: François en Martinus were both registered as Mennonites.
Onze buurt.
Her book Onze buurt ("Our neighborhood") was published anonymously in 1861. Indeed, the term used, "een ongenemde" ("an unnamed [author]") applied the male version of the definite article, implying that the unnamed author was a man. The anonymity also meant that the uninformed reader had no reason to know that the author was an elder sibling of Nicolaas Beets, a theologian and popular poet who was already well known in Haarlem as a published author, despite publishing his works under the pseudonym "Hildebrand".
Only after Dora's death, when the second edition appeared in 1870, did the book incorporate an introduction by Nicolaas Beets in which he disclosed that the author, Dorothea Bohn-Beets, had been his sister. The book's publication received little press coverage, but it was nevertheless reasonably popular with readers. A sixth edition was published in 1911.
In 2002 a new edition was published, using modern (post 1995) spelling.
The book provides a striking description of daily life among the 19th century haute bourgeoisie. The setting is clearly Haarlem (though the city is identified merely as "X") during the 1860s. The family of the main protagonist, Mrs. Rueel, is not identical to that of Dorothea Bohn, but it nevertheless becomes apparent from studying her private correspondence that many of the experiences and happenings related in the book correspond to real-life events in the author's own life. In February 1862 Dora Beets wrote her brother a letter in which she confided how "... in that book I have set out the innermost outpourings of my own heart in all their variety, and all sorts of mouths have given voice to my own beliefs and confessions".
In Onze buurt, Dorothea Bohn-Beets describes mid-nineteenth century city life with its relatively fixed hierarchical structure, the houses of the upper and lower middle-classes and the charitable undertakings by citizens and their wives seeking to alleviate the screaming poverty in the city. She also focuses on the differences within and between church congregations, between traditionalist and "modern" versions of Protestantism. The author hints at her own position through the views and actions of her lead protagonist, who champions an evangelical Christianity. It is nevertheless striking that Roman Catholics, who were certainly present in Haarlem in significant numbers at that time, seem not to exist in the city of "X". A further recurring theme involves feeding people: Mrs. Rueel feeds not merely her three children but also, where necessary, all the neighbours. She is an exceptionally successful provider of sustenance. This is clearly a characteristic that the author uses to idealise her heroine despite the context of a setting that is in other respects realistic. A commentator explains that without some sort of didactic idealisation, a Dutch novel of this period could not exist, because it would carry no useful message. Usefulness, in literature, was very important.


Merindah Dingjan

Merinda Dingjan (born 15 January 1991) is an Australian swimmer who won a bronze medals in the 4×100 m medley at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships.
She was born in Arnhem, Netherlands, but later moved to Canberra.


Mattheus de Haan

Mattheus de Haan (1663–1729) was Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies from 1725 to 1729.
He was born in Dordrecht in 1663. On 26 October 1671 he left for the Indies, where his father had been appointed as Underbuyer ("onderkoopman") in the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He then quickly went through posts in the lower levels of that organisation in Dutch Suratte. There, in 1676, he was made Provisional Assistant ("provisioneel assistent"), and in 1681 he became "assistent". He became Bookkeeper ("boekhouder") in 1683, and, in 1685, "onderkoopman" (Underbuyer/Undermerchant). Ten years later, in 1695, he was promoted to Buyer/Merchant ("koopman"). The next year he had to move to Batavia, to take up the post of Second Senior Buyer ("tweede opperkoopman") in the Company's headquarters there. Two years later, in 1698, he was promoted to First Senior Buyer ("eerste opperkoopman"). He became Secretary ("secretaris") to the "High Government of the Indies" in 1700 and, in 1702, Vice-President of the "Council of Justice". He was made a Counsellor-extraordinary ("Raad extraordinair") of the Dutch Council of the Indies in 1704. He was then appointed President of the "College van Schepenen" in 1705. Five years later, he was made full Counsellor of the Indies and in 1722 he became "Director-General". On 16 October 1724 he was nominated Governor-General, taking over from Hendrick Zwaardecroon on 8 July 1725.
Characteristic of his time in office was his opposition Zwaardecroon's encouragement of silk cultivation. Coffee production in the De Preanger region (Parahyangan uplands to the south of Batavia) went enormously well and de Haan felt that this would lead to a decline in coffee prices in Europe, so he lowered the prices paid to the coffee farmers. Their response was to chop down some of the coffee plantations. This was not what was intended, and De Haan forbade it. Meanwhile, there was further heavy damage to the production of coffee. Coffee from Java went mainly to Europe. They never managed to get into the Asian market. Coffee from Mocha took off there, as did the Arabic coffee of the English. No action was taken against this. The English also began to play a more important role in the cotton and tea trade. De Haan died, after lying ill for three days, on 1 June 1729. He was buried in Batavia and was followed as Governor-General by Diederik Durven.


Aart Jansz Druyvesteyn

Aernout or Aart Jansz Druyvesteyn (1577 – 5 August 1627) was a Dutch Golden Age lawyer, painter, and mayor of Haarlem.
Biography.
According to Van Mander in 1604, he was a promising young landscape painter who came from a good family in Haarlem, and thus painted as a hobby, rather than professionally. In April 1606 he married Anna de Wael, the daughter of the Haarlem mayor Johan de Wael, and they had two sons, Jacob who followed in his father's footsteps, and Johannes, who died childless in Venice in 1681.
According to Houbraken, who echoes Van Mander's comment that he became a good landscape painter, he became an elder in the Dutch Reformed church before eventually becoming mayor of Haarlem. Houbraken reports that he died on August 5, 1617, aged 50.
This date makes it very confusing for art historians, because catalogs from the Frans Hals museum have claimed for decades that this is the same person sitting at the head of the table in Frans Hals' civic guard ("schutterij") group portrait "The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1627" which was painted ten years later.
According to the RKD he painted Italianate landscapes and died on August 5, 1627. This would place the occasion of painting the group portrait as the changing of the guards after the death of its most distinguished member.


Battle of Zierikzee

The battle of Zierikzee was a naval battle between a Flemish fleet and an allied Franco-Hollandic fleet which took place on 10 and 11 August 1304. The battle, fought near the town of Zierikzee, ended in a Franco-Holland victory. The battle is part of a larger conflict between the Count of Flanders and his French feudal lord, King Philip IV of France (1296–1305).
Flemish invasion of Hainaut, Zeeland and France.
The County of Zeeland was an area that had been contested between the Count of Flanders and the Count of Holland since the 11th century. Originally granted in 1012 by Emperor Henry II to the count of Flanders Baldwin IV, by 1076 the area had become part of Holland but under Flemish overlordship. After the Flemish victory in the battle of the Golden Spurs, the Flemish attacked John II Avesnes, count of Holland, Zeeland and of Hainaut and conquered Lessines. The House of Dampierre and the House of Avesnes had been involved in a familial war for decades. In retaliation to the Flemish invasion of Hainaut John's son William plundered Cadzand.
In reaction to this raid, Guy of Namur, son of Guy I of Flanders, formed a fleet at Sluis, which sailed on 23 April 1303 to claim Zeeland for the Flemish. After Flemish landings near Arnemuiden and Veere the troops of William fled to Middelburg which surrendered on 9 May. After this the Flemings conquered the whole of Walcheren and several other islands. Only Zierikzee was held for the count of Holland. In July an armistice was arranged between the Flemings and the count of Holland.
Covered by an armistice in the north, the Flemings raised an army near Cassel, which entered France and attacked Saint-Omer, Terwaan and Tournai. In August Philip IV of France tried to raise a new army to counter this threat, but due to mutiny over backpay he was forced to conclude an armistice until May 1304 with the Flemings, which was later extended to June. The armistice gave the French the opportunity to raise a new army in peace for the next campaigning season.
In the Spring of 1304 the armistice between the Flemings and Holland was broken. William attacked and defeated the Flemings near Castle Blodenburg. A fleet led by William and his uncle Guy of Avesnes, bishop of Utrecht however was defeated by the Flemings, the bishop being captured. After this victory, the Flemings invaded Holland and Utrecht. Seeing the Flemish success John II, Duke of Brabant then joined the Flemish cause. Dordrecht, led by Witte van Haemstede, a bastard son of count Floris V, brought the cities of Holland to the side of William and the Flemings retreated. After this Zierikzee, which was still held by Holland, was besieged.
Battle of Zierikzee.
Upon the end of the armistice between France and Flanders, Philip IV launched his army on Tournai and sent his fleet, led by Rainier Grimaldi, to aid the count of Holland. Grimaldi's fleet consisted of 30 French and eight Spanish cogs and 11 Genoese galleys. This fleet was joined at Schiedam by the small fleet of Holland, consisting of five more ships. This combined fleet then set sail for Zierikzee. Guy of Namur could count on a motley fleet of 37 Flemish, English, Hanseatic, Spanish, and Swedish ships, as well as numerous smaller vessels.
On the evening of August 10, the two fleets met on the Gouwe, back then a bay near Zierikzee. As the river was silted, maneuvering was hindered, which aided the smaller vessels of the Flemings. The Flemish tried a fire ship attack which failed when the vessels were blown back to the Flemish lines. At first the battle seemed to go to the Flemings as the larger French ships were immobilized by grounding. But when the tides changed, the larger French ships came free and joined the fight, turning the battle to Grimaldi's advantage.
The next morning, the Flemish ships were seen to aimlessly float, apparently sabotaged by a traitor who cut their moorings. As the Franco-Hollander fleet was still in battle array, it was able to easily put down further Flemish resistance.
Consequences.
As a result of the French victory, Guy of Namur was captured and the siege of Zierikzee was lifted. One week after the naval battle, on 18 August Philip IV himself was able to defeat the Flemish main army at the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle. On 22 August Count John II died and was succeeded as count of Hainaut, Holland and Zeeland by his son William.


Mohamed El-Fers

Mohamed el-Fers (born 1950 in Haarlem) is a Dutch writer, musician and filmmaker.
Life.
El-Fers was musician in Los Compañeros (Latin American), Nass el-Ghorba (Moroccan), Tiq Maya (Moroccan), Medina (pop) and Atlal (folkrock). With this last group he had in 1982 a number 1 hit in Egypt and Sudan and appeared in "El Alem Ghani" the Egyptian television show by Hamdia Hamdi.
He published in "Hitweek" / "Aloha", "De Groene Amsterdammer", "Nieuwe Revu", "Algemeen Dagblad", the Turkish newspaper "Dünya" and "De Staatskrant".
Together with René Zwaap, he founded MokumTV, one of the best viewed programmes of Salto TV, a local television station in Amsterdam. For MokumTV he made several documentaries, later released on DVD.
El-Fers produced in 1996 for Hippo Records two CDs with Leo Fuld, the 'king of Yiddish music'.
He wrote biographies on e.g. Jacques Brel, Mevlana Rumi, Oum Kalsoum and Bob Marley and published travel guides about Istanbul, Lourdes and Amsterdam. He also wrote an "Encyclopedie van Hollandse Heiligen", an encyclopedia on Dutch Saints.
Together with Veyis Güngör, El-Fers took the initiative that would become the UNESCO Mevlana Year in 2007. See Mevlana800.
Award.
For his Mevlanabiography he received on May 5, 2003 during the 3rd international Mevlanacongress of the Selçukuniversity of Konya (Turkey) the Merit of Honour by the Turkish Secretary of State for Religion, Prof. Mehmet Aydin.


Louis Cuppens

Louis Wilhelmus Franciscus Cuppens (born c. 1943) was a Royal Canadian Air Force officer. He served as deputy commander of NORAD from 1995 to 1998. He was raised in Saint John, New Brunswick.


Holy Spirit Orphanage

The Holy Spirit Orphanage (Dutch: "Heilige Geest- of Arme Wees- en Kinderhuis") was an orphanage in the city of Leiden in the Netherlands. It is a Rijksmonument located on Hooglandse Kerkgracht 17B.
Origin.
The so-called ‘Heilige Geest’ (Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit) was the name of a charitable institution, originating in France, which cared for the poor and needy. In the Dutch city of Leiden the ‘Heilige Geest’ was responsible for regular distribution of food, clothing, and small amounts of coin money. It began in Leiden shortly before 1316 with a group of ‘Heilige Geestmeesters’ (Masters of the Holy Spirit) connected with the Leiden parish of Saint Peter.
Orphanage.
Around the year 1450, the institution purchased a former mansion on the Breestraat, opposite the street currently known as the Papengracht. Initially the building served as an office and warehouse. In 1491 the building was repurposed and became a home for needy and parentless children. This marked the establishment of the ‘Heilige Geest- of Arme Weeshuis’.
Soon, the number of children housed in the orphanage exceeded capacity, forcing the Heilige Geestmeesters to look for a larger building. A new accommodation was found in 1583 in the building of the Vrouwengasthuis (woman’s hospital) on the Hooglandsekerkgracht. The Heilige Geest Orphanage would remain at this location for almost four centuries.
The building complex would undergo three major renovations in this period. The most important of these took place between 1774 and 1778. The merging of the nearby Arme Kinderhuis (Poor Children’s Home) with the Heilige Geest Orphanage necessitated this renovation. The names of the respective institutions were also joined in the unwieldy designation ‘Heilige Geest- of Arme Wees en Kinderhuis’. It was by this name that the orphanage was known well into the twentieth century.
Present day.
The Heilige Geest Orphanage remained on the Hooglandse kerkgracht until 1961, still carrying out its mission to care for Leiden’s poor and needy children. The institution became a foundation in 1979 now known as ‘Stichting Heilige Geest- of Arme Wees- en Kinderhuis te Leiden’, caring for the poor and destitute youth in a wider sense. In 1968 the building became a Rijksmonument, a Dutch national heritage site.
At the end of the twentieth century, to further promote the study of its history, the foundation commissioned a new inventory of the archives of the Heilige Geest Orphanage, which dates back to the fourteenth century, as well as a study of the building history and the realization of the score of the "Music for Christmas 1796" composed by Christian Friedrich Ruppe for the mixed youth choir of the orphanage.


Freek Vonk

Freek Jacobus Vonk (born 24 February, 1983) is a Dutch biologist who specializes in herpetology with a special interest in snake venom. He travels the world in search of the most spectacular and bizarre creatures. He has been bitten by a number of venomous snakes, almost lost his arm due to a Caribbean reef shark bite and has housed several parasites in his own body.
Biography.
Science.
Vonk was born in Dordrecht, Netherlands. When he was a 22-year-old student, he was cited in an article of the Dutch television programme "Noorderlicht". In 2006 he was a co-author of an article in Nature. He wrote his first own article in "Litteratura Serpentium" in 2007 and he was nominated for the Academische Jaarprijs ("Academic Year Prize"). In 2008, he was granted a scholarship for top talent of €180,000 by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (The Dutch science foundation).
Prof. Dr. Freek Vonk studied biology at Leiden University where he specialised in the evolutionary biology of reptiles, resulting in a PhD on "Snake evolution and prospecting of snake venom." He was awarded the prestigious Eureka prize in science communication, for his contribution in increasing the knowledge and involvement of the general public in science. He advanced as a postdoctoral researcher at the Molecular Ecology and Evolution Group at Bangor University, sequencing and studying the genomes and transcriptomes of the king cobra. He continued this work at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, including the genomes of the Malayan pit viper. Over the years he has published articles in many scientific journals including Nature, Cell, and PNAS.
In 2020 he was appointed endowed professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at the Amsterdam Institute of Molecular and Life Sciences (AIMMS), Department of Chemistry & Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Freek is an internationally recognized expert in evolutionary molecular biology, particularly in the field of snake venom.
Media.
In his early career, Vonk appeared in several television and radio programmes, including "De Wereld Draait Door", "GIEL" and "Vroege Vogels". He made television shows for National Geographic Channel and Discovery Channel. In August 2011, the Dutch television programme "Uitgesproken" broadcast an entire episode about Vonk and his pet rock monitor lizard Johan.
Vonk is now famous in the Netherlands for his television programs, in which he shares his love for wildlife with his viewers. For the past seven seasons, Freek has been the most popular tv host amongst children, because of his popular documentary series Freeks Wild World. Freeks Wild World is broadcast on the Dutch public channel NPO 3, the show reaches over a million viewers per episode. Among the most highly acclaimed TV projects were three episodes of ‘DWDD University’ in which Prof. Dr. Vonk gave an hour-long lecture about venom, the evolution of animals and super senses. The shows scored over one and a half million viewers during prime time, on the largest Dutch broadcasting network.
Furthermore Freek has his own children’s magazine called “Wild van Freek” reaching ten thousands of children every month. Next to that Freek annually hosts an amazing show in AFAS Live, called Freek Vonk Live, where thousands of families come and see Freek perform every year. Since 2014, Vonk has been the ambassador of Future For Nature Foundation, a foundation that supports young, talented and ambitious conservationists committed to protecting species of wild animals and plants. He also has his own foundation that fight poaching, called No Wildlife Crime.


2004 Czech Senate by-elections

By-elections for Prague 4 and Znojmo District Senate seats were held in the Czech Republic in October 2004. Elections were held after incumbent senators became members of European parliament.
Prague 4.
Election in Prague 4 was won by František Příhoda who defeated Erazim Kohák by landslide. Příhoda's victory was generally expected.
Znojmo.
Znojmo election was unexpectedly won by Milan Špaček. He faced Jaroslav Pařík who was considered front-runner due to his results in the first round.


Monastyrskyi Island

Monastyrskyi Island () is an island within the boundaries of the Sobornyi district of the Ukrainian city of Dnipro near the right bank of the Dnipro river.
It is covered with granite rocks to the west which gradually turns into a sandy spit in the east of the island.
Part of the island belongs to the Taras Shevchenko city park. The island is connected to the city by a pedestrian bridge in its northern part.
History.
The island got its name in the ninth century because of an unconfirmed belief that in that century Byzantine monks founded a monastery on the island, which in 1240 was destroyed by the Mongol-Tatars.
In 1747 Ukrainian Cossacks did build a monastery on the island.
In 1958 a monument to Taras Shevchenko was installed on the island. There is also a memorial cross to the Byzantine monks, erected in 1994.
In 1999 an Orthodox church of St. Nicholas was built on the northern part of the island.
From 17 October 1929 until 24 November 2015 the island was officially named "Komsomolsky Island" (), after the Komsomol political youth organization of the Soviet Union. It was renamed to its current name in order to comply with decommunization law.
Archeology.
In 1961 there were found several scraps and sharpener of ancient Stone Age by archaeologists.


Oussama Idrissi

Oussama Idrissi (Berber: ⵓⵙⴻⵎⴰ ⵉⴷⵔⵉⵙⵉ, ; born 26 February 1996) is a Dutch-Moroccan professional footballer who plays as a winger for AFC Ajax in the Eredivisie, on loan from La Liga side Sevilla and for the Morocco national team. Born in the Netherlands to parents from Morocco, he has represented the Netherlands at various youth levels, before declaring his allegiance to Morocco.
Club career.
Groningen.
Idrissi made his professional debut for FC Groningen on 19 December 2015 in the Eredivisie match against Heracles Almelo. He came on in the 70th minute for Jarchinio Antonia. He scored his first league goal for the club on 7 February 2016 in a 2–0 home win over Cambuur. His goal, assisted by Simon Tibbling, came in the 75th minute. In October 2017, after playing regularly for two years in Groningen, the club suspended him and Mimoun Mahi citing disciplinary problems.
AZ.
On 17 January 2018, Idrissi signed a contract with AZ, in a deal keeping him in Alkmaar through the 2021–22 season. He made his league debut for his new club on 19 January 2018 in a 1–1 away draw with Utrecht. He was subbed on for Jeremy Helmer in the 77th minute. He scored his first league goal for AZ on 24 February 2018 in a 2–1 home victory over Sparta Rotterdam. Idrissi also provided an assist to Wout Weghorst for AZ's first goal of the day. Idrissi's goal, assisted by Stijn Wuytens, came in the 86th minute and won the match for AZ.
On 25 October 2019, he scored his first goal in the Europa League during a 6–0 rout against Astana. He continued his strong form throughout the 2019-20 season, and won the Eredivisie player of the month award in both December and January, becoming the first player to win the award twice in a row.
Sevilla.
On 5 October 2020, Idrissi signed for Sevilla until 2025.
Ajax (loan).
On 31 January 2021, the final day of the winter transfer window, it was reported that Idrissi joined Ajax on a 6-month loan spell.
International career.
Idrissi has represented the Netherlands at various youth levels. He was called up by the Moroccan senior team in November 2018, and he declared his international allegiance to Morocco in February 2019. In March 2019 he was cleared by FIFA to represent Morocco. He made his debut for Morocco national football team on 22 March 2019 in an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Malawi, as a starter.
Honours.
Club.
Ajax


Frans Adam van der Duyn van Maasdam

Adam Frans Jules Armand, Count van der Duyn, "lord of Maasdam and 's-Gravenmoer" (13 April 1771 - 19 September 1848) was Dutch officer and politician. He was part of the Triumvirate in 1813 that invited Prince William Frederick of Orange-Nassau to become Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands. He was born in Deventer, Overijssel.
Biography.
He was a member of the Medieval noble family "Van der Duyn" . He joined the army of the Dutch Republic as lieutenant, after completing his military education, in 1787. From 1789 till 1791 he studied Roman law at the University of Leiden. At the age of 20 he became Chamberlain of Prince William Frederick, the son of stadtholder William V. He belonged to the Orange party that opposed the more liberal Patriots who wanted to curtail the power of the stadtholder. However, Van de Duyn was quite enlightened and didn't belong to recationary wing of the Orange party. After the French occupation of the Dutch Republic and the establishment of the Batavian Republic, he retired from public service and devoted himself to study. He rented the Castle of IJsselstein and lived there with his wife Maria Baroness van der Capellen, who he had married in 1799. They were a very happy young couple, but Maria passed away after ten years of marriage. Van der Duyn was fond of literature and had his own private library. He preferred to read the works of Diderot, Rousseau, Bayle, Belle van Zuylen and Goethe. He was influenced by the liberal ideas of his age. He preferred a Constitutional Monarchy and was opposed to tyranny. He did sympathize with some of the ideals of the French revolutionaries, but despised the radicalism of the Jacobins. He seldom left his castle and choose to live a quiet life.
In 1811 Van der Duyn moved to The Hague. He joined the circle of conspirators around Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp who were planning an uprising against the French occupators. In November 1813, when it came clear that Emperor Napoleon was losing the war against the Coalition, Van der Duyn, Van Hogendorp and Leopold van Limburg Stirum took power after an uprising which was planned carefully, and formed a "Driemanschap" (Triumvirate) that invited Prince William Frederick, the son of the last stadtholder, to come to the Netherlands and to accept the title of "Sovereign Prince". On 30 November 1813 Prince William Frederick landed at Scheveningen. After the return of Prince William, a commission was set up to draft a Constitution. Van der Duyn was made a member of that commission that was headed by Van Hogendorp. In 1814 he was appointed a member of the "Raad van State" (Council of State). Besides that, he also became head of the Royal Household.
As a nobleman (predicate: "Jonkheer", squire), he was entitled to join the "", the College of Knights, of South Holland. When Prince William Frederick accepted the throne as King William I, Van der Duyn was given the title Count.
From 1817 till 1844 Van der Duyn served as governor of South Holland. King William made him Marshal of the Court in 1825. He continued to serve as Marshal of the Court under William II, who succeeded his father in 1840. In 1840s he supported the revision of the Constitution. In 1848 the King appointed Van der Duyn a member of the Senate in order to secure a majority for the constitutional revisions. He died shortly afterwards on 19 December 1848 in The Hague.


Oslo Mosquito raid

The Oslo Mosquito raid (25 September 1942) was a British air raid on Oslo, Norway, during the Second World War. The target of the raid was the "Victoria Terrasse" building, the headquarters of the Gestapo. It was intended to be a "morale booster" for the Norwegian people and was scheduled to coincide with a rally of Norwegian collaborators, led by Vidkun Quisling.
Preparation.
The operation was carried out by four de Havilland Mosquito aircraft of No. 105 Squadron RAF, led by Squadron Leader George Parry, flying with navigator Flying Officer "Robbie" Robson. The other three crews consisted of:
In order to shorten the mission distance, the four aircraft were flown to RAF Leuchars in Fife, Scotland, where they were refuelled and loaded with four delayed action bombs each.
The operation.
The operation involved a round trip distance of , with a flying time of 4.75 hours, making it the longest mission flown with Mosquitos to date. The bombers crossed the North Sea at heights of less than to avoid interception by enemy aircraft and navigated by dead reckoning. Each aircraft was armed with four 500 lb bombs with 11 second delayed action fuses since in such a low level attack the bombs had the potential to damage the aircraft that dropped them.
Despite their low altitude, the Mosquitos were intercepted by two Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters of 3/JG 5 flying from Stavanger, causing Gordon Carter's Mosquito to make a forced landing in Oslofjord. Rowland and Reilly were pursued by the other Fw 190 until it clipped a tree and was forced to break off the attack.
At least four bombs penetrated the Gestapo HQ; one failed to detonate, while the other three crashed out through the opposite wall before exploding. The building was not destroyed, but several civilian residences were, and 80 civilians were killed or injured. The Norwegian government in exile, which had not known about the raid, later expressed serious concern to the British government. Official announcements by the German occupation forces claimed that several British aircraft had been shot down, when in reality a single Mosquito had been lost.
Impact.
Although the raid had failed to achieve its objective, it was considered dramatic enough to be used to reveal the existence of the Mosquito to the British public, and the following day (26 September) listeners to the BBC Home Service learned that a new aircraft – the Mosquito – had been revealed for the first time by the RAF, and that four had made a low level attack on Oslo. The Mosquito bomber was featured in "The Times" on 28 September, and the next day the newspaper published two captioned photographs illustrating the Oslo bomb strikes and damage.


Cornelia van der Gon

Cornelia van der Gon (1644 – 1701) was an owner of a show-dollhouse that attracted a following in Amsterdam in the 17th century.
She was born in Haarlem as the daughter of the kastelein of the Stadsdoelen (today the Stadsbibliotheek Haarlem). After her father died in 1667 she moved to Amsterdam, where she became the housekeeper of the Amsterdam architect Adriaan Dortsman and started creating dollhouses in his house in 1680. After he died in 1682 he left her most of his estate, including four houses, of which she kept one to live in on Amstel 210. She married Dorsman's assistant, the artist David van der Plas in 1684 who came to live in her house. He helped her with decorations for the doll houses, as did the landscape painter Jan Wijnants.
Two of her dollhouses were purchased by Sara Rothé when she bought three dollhouses for 1,000 guilders that were advertised for auction on April 2, 1743 in the Amsterdamse Courant. Though Rothé dismantled Van der Gon's dollhouses to create her own, the doll house in the Frans Hals Museum still contains many original details added by Van der Gon.
She died in Amsterdam.


Nicolaas van Buren

Nicolaas van Buren (1578–1619), Latinized Nicolaus Burenus, was a Dutch Jesuit and a translator of controversial and devotional writings. Born in Arnhem, he became a Jesuit in 1596, and died in the Spanish Netherlands on 18 October 1619.
Authors that he translated include Martin Becanus, Francisco Arias, Robert Bellarmine, Luca Pinelli and Fulvio Androzzi.


Gerbrand Bakker (physician)

Gerbrand Bakker (Enkhuizen, November 1, 1771 – Groningen, June 15, 1828) was an eminent Dutch physician, professor at the University of Groningen.
He first studied medicine with M.S. du Pui, physician in Alkmaar. In 1788 he enrolled at the University of Groningen, transferring two years later to the University of Leiden, where he received his doctorate in May 1794. His instructors were the celebrated Dupui, Sandifort, Paradys, and Voltelen. He married Jacoba Johanna Poel on January 4, 1800 at Enkhuizen. He practised first at Edam, and was made a reader at the Teyler surgical school at Haarlem in 1806. The next year, he declined a professorship at the University of Franeker. In 1811, under the French, he was named to the professorship at Groningen. He was active in the severe epidemic disease which afflicted Groningen in 1826.
Bakker was distinguished most for his great skill and knowledge in midwifery and practical surgery. On the former he published several works in Dutch and Latin. Amongst his Dutch writings are a treatise on animal magnetism, another on worms, in which he controverted the opinions of professor Rudolphi of Berlin; and a third on the human eye. Bakker occupied himself also with zeal on comparative anatomy, and particularly on the anatomy of the brain.
His most celebrated works in Latin are "Descriptio Iconis Pelvis Feminae" (1816), "Osteographia Piscium" (1822), "Epidemium quae anno 1826 urbem Groningam afflixit" (1826) and "De Natura Hominis Liber elementarius" (1827). This last work, which was to have formed a complete body of anatomy, was left incomplete by the author's death.
Bakker became a correspondent of the Royal Institute, predecessor to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1812.


The End of Agent W4C

Konec agenta W4C prostřednictvím psa pana Foustky () is a 1967 Czechoslovak film parodying the James Bond secret agent genre. Directed by Václav Vorlíček based on the story by Oldřich Daněk. Runtime 87 min. Mono. Produced by Filmové Studio Barrandov and distributed by Central Office of Film Distribution, Prague.
Produced by Věra Kadlecová. Composer - Svatopluk Havelka, musical director - František Belfín. Cinematography by František Uldrich. Editor - Jaromír Janáček.
Film had a great success in USSR theatrical distribution of the 1960s.
Plot summary.
It's a spy films parody, specially James Bond movies.
Main hero - Cyril Juan Borguette alias W4C is superspy. Equipped by last invention - Alarm clock (with knife, gun, gas, geiger-muller, microphone-jammer and small atombomb - all inside) is he sent in Prague. There is saltbox with plans of military use of Venus. Agent must play with international spy network. And on his steps is going accountant Foustka.