January 3, 2022

Some of 24 Oranges’ most memorable posts

Filed under: Architecture,Bicycles,Dutch first,Gaming,General,History,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:16 am

We started 24 Oranges in February 2007 and in late January 2022 it will become a column over at DutchNews.nl, also called 24 Oranges. After 4,100 posts under our belts, we might feel the need to post here every once in a while in the future, but have no current plans to continue. As two self-employed people, we’ve had to make sure we had enough work and energy to keep going, and honestly we just don’t these days.

Before we sign off indefinitely, let’s look back at a few of the stories that we still talk about in no particular order.

1. A beautifully preserved Jewish home in Amsterdam

We didn’t break this story, but we scooped all the Dutch media in getting the right to use pictures, which we’re very proud of. All we did was ask nicely, while other media tried to ask us, which was odd because we didn’t have the rights.

Recently discovered Jewish interior will not be wrecked for now.

2. The Dutch neighbourhood built by the Nazis

It’s not the province of Limburg’s fault for being a few kilometres from the Germany border. In this case, the city of Heerlen, which was occupied back in the day, has an entire neighbourhood with an eerie Dutch look on the outside, but efficient spaces for families on the inside.

Visiting a neighbourhood built by Hitler.

3. Diehard elderly Frisian man finishes 240 km bike race

Statistically, our cycling stories have always done well since we have the biggest this and the first that when it comes to bikes. Here’s a story about elderly Frisian man Wiebe Idsinga finishing a 240 km bike tour as the last man cycling, but he finished it. Watch the video in the link below.

Diehard elderly Frisian man finishes 240 km bike race.

4. Friesland home to world’s oldest working planetarium

This story made me finally visit the Royal Eise Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker in 2020 at a time when museums where one of the few things open. I even bought a booklet in French to send to my engineer father who knows it off by heart. It was one of the most impressive things I’ve every seen, and I’m happy to say it will become UNESCO heritage in 2023.

Friesland home to world’s oldest working planetarium.

5. Man found not guilty after blacking out hospital

This gaming story went around the world, and it’s truly the kind of weird news we liked to write about. A man shut down a hospital during a psychotic episode, thinking he was playing Silent Hill. The gaming community helped this story go viral.

Man found not guilty after blacking out hospital.

6. A French Canadian soldier single-handedly freed Zwolle

I wrote this story while visiting my parents in Québec, and anytime I could write a story that had a Canadian and Dutch angle to it, I did. This story is incredible to say the least, and people in Zwolle absolutely know who Léo Major is to this day.

The French Canadian soldier who freed Zwolle.

7. Fertility doctor uses his own sperm

A creepy story about a doctor who might have produced about 60 children, a story that had sequels in the media. The doctor died and then everybody scrambled to try and find out if they were one of his kids, with all the legal red tape this entails.

Dutch fertility doctor bragged about using his sperm.

8. Sexist advert denigrates Dutch women and men

After publishing this I got a call from Nyenrode Business Universiteit asking us why we were picking on them. I said many things, including they have openly assumed that managers are all dumb straight men and that women can’t be taken seriously. The man confessed his wife told him the same thing and they eventually pulled the advert.

Sexist advert denigrates Dutch women and men.

9. Photoshoot with original Leeuwenhoek microscope and specimens

Although Leeuwenhoek’s specimens have been imaged before, this was the first time that the latest digital techniques have been applied to the surviving specimens. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek from Delft, one of the world’s first microbiologists, had a special collection of specimens. Follow the link to get the whole story.

Photoshoot with original Leeuwenhoek microscope and specimens.

10. Subsidizing astrologers for job seekers raises eyebrows

I remember this story pissing off quite a bit of Dutch folks in the category throwing money out the window. Some government re-integration projects for the unemployed included help from astrologers, tarot readers, and folks that talk to space aliens.

Subsidizing astrologers for job seekers raises eyebrows.

Take good care of yourselves and each other, thanks for checking us out!

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April 13, 2021

Zwolle liberator to get motorway named after him

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 4:38 pm

On this day in 1945, Léo Major, the French Canadian soldier who single-handedly freed freed Zwolle, Overijssel, will have a 3.5 kilometre large section of motorway 371 in Québec named after him, starting at the entrance of the Valcartier military base Northwest of Québec City, Québec, Canada.

Léo Major was given his first medal, the Distinguished Conduct Medal of the British Army, the only Canadian and one of only three soldiers in the British Commonwealth to ever receive the Distinguished Conduct Medal twice in separate wars. Major went on to pull some more great moves in the Korean War. His friend Wilfrid Arseneault was given a Bronze Lion posthumously in 1970 by Dutch Queen Juliana.

(Link: lapresse.ca, Photo: Wikipedia)

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January 24, 2021

Film about ‘homesick’ stone brought back to Finland

Filed under: Art,History,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:42 pm

I recently asked a friend who is big on documentaries if they had any viewing suggestions, and I was told I should watch the 2019 Dutch documentary ‘Bart en de steen die terug naar huis ging’ (‘Bart and the stone that went back home’). It’s the story of artist Bart Eysink Smeets who took a dolmen stone from Borger, Drenthe back to its original home on the Åland Islands, a unique part of Finland where Swedish is the main language.

Filmed by Bart’s brother Tom, we get to watch Bart’s process in finding the right stone in Borger, Drenthe, the Dutch city with the most dolmens. The film is a combination of bureaucracy, up and downs, weirdness, and humour. The way to Åland is a fun road trip as well and you might get attached to the stone while you watch.

As I want to keep this spoiler-free, watch it if you can understand enough Dutch and/or with Dutch subtitles. There’s some English, Drents (dialect) and Swedish as well.

(Link: nrc.nl, image: still from the film)

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January 16, 2021

Sailing from Rotterdam to Amsterdam (time-lapse video)

Filed under: Architecture,Film,History,Nature,Photography by Branko Collin @ 4:22 pm

In 2013 Shell had to transport an eight-story metal building from Rotterdam to Amsterdam.

They hired a company called The Timewriters to create a time-lapse video of the transport, which has now been released in glorious 4K format on YouTube, accompanied by a beautiful, if somewhat ill-fitting Dvořák piece.

The day-long journey begins on the Nieuwe Maas river near the Feijenoord neighbourhood in Rotterdam, then goes past Gouda, Alphen aan de Rijn and Schiphol Airport to end in Amsterdam. If it hadn’t been dark by then, you might even have been able to see my house at 9:14.

This is worth watching for the bridges alone.

And then you come back a second time for the places you know and a third time to figure out how and why the Dutch created their environment the way they did.

Also check out the comments on YouTube, lots of insights from people who recognise certain types of trains, planes and places.

(Source: YouTube / The Timewriters)

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November 30, 2020

Why do old windmills turn left and new ones turn right?

Filed under: Architecture,General,History,Nature by Orangemaster @ 2:37 pm

Every once in a while it’s good to ask ourselves some deep questions, and this one popped up as news recently. Why do old Dutch windmills turn left and newer ones turn right? It has nothing to do with the wind or with most millers being right-handed – let’s get that out of the way now.

The material that older blades are made from provide a more precise explanation. The two rods that form a cross to which the blades are attached are made from a tree trunk. As it was growing and needed sun to do so, the trunk would rotate to the right because the sun rises in the East, then moves to the South and sets in the West, and the tree would follow.

By turning the blades to the left, counter-clockwise, it would turn avoid splintering the wood. The wood needs to be super solid and ideally be of high quality, which could sometimes come from trees that grow very straight in forests, but not all the time.

Taking physics into account, there is no reason why modern-day windmills should have a preferred rotation direction. For example, wind turbines are manufactured in factories that use the same type and angle of blades, making them standardised and so they turn the same way – to the right. They could all be made to turn left if for some reason the world decided to do so.

Old Dutch windmills were not standardised and unique, which makes them nice to visit.

(Link: nu.nl)

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September 7, 2020

Dutch efforts are retrieving the downed RAF BK716 bomber

Filed under: Aviation,History by Orangemaster @ 2:14 pm

After about 12 years of wondering what happened to the missing British Short Stirling Bomber BK716, it was finally found at the bottom of the Markermeer lake, near Amsterdam. In 2020 we’ve also learned that the remains of the seven airmen who went missing aboard this aircraft during World War II are still on board.

A spokesman for Durham Constabulary in the United Kingdom said the Bomber Command Museum of Canada had asked it for help tracking down living relatives of Sergeant Charles Armstrong Bell of Langley Park, County Durham, one of the seven airmen. The relatives of the six other crew members have also been found, although their names have not been revealed.

The BK716 was lost when returning from a bombing raid in Germany in 1943, and first discovered in 2008 when a piece of its landing gear latched onto the anchor of a stranded boat. Experts had long believed that the aircraft was another Short Stirling, the BK710, after examining an aluminium panel. Later, however, a cigarette case and a wooden mascot brought on a new investigation that made the BK716 a more likely candidate.

The defence ministry and a private contractor started retrieving the wreckage of the BK716 on 31 August, with an engine part confirming that it is the BK716. After six weeks, the dredging will have been completed and hopefully we’ll hear all the historical details. For context, the Markermeer is a 700 km² lake that is in fact shallow at 3 to 5 m in depth, while the area the plane parts are being found cover 75 m².

(Links: dutchnews.nl, bbc.com, Photo of a different plane, the Short S 31 Half Scale Stirling by, most probably, the Imperial War Museum)

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August 21, 2020

Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium removes misinterpreted statue

Filed under: Art,History,Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:06 am

Much in the same way that the swastika went from being a religious symbol to being a Nazi one, the official olympic salute with extended arm stopped being used after WWII because it resembled the ‘Hitler greeting’.

That being said, the statue by The Hague sculptor Gra Hueb at Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium was inaugurated in 1928 for the Olympic Games in Amsterdam and had nothing to do with the Nazis. It was placed in honour of Baron Van Tuyll van Serooskerken, the first chairman of the Dutch Olympic Committee who successfully brought the Games to the Netherlands. The stadium is not too far from 24 Oranges HQ and is still in use.

As a sign of the times – for better or worse – historians and the Olympic Stadium folks decided to remove it and place it somewhere else in the stadium instead of prominently at the entrance.

(Link and photo: parool.nl)

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June 25, 2020

New wharf cellars discovered in Utrecht

Filed under: Architecture,Dutch first,History by Orangemaster @ 11:58 am

According to Utrecht city council, some previously unknown 60 wharf cellars have been discovered in the city’s centre. The council says that there are some 200 addresses with cellars of which the state of disrepair is unknown and that they are planning to look at more closely. An inspection should provide the best possible idea of the state of wharves in the city and what preventive and safety measures are needed.

Covid permitting (always check first), visitors can take a walking tour of canals and wharf cellars. As well, this latest discovery could make the tours even more exciting.

According to Wikipedia, Utrecht has 732 wharf cellars built around 1150. They were originally used as storage and other spaces for goods to be transported over water. One cool fact about them is that they can be found under roads.

(Link: www.rtvutrecht.n, Photo of Utrecht Nieuwegracht wharf by Japiot, some rights reserved)

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May 4, 2020

Wartime art: one hundred chairs for one hundred victims

Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 5:44 pm

At the end of WWII, 140 men were shot by the German occupiers at Rozenoord in Amsterdam South district, many of which were resistance fighters. The history of Rozenoord is particularly painful since the men were shot so close the liberation.

Located in the Amstelpark in Amsterdam South district, the Rozenoord monument saw the light of day thanks to an initiative of local residents. Artist Ram Katzir designed the new monument to give all the victims a worthy memorial place. Instead of one monument for 100 people Katzir gave every person their own monument.

Anchored in cement with names on plaques, one hundred chairs are spread out over a green space as if they were barely sat in and positioned randomly. However, the chairs were actually placed according to information about the way the victims were shot. There’s also plaques for those who could not be identified.

The space between the chairs invites visitors to walk around and see who these people were. They can also be sat on, as the piece is meant to be interactive. By sitting down, one can see the other ‘victims’ around them, turning the visitors into participants.

(Link and photo: monument-rozenoord.nl)

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April 10, 2020

Oldest known Corona patient, 107-year-old Dutch woman, cured

Filed under: Dutch first,Health,History by Orangemaster @ 2:59 pm

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), The Netherlands’ ‘Tante Cor’ (‘Aunt Cor)’, real name Cornelia Ras from Goeree-Overflakkee, South Holland, is said to be the oldest Corona patient in the world to have been cured of Covid-19. Although the actual age of a number of elderly patients has not been determined, chances are that Tante Cor is the oldest, with a 104-year-old man from Oregon, Unites States coming in second place.

Tante Cor contracted the virus during a church service in her nursing home, now known hotbeds of contamination in many parts of the world. Forty other people were contaminated as well, ten of which have died, sadly not a unique occurrence.

A few other hundred-year-olds in The Netherlands have also recovered: a 101-year-old woman from Capelle aan den IJssel, South Holland as well as a 103-year-old man from Steenbergen, Noord-Brabant.

(Link: nu.nl, Photo of random old people by Flickr user Freeparking, some rights reserved)

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