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Interesting Facts about Netherlands

Trivia, oddities, and curious tidbits about Netherlands.

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18 curious facts about Netherlands.

The world's busiest port is in Rotterdam with over - 385,800 tons being transported.
The country with the most bicycles has approximately 16 million bikes. That would average to be one bike per person in the country.
The Netherlands is also known as Holland, because it contains the provinces of North and South Holland. These provinces, along with the province of Utrecht, are the mostly densely populated part of the country. The northern provinces are largely rural. Altogether there are 12 provinces in the Netherlands.
Disastrous flooding in 1953 killed 1,800 people and destroyed more than 70,000 homes. This led to a huge flood-control project. Flooding struck again in 1995. Rising rivers forced 240,000 people to relocate until the water receded.

Some Dutch people hid Jewish citizens from Nazis during World War II. Among these “onderduikers,” people who “dove” into hiding, was a teenager named Anne Frank whose diary was later published worldwide.
Recycling is well established in the Netherlands. Dutch families carefully sort recyclable waste. Organic matter like vegetable scraps is put into special bins for pickup.
In the 17th century, a craze called “tulipomania” swept the country. Tulips became so popular that people had to pay huge sums to buy a single bulb. Eventually, the government regulated the tulip trade.
Dutch farmers learned a kind of pole-vaulting so they could cross drainage ditches and get from field to field. This became a sport called polsstokspringen.
Some historians say the Dutch invented baseball. Art from the 1600s shows children playing something much like the modern game. Dutch settlers may have brought baseball to North America.
In 1993, the Netherlands government legalized euthanasia (mercy-killing) under certain strict conditions, the first government in the world to do so.