Django, who was born Jean Baptiste Reinhardt in Belgium and who died in 1953 in France, was an extraordinary man.

Not only was his Belgian nationality interesting because of Belgium's occupation by Germany ( which provided a valid explanation of why such a skilled detective would be out of work and available to solve mysteries at an English country house ), but also at the time of Christie's writing, it was considered patriotic to express sympathy with the Belgians, since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain's casus belli for entering World War I, and British wartime propaganda emphasized the " Rape of Belgium ".

Alexis Carrel was also a member of learned societies in the U. S., Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy and Greece and received honorary doctorates from Queen's University of Belfast, Princeton University, California, New York, Brown University and Columbia University.

As the delegates made their way to the conference by train, Germany was invading Belgium.

However, the first major pop rapper from Belgium was Benny B, who had a very mainstream and commercial sound.

By the mid late 18th century developments in cheaper zinc distillation such as John-Jaques Dony's horizontal furnaces in Belgium and the reduction of tariffs on zinc as well as demand for corrosion resistant high zinc alloys increased the popularity of speltering and as a result cementation was largely abandoned by the mid 19th century.

Rail transport in Belgium was historically managed by the National Railway Company of Belgium, known as SNCB in French and NMBS in Dutch.

Non-ferrous metallurgy has prospered because the Pirdop copper smelting plant was bought by Union Minière of Belgium and because export markets have been favourable.

The 3rd Division was deployed to Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force ( BEF ).

In 1824, Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father and later wrote that it was while travelling on the Rhine that he decided to abandon the law: " I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer.

At the end of September 2003, the first part of High Speed 1, a high speed link to the Channel Tunnel and on to France and Belgium, was completed, significantly adding to the rail infrastructure of the country.

This was also seen in Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Pacific, Scandinavia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, Philippines and Mexico.

* Province of Brabant, Belgium, which in 1995 was split up into two provinces and an autonomous region:

A 2005 study by researchers at Ghent University in Belgium showed that subclinical iron deficiency ( anemia ) was a strong predictor of bacterial vaginosis in pregnant women.

The one major paratrooper attack was used earlier in Holland to capture a bridge and a number of small-scale glider-landings were conducted in Belgium to capture terrain dominating bottle-necks on planned routes of advance prior to the arrival of the main ground forces ( the most renowned being the landing on the Belgian border-fort of Eben-Emael ).

The UK was allied with France ( by the Entente Cordiale ) and Russia, and when the First World War broke out in 1914, the British Army sent the British Expeditionary Force to France and Belgium to prevent Germany from occupying these countries.

: According to the BIS, " The choice of Switzerland for the seat of the BIS was a compromise by those countries that established the BIS: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Researchers working from the 1990s have concluded that money was directly funnelled to the army by the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, the UN, and Belgium.

Their second son, John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower, was born on August 3, 1922, while they were in Panama ; John served in the United States Army, retired as a brigadier general, became an author and served as U. S. Ambassador to Belgium from 1969 to 1971.

Soon, the war began to go well ; French troops marched across the southern half of the Netherlands ( which would later become Belgium ), and the emergency that had placed the Committee of Public Safety in control was no more.

Eindhoven was connected to the major Zuid-Willemsvaart canal through the Eindhovens Kanaal branch in 1843 and was connected by rail to Tilburg ,'s-Hertogenbosch, Venlo and Belgium between 1866 and 1870.

In the second half of the twentieth century, however, there has been a gradual shift of political and economic power to Flanders, which, having modernized its economy, is now more wealthy and prosperous than its southern counterpart .< ref >" Belgium.

Flanders Expo, the biggest event hall in Flanders, second biggest in Belgium, is also located in Ghent.

A second German force was sent into Belgium and the Netherlands to act as a diversion to this main thrust.

" Michel De Coster, Professor at the Université de Liège wrote also: " The historians and the economists say that Belgium was the second industrial power of the world, in proportion to its population and its territory (...) But this rank is the one of Wallonia where the coal-mines, the blast furnaces, the iron and zinc factories, the wool industry, the glass industry, the weapons industry ... were concentrated "

Even if Belgium is the second industrial country after England, the effect of the industrial revolution there was very different.

* Father's Day ( in Belgium on the second Sunday in June )( in the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Venezuela, the Netherlands, Ireland and Canada on the third Sunday in June )

* 1918 – World War I: Germans repel the British's second attempt to blockade the port of Ostend, Belgium.

A new development, called the rotating-wheel braille display, was developed in 2000 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST ) and although a second rotating display was designed at the Leuven University in Belgium both wheels are still in the process of commercialization.

On August 2, 1963, the second Gilson Act entered into force, fixing the division of Belgium into four language areas: a Dutch, a French and a German language area, and Brussels as a bilingual area with both French and Dutch as its official languages.

On January 30, 2003, Belgium became the second country in the world to legally recognize same-sex marriage.

* 1939: The second IJK took place in Tervuren, Belgium

The German Emperor Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse, Duke Charles Edward of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and Duke Ernst August of Brunswick were Edward's nephews ; Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain, Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden, Crown Princess Marie of Romania, Crown Princess Sophia of Greece, Empress Alexandra of Russia, Grand Duchess Alexandra of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and Duchess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen were his nieces ; Haakon VII of Norway was both his nephew by marriage and his son-in-law ; George I of Greece and Frederick VIII of Denmark were his brothers-in-law ; Albert I of Belgium, Charles I and Manuel II of Portugal, and Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria were his second cousins.

Belgium is the second state in the EMU, after Finland, to, from 2008 on, change the design of their standard circulation euro coins in accordance with recommendations defined by the Economic and Financial Affairs Council of the European Union.

Prince Philippe was the third ( second surviving ) son of Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, and his wife, Marie-Louise of France, and the younger brother of King Leopold II of Belgium.

When, however, the only legitimate son of his uncle, Leopold II, died as a child, and Albert's older brother, Prince Baudouin of Belgium, who had been subsequently prepared for the throne, also died young, Albert, at the age of 16, unexpectedly became second in line ( after his father ) to the Belgian Crown.

During the season, Häkkinen took six more podium finishes to add to his sole podium of 1993, including a second place in Belgium.

However, a second act of the French King " justified a hostile interpretation ": pursuant to a treaty with Spain, Louis occupied several towns in the Spanish Netherlands ( modern Belgium and Nord-Pas-de-Calais ).

During the Shaba invasions, France sided firmly with Mobutu: during the first Shaba invasion, France airlifted 1, 500 Moroccan troops to Zaire, and the rebels were repulsed ; a year later, during the second Shaba invasion, France itself would send French Foreign Legion paratroopers ( 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment ) to aid Mobutu ( along with Belgium ).

McCrae fought in the second battle of Ypres in the Flanders region of Belgium where the German army launched one of the first chemical attacks in the history of war.

* Eugène Prévinaire, ( 1805 – 1877 ), second governor of the National Bank of Belgium

He played in the 1990 FIFA World Cup, scoring a hat-trick against South Korea in Spain's second game ( 3 – 1 ), and also a penalty against Belgium in the nation's final group game.

Despite this, " Maria " was chosen as the album's second single, and became a breakthrough hit, reaching number one in France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Turkey, and the entire continent of South America.

* Belgium is the second European country ( after the Netherlands ) to legalise euthanasia.