Foreigners visiting the Netherlands in November and December are often shocked at the sight of whites dressed up to something resembling classic blackface character, known as Zwarte Piet, whom many Dutch nationals love as a holiday symbol.

A white Netherlands | Dutch woman in Zwarte Piet costume.

The Netherlands continues to celebrate St. Nicolas Eve with sinterklaas accompanied by multiple Zwarte Pieten in the form of adolescents boys ( and sometimes girls ) who use black make-up to make their faces unrecognizable, ( for children who might otherwise recognise them ) and who wear Moorish page boy costumes.

In the past, Zwarte Piet was more identified with the chastising of bad children than the rewarding of the good, but both characters have softened since the mid-19th century, and today the 5 December feast of Saint Nicholas ( in the Netherlands, 6 December in Belgium ) is mainly an occasion for giving gifts to children.

The corresponding figure in the Netherlands and Flanders is called Zwarte Piet or Black Pete, and in Switzerland Schmutzli, ( schmutz meaning dirt ).

In Belgium and the Netherlands, children are told that Zwarte Piet leaves gifts in the children ’ s shoes.

* Vechte, a river that originates in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and ends in confluence with river Zwarte Water in the Netherlands province of Overijssel ; often called Overijsselse Vecht in Dutch

Location of the Zwarte Water river within the Netherlands.

The station announced itself as VRON ( Vrije Radio Omroep Nederland ; Free Radio Station the Netherlands ) but changed to Radio Veronica, after the poem " Het Zwarte Schaap Veronica " — The Black Sheep Veronica — by the children's poet Annie M. G. Schmidt.

On 27 November 2003, the Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner announced that his government was considering rules under which coffeeshops would only be allowed to sell soft drugs to Dutch residents in order to satisfy both European neighbors ' concerns about the influx of drugs from the Netherlands, as well as those of Netherlands border town residents unhappy with the influx of " drug tourists " from elsewhere in Europe.

* April 3 – Piet de Jong, Dutch politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1967 until 1971

The Piet Hein Tunnel () is a 1. 9 km long tunnel under an inlet of the IJsselmeer in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

In the 20th century, the Netherlands produced many fine painters and artists, including Piet Mondriaan, a noted contributor to the De Stijl art movement, who was also among the vanguard of non-representational painting.

Piet de Jong as Ministry of Defence ( Netherlands ) | Minister of Defence in 1965.

Piet de Jong at the inauguration of his Netherlands cabinet De Jong | cabinet in 1967.

Piet de Jong as Prime Minister of the Netherlands in 1969.

Piet de Jong with all former living Prime Minister of the Netherlands | Prime Ministers of the Netherlands in 2011.

The other " judges " were Meester Piet Vermeylen of Belgium, George Branting of Sweden, Maître Vincent de Moro-Giafferi and Maître Gaston Bergery of France, Betsy Bakker-Nort of the Netherlands, Vald Hvidt of Denmark, and Arthur Garfield Hays of the United States.

* HMS Serapis was a World War II S-class destroyer launched in March 1943, transferred to the Royal Netherlands Navy in October as HNLMS Piet Hein, and broken up in 1962.

* Piet de Brouwer ( 1880 – 1953 ), Dutch archer from the Netherlands

Kristel was born in Utrecht, Netherlands, as the daughter of Piet and Jean-Nicholas, who ran an inn in Utrecht.

SUNflower: A comparative study of the development of road safety in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands Matthijs Koornstra ( SWOV ), David Lynam ( TRL ), Göran Nilsson ( VTI ), Piet Noordzij ( SWOV ), Hans-Erik Pettersson ( VTI ), Fred Wegman ( SWOV ), and Peter Wouters ( SWOV ).

Rensenbrink made his international debut for the Netherlands national football team against Scotland in 1968, but picked up relatively few caps due to competition for the forward positions with Johan Cruijff and Piet Keizer.

Piet, who owned a hobby and crafts workshop and a camper which he would drive around The Netherlands and Belgium for live trips.

In 2006 Minister of Justice Piet Hein Donner provoked a widespread public outcry when he suggested the Netherlands might accept Sharia law in a constitutional manner.

* Fracture Mechanics by Prof. Piet Schreurs ( from TU Eindhoven, Netherlands )

* 1902 – Louis Beel, Dutch politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands ( d. 1977 )

* 1918 – Jelle Zijlstra, Dutch politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands ( d. 2001 )

Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the Remonstrance ( 1610 ), a theological statement signed by 45 ministers and submitted to the States-General of the Netherlands.

Germany | German – Netherlands | Dutch – Belgium | Belgian border as seen from the town area

MCP received this order from the Dutch government because their computer met all the technical and other demands, including the demand that the computers should be of Dutch origin and should be built in the Netherlands.

* 1566 – Two-hundred Dutch noblemen, led by Hendrik van Brederode, force themselves into the presence of Margaret of Parma and present the Petition of Compromise, denouncing the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands.

* 1960 – The Netherlands and West Germany sign an agreement to negotiate the return of German land annexed by the Dutch in return for 280 million German marks as Wiedergutmachung.

Due to mutual agreements with foreign clubs, the youth academy has also signed foreign players as teenagers before making first team debuts, such as Belgian defensive trio Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld and Thomas Vermaelen ( now with Arsenal ) and winger Tom de Mul ( now with Sevilla ), all of whom are full internationals as well as Dutch youth international Javier Martina and Vurnon Anita of the Netherlands Antilles.

Dutch hip hop or Nederhop is hip hop music created by musicians in the Netherlands and Flanders.

Another Dutch hip-hop duo are Pete Philly and Perquisite who are already well known in the Netherlands, Germany, and even in Japan.

A famous Dutch rapper outside the Netherlands is Salah Edin.

* Astronomical Netherlands Satellite, a Dutch X-ray satellite

The Dutch, however, who clung to their troops for their country's protection, were against any adventurous military operation as far south as the Danube and would never willingly permit any major weakening of the forces in the Spanish Netherlands.

With Villeroi shadowing Marlborough's every move, Marlborough's gamble that the French would not move against the weakened Dutch position in the Netherlands paid off.

The immediate question for the Allies now was how to deal with the Spanish Netherlands, a subject which the Austrians and the Dutch were diametrically opposed.

The myth was perpetuated by Romeyn de Hooghe's Spiegel van Staat der Vereenigden Nederlanden (" Mirror of the State of the United Netherlands ", 1706 ), which also ran to many editions, and it was revived in the atmosphere of Romantic nationalism in the late eighteenth-century reforms that saw a short-lived Batavian Republic and, in the colony of the Dutch East Indies, a capital ( now Jakarta ) that was named Batavia.

The idea of being " born again in Christ " inspired some common European forenames: French René / Renée ( also used in the Netherlands ), Dutch Renaat / Renate, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Renato / Renata, Latin Renatus / Renata, which all mean " reborn ", " born again ".

Colonial soldiers standing guard next to the statue of King Willem III of the Netherlands, representing Dutch empire | Dutch dominance on Banda.

The original colony of New Netherlands was settled by the Dutch and the law was also Dutch.

During the Napoleonic wars the Kingdom of the Netherlands adopted the French code civil in 1809, however the Dutch colonies in the Cape of Good Hope and Sri Lanka, at the time called Ceylon, were seized by the British to prevent them being used as bases by the French Navy.

Many of these vehicles are second hand ( such as the 1500 decommissioned Dutch buses, which the Netherlands donated to Cuba in the mid 1990s ) and despite the United States trade embargo, American-style yellow school buses ( imported second-hand from Canada ) are increasingly common sights.

Drawing of fossil jaws of Mosasaurus | Mosasaurus hoffmanni, from the Maastrichtian of Limburg ( Netherlands ) | Dutch Limburg, by Dutch geologist Pieter Harting ( 1866 ).