At 15:35 24-5-01 +1000, Brett Coster wrote:
>So Charlie said:
> > And has been before. A lot of the Netherlands was flooded in WW2, IIRC.
>
>A lot of Holland
<sigh>
Time for a rerun of the Dutch Geography Crash Course I gave here in the past.
Calling this country "Holland" is WRONG WRONG WRONG! The country is known
as "The Netherlands"; the only "Holland" we have are two of our twelve
provinces (only two provinces, named with a great sense of originality
"North Holland" and "South Holland").
Can anyone explain why you foreigners keep calling it "Holland"? It's
annoying has hell. Oh, and saying "Because it's easier" isn't good enough
as an explanation...
> was North Sea up to and including WW2.
Not really. The coast line hasn't changed all that much; we only reclaimed
some 30 sq km of land from the North Sea since then. We did have one
*major* land reclamation operation (giving us the province called
Flevoland), but that took place in the IJsselmeer (the former Zuiderzee),
not in the North Sea.
>Amsterdam's airport - actually, I guess it must be the only
>airport in the Netherlands ;-) - is Schipol
Schiphol the only airport? You'd be surprised...
Actually, it still amazes me what we managed to cram into this small
country (a mere 41,532 square km in size, 18.4% of which is water):
2,739 km of railways, 125,575 km of highways, 5,046 km of waterways, 11,613
km of pipelines, 11 ports and harbors, and 28 airports. And then we still
manage to have forests, agriculture, and room for 16 million people to
live, work and relax...
(Source: CIA World Factbook)
>Anyway, hundreds of RAF and USAAF bombing missions entered Europe
>over the Zuyder Zee as it was then, which didn't take the
>Luftwaffe long to realise and then counter with flak and
>fighters. Dozens of aircraft, from both sides, are believed to
>have been lost there.
Yep, we still keep digging them up. And it's not just planes -- hardly a
month goes by without a building project being halted because a WW2 bomb is
discovered on the site. And a Navy officer I talked to a few months ago
told me that our minesweepers still find and destroy 1 or 2 WW2 mines in
the North Sea every *week*!
>It's possible that my
>cousin's Lancaster that went missing in 1945 will one day turn up
>in a paddock there, although his plane could be anywhere from
>Yorkshire to Leipzig. Just disappeared, no trace.
There's a good chance he's buried with his plane, somewhere in The
Netherlands. But if it's any consolation: if we ever find him, we'll see to
it that he is brought home for proper burial.
Jeroen
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