World Famous Dutch People Trivia Quiz

Answer: Peter Stuyvesant

He ruled New Amsterdam from 27 May 1647 until it was conquered by the British on 9 September, 1664. The burgomasters ('masters of the civilians') proclaimed Captain Richard Nicholls governor. He was a captain of four English vessels, sent by the Duke of York, and the town was called New York. All that remains today is a Stuyvesant Street, a Stuyvesant High School and Middle School and a neighborhood called Stuyvesant Town.

In his early childhood Stuyvesant's name was Pieter. He Latinized that name into Petrus. In the nineteenth century his name was anglicized by American historicist into Peter, a form not used in the seventeenth century.

A replica of the tombstone of Stuyvesant can still be admired in New York. It can be found on the outside of the St. Mark's church wall.

Learn more about Stuyvesant at http://www.peterstuyvesant.org.

Answer: Arie Luyendijk

When Arie moved to the States he renamed himself "Luyendyk". Besides his great achievement in Indianapolis, Arie won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1989, co-driving a Nissan GTP with Geoff Brabham and Chip Robinson and backed up his sports car racing credentials with a popular victory in the 1998 24 Hours of Daytona, sharing the winning MOMO Ferrari 333SP with Gianpiero Moretti, Didier Theys and Mauro Baldi. Arie has also been invited to represent IndyCar racing in the International Race of Champions (IROC) series.

Becoming to old to drive himself, Arie shifted his focus on managing Arie Luyendyk Jr. He is a talented driver in the open wheel cars and races in the A1GP.

Jan Lammers and Rob Slotemakers are well know racers in The Netherlands but their stardom seldomly crossed the Dutch Border.

Answer: van Rijn

Vincent Van Gogh is also a famous Dutch painter who lived in the 19th century.
"Rhine" is the English translation of the river The Rijn. The Maas is an other major Dutch river, like the Rijn. Maes (Nicolaes) was one of the students of Rembrandt.

Rembrandt van Rijn created a total of 300 paintings, 300 sketches and more than 2000 drawings. His best known artwork is The Nightwatch. In 1715 this masterpiece was moved to a different location where is had to fit between two windows. They simply trimmed the sides and cut of three figures. How rude!

Rembrandt is undoubtedly the most important artist from the 17th century. Born in 1606 in Leiden, he was the son of a windmill owner. Very Dutch indeed.
During the last years of his live, Rembrandt created his best self portraits. In these you can really see all the suffering. He went bankrupt and three of his new born babies died shortly after birth. The fourth son (named Titus) did survive but then his wife (Saskia) died shortly after giving birth. He remarried and had a daughter Cornelia. He outlived his son Titus and his second wife Hendrickje.

He died on October 4 1669 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Answer: Johan Cruijff

Outside The Netherlands his name is spelled Cruyf.
To prove he is really a legendary player, here is a list of his accomplishments:

14x Dutch Competition Champion
10x National Cup winner
4x Europe Cup I
2x Europe Cup II
1x World cup for competition teams
2x European Super cup
3x Spanish Super cup
2x Top scorer Dutch competition: 1967, 1972
5x Dutch soccer player of the year (1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1984)
3x European soccer player of the year (1971, 1973, 1974)
Best Player Word Championship 1974
European country team of the year (1974 in a tie with West-Germany)
1 x runner up World championship
2x Dutch Sportsman of the year, (1974, 1975)
2x American soccer player of the year (1979, 1980)
1 x season's most valuable player in the league 1979 (Los Angeles Aztecs)
World Soccer Magazine Manager of the year 1987
2 x Mondial coach of the year (1992, 1994)
Dutch soccer player of the CENTURY
IFFHS European soccer player of the CENTURY

Other honors:
Royal Knight in the Order of Oranje Nassau, granted by the Dutch Queen in 1974
Honoree citizenship of Los Angeles, granted in December 1979
Sport and Trade award, ministry of Culture and wellbeing, granted in July 1992
Honoree membership of Ajax Amsterdam (number 14 has been reserved for Johan and will never be used again).

The other answers are brilliant players as well, especially Marco van Basten who has also made it to coach of the Dutch soccer team.

In his senior years Johan was sports commentator and chairman of the Johan Cruyff Foundation. The Johan Cruyff Foundation supports sports and play for children worldwide. Special attention is being paid to children with a handicap.

Answer: Bicycle pedal and cranks

His name was Christiaan Huijgens (1629-1695), but his name is also written as Huyghens or Hugens.

The second law of motion was later reformulated and generalized by Isaac Newton, but our Christiaan thought of it first. Christiaan was also the leading proponent of the wave theory of light. In astronomy he was the first to correctly identify the observed elongation of Saturn as the presence of Saturn's rings as well as the moon Titan.

Other famous inventions are the pendulum clock and significant improvement on the lenses of telescopes. He developed the construction of lenses of enormous focal length. Three telescopes he made had focal lengths of 123 feet, 180 feet, and 210 feet, and were given to the Royal Society of London where they remained. He also developed the achromatic eye-piece (for a telescope) which is named after him.

Some history books will state that Pierre and Ernest Michaux, the French father and son team of carriage-makers, invented the first bicycle during the 1860s. Historians now disagree and there is evidence that the bicycle is older than that. However, historians do agree that Ernest Michaux did invent the modern bicycle pedal and cranks in 1861. This was well after the death of Christiaan (1695).

Answer: Germany

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank was born in 1929 in Germany in Frankfurt am Main. Her family fled to Amsterdam when the Nazis took over Germany in 1933. In 1941 all German Jews who lived outside Germany were declared stateless by a Nazi law. Anne desired to become Dutch. She spoke and wrote in Dutch.

The Frank family and their friends, who hid in the Backhouse, were betrayed and arrested in 1944. Only the father, Otto Frank, survived the war, all others died in imprisonment. Otto published the 324 pages 1947 but onely after a lot of hesitations. The diary has been translated all over the world, making Anne's story world famous.

Trivially enough Anne Frank was on the list of "greatest Dutch Person (grootste Nederlander)" in 2004 as well as "Greatest German Person (Unsere Besten)" in 2003. She made it to the 8th and 134th place respectively, which confirms my point that she is often regarded as a Dutch girl.

Answer: A flight in the Space Shuttle

All are important events in 1985 but Wubbo only participated in the Space Shuttle Flight Challenger launched on October 31st. He was in Spacelab D-1 responsible for the test equipment and a lot of scientific experiments.

With that flight he also became the first Dutchman in space. Born Dutchman Lodewijk van den Berg flew with the Challenger a half year earlier but he became American citizen in 1975.

The International Astronomical Union named a planetoid after Wubbo Ockels, full name "9496 Ockels". The tiny planet revolves between Mars and Jupiter around the sun and has a maximal diameter of 11.4 kilometers.

Answer: Jan de Bont

Rutger Hauer is best known for his role of replicant Roy Batty in the Science Fiction cult movie "Blade Runner", starring Harrison Ford. In 2007, at the time of the 25th anniversary of "Blade Runner", Rutger received a time machine award at the International Film festival Catalonia (Spain).
Other movies with Rutger are "The Hitcher", "Blind Fury", "Batman Begins" (William Earle) and "The Poseidon Adventure" in which he played Bishop August Schmitt. So he is an actor and not a director, let alone a former camera man.

Famke Janssen is the very pretty actress most famous for her role as Jean Grey in the X-men movies. Her breakthrough was as Bond Babe with killer thighs in "Golden Eye" starring Pierce Brosnan. Also on television she is often to be seen, for instance as Ava Moore in "Nip/Tuck".

Paul Verhoeven is a director. He has worked with Rutger Hauer and Jan de Bont a lot. His best known international movies are Basic Instinct, RoboCop, Starship Troopers and Hollow Man. After this last picture he went back to The Netherlands to restart his Dutch movie inspirations. "Black Book" was an immediate success and just missed the Academy nomination list.

Jan de Bont came to America in 1970 after completing a few great Dutch movies with his friend Paul Verhoeven. Jan was already recognized for his stunning camera work in The Forth Man. His genre is usually action with stunts and moving cameras. His best known work can be seen in "Die Hard", "Black Rain", "The Hunt for the Red October", "Lethal Weapon 3", "Basic Instinct" and "Flatliners". He was Hollywood's most successful cameraman which encouraged him to move on to directoring. He was successful in the beginning proven by his top selling "Speed" and "Twister". Then he thought he could do the production too but that didn't turn out so well. "Speed 2", "The Haunting" and "Tomb Raider 2" were acceptable but far from successful.

Answer: Shocking Blue - "Venus"

Shocking Blue had a world wide hit with "Venus". The song is based on "The Banjo Song" (1963) by The Big 3 with Tim Rose and it borrowed a catchy guitar riff from "Pinball Wizard". The single only made it to number three in The Netherlands but in other countries it lead the charts. "Venus" has been covered by Stars On 45 and by Bananarama, both times it took the top position in the Billboard top 100, as did the original.

With the chugging beat and lyrics that begin "I've been driving all night, my hands wet on the wheel...", "Radar Love" is the perfect song for cross-country night driving with no objective other than being with the one you love as soon as possible. It is a very popular "car" song. Surprisingly, this universally well-known classic did not even make the pop top 10 upon its initial release. It landed at unlucky thirteen. The song has been covered a few hundred times over the decades, including versions by White Lion, U2, R.E.M., Blue Man Group, Def Leppard, James Last and Santana. "Radar Love" features prominently near the beginning of the 1993 film Wayne's World 2 and is also to be heard in the film "Detroit Rock City" and it even made two episodes of "The Simpsons".
"Twilight Zone" atually scored better than "Radar Love". It peaked in position ten.

George Baker is a homegrown Dutch artist. Surprisingly enough, his early (1969) single "Little Green Bag" was used in the film "Reservoir Dogs", upon which it became an international cult classic. It even made it to the 21st position in the Billboard top 100. In 1992, the song reached the number one position in Japan, after it was used in a Japanese whiskey commercial. In 1999 Tom Jones released a cover of the song recorded with the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies on the collaborations album "Reload".

Answer: Heineken

Heineken owns and manages one of the world's leading portfolios of beer brands and is one of the world's leading brewers in terms of sales volume and profitability. Strong in taste, it is the favored beer by consumers worldwide who appreciate the high quality flavor. Rumor has it that Heineken recruited hundreds of people whose job it was to ask specifically for Heineken in American bars. If this is true, it worked!

The company 'Heineken' was formed when the twenty-two year old Gerard Adriaan Heineken bought brewery 'De Hooiberg' (translation 'The Haystack') in Amsterdam in 1863. In 1886 Dr. Elion, a student of Louis Pasteur, developed a special Heineken A-yeast. This yeast is still the basis for the Heineken recipe. Alfred (Freddy) Heineken (the grandson of Gerard) joined the company in 1941. Under his command the Dutch beer developed into the world famous brand. Freddy Heineken died on January 3, 2002 aged 78. Freddy's daughter, Charlene de Carvalha-Heineken, took over the beer empire. She became the richest woman in the Netherlands instantly (yes, even richer than the Queen). Her estimated value in 2007 was 7.2 billion dollars, about 12% of Bill Gates' assets, which placed her on position 102 in the Forbes list 2007.

The abduction of Freddy Heineken and his chauffeur (Doderer) took place on November 9, 1983. After a brilliantly constructed ransom payment, the abductors escaped. Heineken and Doderer were found alive in a shed in Amsterdam on November 30, and the criminals were apprehended a few weeks later. Most of the ransom money was recovered but 8 million Guilders (4 million Euros) is still missing.

Corona, officially Corona Extra, a Mexican beer brand by brewery Grupo Modelo. It is light colored and in a transparent bottle, therefore it can not be stored very long. During the production cheap alternatives are used like corn and rice. This is why the taste is kind of neutral which is compensated by putting a lemon or lime slice in the bottle. The best feature of this brand is its marketing. It is very popular under young drinkers.

Genuine Bud often abbreviated to Bud, is the most important beer brand of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. The "King of Beers" is the best selling beer worldwide followed by Bud Light. Budweiser is an American lager, low on taste and high on carbonic acid. Budweiser has a long dispute with the Czech brewery Budweiser Budvar. Several attempts by Anheuser-Busch to buy the factory failed. Budweiser is very well known because of the sports event sponsorships.

Arthur Guinness started brewing ales initially in Leixlip. In 1759 he moved to the St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin Ireland. The beer is based on the porter style that originated in London in the early 1700s. The distinctive feature in the flavor is the roasted barley which remains unfermented. For many years a portion of the beer was aged to give a sharp lactic flavor, but Guinness has refused to confirm if this still occurs. The thick creamy head is the result of a nitrogen mix being added during the serving process.