We wrote about Boyan Slat, the water rocket obssessed teenager (that’s what his mom called him on telly recently) who shot off some 101 rocket simultaneously last year on 20 June. This year, with the help of students from the Delft University of Technology and sponsoring from the university, he launched 213 rockets, which earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
(Dear Dutch press: you’ve never spelled ‘Guinness’ properly as far as I can remember. Please learn to spell it with 2 nn and 2 ss. It’s that simple, think of a car with four wheels.)
Somehow, as I said last year, this kid is probably going to go to the Delft University of Technology when he grows up.
Since then, Slat’s modest website wetenschapvoordummies (Science for dummies) has been replaced by a much slicker site called gottalaunch with all kinds of pictures, videos and cool stuff.
A museum consisting largely of dioramas of the Great War will open at 2 pm today in the Kruithuis (old munitions house) in Alkmaar, Noord Holland. Named Le Poilu after the nickname unshaven French soldiers acquired in the war, the museum mainly looks at the Battle of Verdun, where 300,000 soldiers died and many more were wounded. The museum was founded by Peter Wories from nearby Heiloo, who has been fascinated by WWI ever since he found out that his grandmother was originally from Antwerp, but fled the city to the Netherlands when the Germans attacked in 1914.
Albert Verwey wrote about Lodewijk van Deyssel’s 1887 novel Een Liefde (A Love), considered pornographic at the time: 
As of today, the Royal Palace in Amsterdam will be open to the public again. The former 17th century city hall had been closed for renovations for three years. 
