December 29, 2018

British postage stamp depicts the wrong war

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 12:15 pm

The Royal Mail of Britain has presented a collection of stamps online that are due to be issued next year, marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day, depicting the Normandy landings of the Allied troops. Problem is, the stamps actually show Americans troops in what is now modern-day Indonesia (Dutch New Guinea), 13,679 kilometres away from Normandy.

People on social media were quick to point out that the image appears on the American National WWII Museum website and is attributed to the US Coast Guard, showing troops carrying stretchers from a landing craft at Sarmi, Dutch New Guinea on 17 May 1944. As well, the D-Day landings took place on 6 June that year, when British, US and Canadian forces landed on the beaches of northern France.

Not only was the wrong image called ’embarrassing’ online, but it’s probably one of the last times that anyone old enough to have been involved in the war will see these stamps, making it extra embarrassing, according to Paul Woodadge, 49, a D-Day historian. As well, a Twitter account for World War Two tours of Jersey tweeted the Royal Mail to point out that the featured ship, LCI-30, did not participate in the Normandy landings.

In the meantime, Royal Mail has apologised and will correct their error. Here’s a case where if social media or the Internet wasn’t around, the mistake would have been even greater, as people would only have noticed the mistake after the stamps were printed.

(Link and photo: bbc.com)

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November 7, 2016

Dutchman breaks Rubik’s Cube record again

Filed under: Gaming by Orangemaster @ 9:06 pm

Rubik's cube-fake

Mats Valk, a 20-year-old business analytics student from Amsterdam, recently broke the world record for solving a 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube at a tournament in Indonesia with a time of 4,74 seconds. Three years ago he had also broken the world record with a time of 5,55 seconds, then someone eventually beat him with a time of 4,90.

At home practicing for this tournament, Valk was able to score a time of 3,81, but it all depends on what the cube is like at the beginning, he explains. Valk has his own line of cubes, called ‘Valk3’. In Indonesia he played on a special version of his Valk3 with magnets for more stability.

Check it out and don’t blink, you’ll miss it:

(Link: www.parool.nl)

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January 9, 2016

These West African wax prints tell a story

Filed under: Fashion by Branko Collin @ 11:55 pm

si-tu-sors-vlisco

A brand named Vlisco has long been in the business of selling wax print textiles in African countries such as Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria where these fabrics were used in traditional wrapped fashion styles.

Sellers used to tell stories about the prints to make them more attractive to their customers. The above Vlisco classic for instance, depicting birds escaping a cage, is called ‘Si Tu Sors Je Sors’, French for “if you cheat on me, I’ll cheat on you.”

six-bougies-vlisco

The 1945 design ‘Six Bougies’ (six spark plugs) originally signified wealth, but in recent years it has come to mean a woman who can take on six men.

These very African textiles originally came from Indonesia by way of the Netherlands. Somewhere during the 1860’s, Messyness Chic reports, the uncle of a Dutch entrepreneur convinced his nephew to use a recently acquired factory in Helmond to produce batik, wax-dyed cloth.

Making batik the Indonesian way, by hand, took a lot of time, so using machines to do the work would cut down on the cost. Unfortunately for Vlisco, these machine produced textiles could not compete with the real thing and the Indonesians rejected them. However, the little flaws in Vlisco’s product appealed to West Africans because it meant every garment would be unique.

Although Vlisco only has stores in Africa, in 2014 the company created a special edition fabric to commemorate the inauguration of the new Dutch King.

(See also: Congo Story; photos: Vlisco)

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July 21, 2014

Armoured vehicles of the Dutch East Indies army

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 11:23 am

marmon-herringto-ctls-4tac-pd

Overvalwagens.com is a website dedicated to “the research of military, commercial and improvised vehicles as used in the Netherlands East and West Indies before 1945”.

In May 1940 Nazi Germany conquered the Netherlands, but it did not gain control over Dutch India. The outbreak of WWII made acquisitions difficult however for KNIL, the army in Dutch India. Overvalwagens.com writes: “Often the Netherlands Purchasing Commission was forced to acquire vehicles (as well as other military equipment) that was by no means standard allied material. Sometimes they bought off-the-shelf prototypes or equipment rejected by the US armed forces.”

An example is the tank shown above, the Marmon-Herrington CTLS-4TA. This was produced by the only company in the US “building tanks commercially, while not being involved in the re-armament process of the US Forces”. An interesting vehicle because the gun turret could not turn all the way around. As a result they were sold and used in pairs, one gun covering the left flank, the other one the right.

(Link: Martin Wisse, Photo: British armed forces, now in the public domain)

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April 29, 2012

A ‘Truman show’ village for dementia sufferers

Filed under: Health by Branko Collin @ 2:16 pm

elderly_manThe international press have been giving a lot of attention lately to a nursing home for dementia sufferers near Amsterdam that tries to give its inhabitants a sense of living their ordinary lives.

The 152 patients living in De Hogewey, Weesp still go to the supermarket, the hairdresser and to a café, even though they generally have no idea what is going on.

Writes the Daily Mail in an extensive report:

A brainstorming process began and by early 1993 they had the answer. Yvonne says: ‘In life, we want to live with people like ourselves. We want to be surrounded by people we would choose to be friends with those with similar values, similar jobs and with similar interests.’

The result was a ‘village’ with several lifestyle options. The job of doctors and carers is to make those seven worlds as real as possible: through the way the home is decorated, the food, the music, even how the table is laid.

The lifestyles reflect the world outside the gates. The ‘Gooise’, or aristocratic Dutch; the ‘ambachtelijke’, or working class; the ‘Indische’, or those of Indonesian origin who migrated to Holland from the former colony; the ‘huiselijke’ or homemakers; the ‘culturele’ who enjoy art, music and theatre; the urban sophisticates who relish city life, and the ‘Christelijke’, for whom religion is paramount – whether Christianity or another faith.

[…]

The posher ‘residents’ dine off lace tablecloths on a table laid with fine glass and porcelain; meals are brought to the table by ‘servants’ who remain on standby in the kitchen. Their relationship with the residents is deliberately formal and submissive. Conversely, the working-class residents prefer meals to be casual, taken with their helpers or ‘family’, maybe in front of the TV.

See also this German video by 3Sat:

Although it costs approximately 5,000 euro per month to stay at De Hogewey, most of that is paid for by the insurer, dementia being covered under Dutch universal healthcare (there is a small copay of 100 euro per month, according to the video report).

Note: stays at nursing homes are generally covered by a nationwide policy (PDF, Dutch) that lets homes charge for extras such as cable television, laundry services and so on. I imagine the same goes for De Hogewey. In other words, there may be extra costs, but these are typically and easily covered by the state pension that everybody over 65 gets (AOW).

See also:

(Photo by Frank Mayne, some rights reserved)

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