When King’s Day began, it had a different name, and was celebrated on a different day. While it is presently celebrated on King Willem-Alexander’s birthday of April 27, the tradition began as Princess Day on August 31, 1885, which was Princess Wilhelmina’s fifth birthday. The holiday changes name (it has also been Queen’s Day) and celebration date depending on the current monarch.

For more than 20 years, Willem-Alexander had a part time job working as a commercial co-pilot for KLM Airlines and Martinair. The king would semi-secretly fly regularly to maintain his pilot’s license, which required he tally 150 hours per year. In 2017, after four years as king, Willem-Alexander revealed his side gig, when he had to retrain to fly Boeing 747s.

The 1974 Dutch World Cup team was known for their position-less style of play that became known as Total Football. Dutch soccer legend Johan Cruyuff is the player most associated with the innovation. As of 2022, the Netherlands have played in three World Cup finals but have not yet taken the title.

Eddie Van Halen was born in 1955 in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, before his family moved to California in the early 1960s. Eddie’s father was Jan van Halen, a Dutch jazz pianist, clarinetist, and saxophonist. His mother Eugenia was from the island of Java, part of the historical Dutch East Indies. Eddie and his brother Alex formed the influential rock band Van Halen in 1972.

Christmas and the story of Santa Claus varies by country and culture, but the American version is believed to come from Sinterklaas, aka Dutch Santa, via Dutch immigrants in the late 18th century. In the Netherlands, Sinterklaas brings presents to children on December 5, the night before St. Nicholas Day. The name Santa Claus evolved from the Dutch nickname for the actual St. Nicholas.

“Wilhelmus,” the Dutch national anthem, is more than 450 years old. It holds the record as the world’s oldest national anthem. The song was written somewhere between 1568 and 1572, as the Dutch fought to gain independence from Spain in what became the Eighty Years War. The song is from the perspective of William the Orange, who led the independence movement.

In the 16th century, a Dutch doctor named Franciscus Sylvius de la Boe created a schnapps distilled with juniper berries, which had long been used to fight fevers. He called the spirit “genever,” which is Dutch for juniper berries. In the following century, genever developed into gin, as its popularity skyrocketed in England, and later worldwide.

According to Dutch lore, the Dutch selectively bred carrots to be orange in color. The practice was done to honor the House of Orange, the ruling dynasty of the Netherlands which has played an important role in its history since its founding in 1544. Prior to the Long Orange Dutch Carrot (first reported in writing in 1721), carrots had been purple and yellow. But since the Dutch began breeding orange carrots, they have grown to dominate the market share worldwide.

On average, a person in the Netherlands consumes four pounds of licorice — called “drop” in Dutch — every year. Though the plant licorice comes from is native to Greece, Turkey, and parts of Asia, no one consumes more of the candy than the Dutch. Licorice accounts for 20% of all candy sold in the Netherlands every year.

The Netherlands is one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world: According to the latest statistics from 2018, the country is home to 22.5 million bicycles, compared to a population of around 18 million. About a quarter of all trips in the country are made by bicycle, and that figure is only growing thanks to cyclist-friendly government policies.

On April 1, 2001, the mayor of Amsterdam married four couples at City Hall after the Netherlands became the world’s first country to officially legalize same-sex marriage. It is against the law to possess, sell or use drugs in the Netherlands, but it is permitted for establishments known as coffee shops to sell “soft drugs” such as cannabis. Uruguay was the first country to officially legalize marijuana in 2013.

On average, Dutch people are the tallest in the world. As of 2021, the average height of a man from the Netherlands was exactly 6 feet, and the average height for women was 5 feet, 6 inches. However, statistics show that recent Dutch generations are actually losing height: between 1980 and 2001, they lost about a half inch in height on average.

Though he spent most of his career in France and was associated with the post-impressionist art scene in Paris, Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in Zundert, Netherlands. Van Gogh was the oldest of six children raised in the Brabant region of the Netherlands. The artist apprenticed in the Hague before leaving for London and then France.

There are more than 1,000 windmills in the Netherlands, and though the vast majority of them are no longer operational, many are still open to visitors. Windmills were historically important for pumping water out of the lowlands, but the expansion of cities and higher buildings have cut down the wind the older mills would need to operate.

The name “Netherlands” roughly translates to lowlands or low-lying country. It’s an apt moniker, considering that the Netherlands have the lowest average elevation of any European country, with almost one-third of the nation lying below sea level. In fact, about half of the Netherlands population lives below sea level. This makes the Netherlands one of the countries facing the most immediate effects of climate change and rising sea levels.

Love a bouquet of flowers? There’s a good chance you can thank the Netherlands for that — the country provides over 50% of the world’s exports. As of 2021, the Netherlands accounted for $5.77 billion worth of cut flowers and flower buds suitable for bouquets or ornamental purposes. The Netherlands is particularly known for growing roses and tulips.

Benelux is a political and economic union between the countries Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg — each of which lends its first few letters to the union's name. The small nations north of France and west of Germany officially formed their trade alliance in 1958, with the signing of the Treaty of the Benelux Economic Union. This document made Benelux the first completely free international labor market and just 12 years later, border controls between the nations were abolished.

The Netherlands flag is made up of three equally sized horizontal stripes of red, white, and blue. The nation’s original flag featured orange in place of red after the House of Orange — William I, prince of Orange, led the Dutch independence movement against Spain. However, it was replaced after a 1654 defense treaty between the Netherlands and England, which excluded members of the House of Orange from being heads of state in the Netherlands.

Approximately 23 million people speak the Dutch language worldwide, and it is an official language of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, as well as island nations of Aruba, St. Maarten, and Curaçao (which are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands). The Dutch Language Union, established in 1980, is intended to regulate issues regarding the language like spelling and grammar.

“Dutch” is the term English speakers use to describe people from the Netherlands; however, Dutch people do not use this term — their language is referred to as “Nederlands.” Dutch comes from a Germanic word meaning “of the people” and is similar to the German word “deutsch” — Germans refer to their native country as “Deutschland.”