Perhaps that’s why it is such a happy country!ġ5. The Netherlands has the thirteenth-highest income per person in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund. There are almost no streets in the Dutch village of Giethoorn, but there are lots of canals, which is why it's also known as the “Venice of the Netherlands”.ġ4. Nowadays, the name “jenever” can only be used for that kind of liquor made in Belgium, the Netherlands, two northern French departments, and two German federal states.ġ3. He turned the image of it as a medicine to one of gin as a fashionable drink. It was the Dutch King William of Orange who made the drink popular in England when he became King of England, Ireland, and Scotland. What we now know as gin was invented as “jenever” in the Netherlands in the 16th century and originally used for medicinal purposes. KLM ( Koninklijke Luchtvaartmaatschappij or “Royal Airline Company”), the Dutch national airline, is the oldest national airline in the world. Historically they were used to pump water from the low-lying land back to the sea.ġ1. 19 of these can be found at the Unesco World Heritage Site of Kinderdijk. There are still over 1,000 traditional working windmills in the Netherlands. They consume 32 million kilos of licorice every year.ġ0. The Dutch are the biggest licorice eaters in the world. According to the 2013 United Nations World Happiness Report, the Netherlands was ranked one of the happiest countries in the world! It is ranked fourth happiest out of all the countries in the world.ĩ. Amsterdam is the most densly populaed city in the Netherlands and home to at least 200 different nationalities.Ĩ. Only 50% of the country has land exceeding one meter above sea level, with most of the areas below sea level being man-made.ħ. The Netherlands has a long coastline along the North Sea. Did you know that the official language Dutch isn't the only national language in the Netherlands? Frisian or Fryslân, the language spoken in the province of Friesland, is too.Ħ. The Netherlands was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. There are 20 national parks in the Netherlands, as well as hundreds of woods and lakes.Ĥ. Neanderthal traces have been found near Maastricht, thought to trace back at least 250,000 years.ģ. The country's official name is the Kingdom of the Netherlands and it was established in 1815.Ģ. It used to be the economically strongest region of the country, which is why it's so known. Holland comprises the Dutch provinces of North and South Holland. Here's a fun fact about Holland: using “Holland” to talk about the Netherlands is wrong. If you see anything that looks incorrect, please let me know at wanderer and I'll look into it. Given their nature, these posts are research-based and even though a lot of time has gone into them, it's still possible a mistake has sneaked in. I'm doing these posts for every country I have articles about here on the blog.
This post is part of a series of fun facts posts.