Patrick Poelmann @patrickpoelmann

Amsterdam, 7 juli 1652. In de nacht brak in het oude stadhuis een brand uit die zich razendsnel verspreidde. Al snel werden er rijen gevormd die emmertjes water doorgaven om het vuur te bestrijden. Ook de Wisselbank werd getroffen. Veel archiefstukken gingen verloren en munten smolten samen. 1/3

Op deze dag in 1885 testte Louis Pasteur zijn vaccin tegen hondsdolheid bij de negenjarige Joseph Meister. Joseph was door een dolle hond gebeten. Na wekenlange behandeling genas de jongen en kon Pasteur zeggen dat hij een vaccin tegen hondsdolheid had ontdekt

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He was 27 years old. Standing on a train platform in occupied Poland. Watching helpless men, women, and children being loaded onto cattle cars. Most people looked away. Berthold Beitz walked toward the train. It is 1942. The war has consumed Europe for three years. The killing has become industrial — systematic, scheduled, relentless. Beitz is not a soldier. Not a resistance fighter. He is a German businessman, born in 1913 in a small town in Pomerania, sent by the Carpathian Oil Company to manage their operations in Borysław — now western Ukraine. He oversees thousands of workers. Many of them are Jewish forced laborers. The SS is methodically eliminating the Jewish population of the region. Deportation trains to the Bełżec extermination camp run on schedule. No one who boards them comes back. And no one — not even workers at strategically vital oil operations — is protected. But Beitz has something most men in his position never use: access. As director of a facility crucial to the German war effort, he has relationships with Nazi officials. He receives advance notice of planned deportation actions. And in the summer of 1942, standing at the transfer point watching what is being done to the people around him, he makes a decision that will define the rest of his 99 years on earth. He starts warning people. When a roundup is coming, he slips word to the Jewish community ahead of time. He obtains work papers — sometimes forged — declaring Jewish workers essential to oil production. He goes to the train platforms, again and again, and pulls people off the cattle cars. Tailors. Hairdressers. Talmudic scholars. He hands them cards that read "petroleum technician" and walks them away from death. In August 1942, he removes 250 people from a single transport to Bełżec in one audacious act. He tells the guards these men and women are his workers. Critical to the war effort. Indispensable. The guards let them go. What makes Beitz remarkable isn't just what he did — it's where he came from. He had no background of moral heroism. He came from a family of Nazi sympathizers. He had no underground network, no organization behind him, no guarantee he would survive. He later described his only tools as "self-assurance and incredible luck." And something else. He witnessed the brutal SS evacuation of a Jewish orphanage — infants thrown from windows, children dragged barefoot through the night to the railway station. He watched a mother shot while holding her child. He once explained his response simply: "We watched from morning to evening, as close as you can get, what was happening to the Jews. When you see a woman with her child in her arms being shot, and you yourself have a child, then your response is bound to be completely different." He had three daughters of his own. His wife Else stood beside him through all of it. Together they hid Jewish families in the cellar of their home. They fed them. Sheltered them. Kept Jewish children inside their own walls while SS officers passed on the street outside. If discovered, the penalty for them — and for their children — was death. They did it anyway. By the end of the war, Berthold and Else Beitz had saved more than 800 lives. After the war, Beitz became one of the most influential industrialists in postwar Germany — chairman of the Krupp steel conglomerate, a symbol of West Germany's rebuilding. His wartime reputation for integrity opened doors across Eastern Europe and helped restore diplomatic ties shattered by the Nazi era. On October 3, 1973 — more than three decades after he first walked toward that train — Yad Vashem awarded Berthold Beitz the title Righteous Among the Nations, the highest honor Israel bestows on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jewish people during the Holocaust. Else received the same honor in 2006. Berthold Beitz died on July 30, 2013, at the age of 99. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, called him one of the great Germans of the past century — a hero at a time when it was a crime to be a humane person. Asked why he did it — why he risked his life, his wife's life, his children's lives — Beitz was clear. There was no political ideology. No organized resistance movement driving him forward. He simply could not look away. 800 people lived because one man chose to walk toward the train instead of away from it. He had no special power. No guarantee of survival. He had a position, some connections, extraordinary nerve — and the knowledge that doing nothing was its own kind of choice. What would you have done?

250 jaar geleden erkende Nederland als eerste land ter wereld de onafhankelijkheid van de Verenigde Staten. Sindsdien zijn de geschiedenissen van onze landen met elkaar vervlochten. De trans-Atlantische relatie is essentieel voor onze vrijheid, veiligheid en welvaart, en dat is altijd zo geweest. En we weten uit ervaring dat onze gedeelde geschiedenis een sterk fundament is om een betere toekomst op te bouwen. Mijn hartelijke felicitaties aan het Amerikaanse volk met het 250-jarig bestaan van hun republiek. En op naar de volgende 250 jaar van vriendschap en partnerschap tussen de Verenigde Staten en Nederland. 🇺🇸🤝🇳🇱

America’s 250th anniversary also belongs to the Dutch. 🇳🇱 They were there at the beginning. They gave us the First Salute in 1776 — the first time any foreign power recognized our flag. They loaned us the money to survive our fight for independence. They gave our Founders the inspiration for a document that declared our desire for a free society. And when freedom in Europe was threatened two centuries later, Americans crossed that ocean to stand with them — just as the Dutch had once stood with us. That is 250 years of partnership. 250 years of shared values. 250 years of showing up for each other — in the good times and in the hard ones. I am deeply proud to represent the United States here, in this country, at this moment in history. And I am grateful for the privilege of calling the Dutch our friends. Hartelijk dank. Thank you, happy Independence Day, and God bless The United States of America. 🇺🇸 #USNL #America250 #Freedom250

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Op deze dag in 1776 riepen de Verenigde Staten hun onafhankelijkheid uit. 250 jaar geleden! In de Declaration of Independance werd de onafhankelijkheid gelegitimeerd met een aantal 'vanzelfsprekende waarheden'. Hierna volgde de onafhankelijkheidsoorlog met Engeland (tot 1783)

Amsterdam, 4 juli 1814. Na de overwinning op Napoleon Bonaparte keerde tsaar Alexander I niet meteen terug naar Rusland, maar bezocht hij Willem I (toen nog soeverein vorst). In de hoofdstad werd de tsaar met alle egards ontvangen en ondernamen zij samen verschillende tochten.

Weekendgedicht. Het grootse aan ‘water’ zo klein mogelijk verwoord.

Ernst Röhm helped build the machine that put Hitler in power. The brownshirts, the street brawls, the beatings that cleared the way before anyone could organize against them. His SA had grown to millions of men, bigger than the actual German army, and Röhm was not satisfied. He talked openly about a second revolution. He wanted his stormtroopers folded into the military with himself on top. The generals were horrified. The industrialists who had bankrolled Hitler were nervous. And Hitler, who no longer needed the street thugs that carried him to the chancellery, decided the man was now a liability. The plan came together quietly. Himmler, Göring, and a cold young intelligence officer named Reinhard Heydrich drew up lists of names. Not just SA leaders. Old enemies, inconvenient witnesses, men who knew too much or had said the wrong thing years earlier. The code word for the operation was Hummingbird. Early on June 30, 1934, Hitler flew to a resort town in Bavaria where Röhm and his top men were staying at a lakeside hotel. He walked in himself, went room to room, and had them pulled out of bed at gunpoint. Some were still half asleep. One senior SA man was found in bed with a young companion, which the regime later used to smear the whole group. Röhm was driven to a Munich prison, left alone in a cell with a loaded pistol, and told to do the decent thing. He refused. He reportedly said if he was going to be killed, Hitler could do it himself. So two officers walked in and shot him. Across Germany the killing spread for about three days. A former chancellor, Kurt von Schleicher, opened his front door and was shot down on the spot. His wife rushed to him and they killed her too. Gustav von Kahr, an old man who had crossed Hitler back in the failed putsch of 1923, was beaten to death and his body left in a swamp outside Munich. A music critic was killed because he shared a name with someone on the list. The vice chancellor, von Papen, survived, but his speechwriter and his press secretary did not. At the Lichterfelde barracks in Berlin, men were lined up against a wall and shot by firing squad, some of them shouting their loyalty to Hitler right up until the volley. At least 85 people died, and the real number is almost certainly higher. Then came the part that should stay with you. When the bodies were buried and the ashes handed back to families in boxes, the cabinet sat down and passed a one sentence law declaring every one of the murders a legal act of national self defense. The aging president, Hindenburg, sent a telegram personally thanking Hitler for saving the country. The army, which had stood aside and even lent vehicles and weapons, formally expressed its gratitude. A month later Hindenburg died, Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor into himself, and the soldiers swore a personal oath of loyalty not to Germany but to him by name. No coup. No trial. No outrage. A government had just murdered dozens of its own and rewritten the law overnight to call it justice, and the public mostly thanked them for restoring order. The lesson every strongman since has studied is simple. The people who help you seize power are the same ones who know exactly how you did it. They are the ones who watched you lie, who carried the bodies, who could undo you with a single honest sentence. So once the throne is yours, they are almost always the first to go.

Den Haag, 29 juni 1940. Veel Oranjegezinden droegen op de verjaardag van prins Bernhard een anjer in hun knoopsgat. Met dit handelsmerk van de prins lieten de Nederlanders openlijk hun onvrede blijken over de Duitse bezetting tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. 1/2

Franeker, 30 juni 1818. Samen met zijn zoon Frederik bezocht koning Willem I het Planetarium van Eise Eisinga. Beiden namen tevens de moeite om op zolder rond te kijken om de tandraderen te bezichtigen. Volgens Eisinga waren de vorst en zijn zoon “zeer wel tevreden" over het bezoek. 1/3

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Op deze dag in 1941 begonnen de pogroms in het Roemeense Iași. Een week lang werden in de stad Joden vermoord of in treinwagons gepropt zonder eten en drinken om daar te sterven. Ruim 13.000 mensen kwamen om het leven. Ik bespaar jullie de echt vreselijke foto's #nooitvergeten

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Goejanverwellesluis, 28 juni 1787. Wilhelmina van Pruisen, echtgenote van Willem V, werd nabij Haastrecht aan de Vlist aangehouden toen zij naar Den Haag wilde reizen om daar een orangistische volksactie uit te lokken. De Patriotten stuurden haar echter via Goejanverwellesluis weer terug. 1/2

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De imposante Onze Lieve Vrouwetoren in Amersfoort, beter bekend als ‘de Lange Jan’, is met ruim 98 meter een van de hoogste laatmiddeleeuwse torens van Nederland. Na het ‘Mirakel van Amersfoort’ werd omstreeks 1460 de bestaande kapel uitgebreid tot kerk, tegelijk startte de bouw van de toren. 1/4

On 31 October 1943, a captured SS officer from Hitler's brutal death squad was bugged at Latimer House by the British. He calmly described seeing Auschwitz from the train and knowing no one came out alive. Then he recounted mass executions of 5000 Jews in one day: (🧵)

Weekendverhaaltje. Om over na te denken!

Utrecht, 26 juni 1321. Twee geestelijken legden de eerste steen van de Domtoren. De Domkerk was al in aanbouw, maar de aandacht verschoof naar de bouw van de toren. Met deze indrukwekkende toren onderstreepte de bisschop zijn prestige en macht. 1/3

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The Best Goals in History Scored in EURO 1988 38 Years Ago Super difficult super goal by Van Basten which is called one of the best goals in the history of EURO, even the history of football, and will not be repeated again

An intense "Omega Block", a high-pressure pattern shaped like the Greek letter Ω, is locking hot Saharan air over Western Europe, fueling record-shattering temperatures. With France hitting 45°C, Spain exceeding 40°C, and the UK bracing for near-40°C, this slow-moving dome of heat is delivering clear skies, minimal wind, and dangerous conditions.

Nog meer toppers! Je hoeft geen fan van Sigrid Kaag te zijn om te zien waar ze goed in was: dossierkennis, internationale diplomatie en rechtop blijven staan terwijl half Nederland liever iemand ziet vallen dan functioneren. Haar probleem was niet dat ze dom was. Haar probleem was dat uiterst rechts Nederland allergisch is voor klasse. Dus werd ze niet bestreden op inhoud, maar gedemoniseerd tot ze weg was. Wat een verlies.