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These articles have appeared on the Portal:Belgium page in 2007.
January
Father Damien, formally Joseph (Jozef) de Veuster, SS.CC. and Blessed Damien of Molokai (January 3, 1840, Tremelo – April 15, 1889, Molokai), was a Belgian Catholic missionary of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who is revered primarily by Hawaii residents and Christians for having dedicated his life in service to the lepers of Molokai in the Kingdom of Hawaii. In Catholicism, Father Damien is the spiritual patron of people with leprosy, outcasts, and those with HIV/AIDS, and of the State of Hawaii. Father Damien Day is recognized each year in Hawaii on April 15. His Feast Day in the Catholic Church is May 10. Having been beatified in 1995, Father Damien is awaiting formal approval for sainthood.
The Father Damien Statue memorializes the priest in bronze at the United States Capitol. A full size replica stands in front of the Hawaii State Legislature. In 1995, Pope John Paul II beatified him and bestowed the official title of Blessed Damien of Molokai.
In 2005, Father Damien was chosen as the Greatest Belgian of all time by the Flemish public broadcasting service, VRT.
February
The Congo Free State was a kingdom privately and controversially owned by King Leopold II of Belgium that included the entire area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leopold II began laying the diplomatic, military, and economic groundwork for his control of the Congo in 1877, and ruled it outright from early 1885 until its annexation by Belgium in 1908.
Under Leopold II's administration, the Congo Free State was subject to a terror regime, including atrocities such as mass killings and maimings which were used to subjugate the indigenous peoples of the Congo region and to procure slave labour, although it was not called slavery at the time. Estimates of the death toll range depending on the source.
Beginning in 1900, news of the conditions in the Congo Free State began to be exposed in European and U.S. press. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic manoeuvres led to the end of Leopold II's rule, and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo.
March
Brussels (French: Bruxelles, [bʁysɛl], and sometimes bʁyksɛl by non-Belgian speakers of French; Dutch: Brussel, [ˈbrɵsəɫ]; German: Brüssel, [brʏsəl]) is the capital of Belgium, of the French Community of Belgium, of the Flemish Community, and is the headquarters of the European Union's institutions (and thus often considered 'The Capital of Europe').
Brussels is the capital city, in the centre of Belgium, and also the largest municipality of the Brussels-Capital Region. This municipality inside Brussels is correctly named The City of Brussels (French: Bruxelles-Ville or Ville de Bruxelles, Dutch: Stad Brussel), which is one of 19 municipalities that make up the Brussels-Capital Region (see also: Municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region), with a total population of 1,018,804 inhabitants (1 January 2006). The municipality has a population of about 140,000. The Metropolitan area has about 2,090,000 inhabitants.
Brussels is also the political seat of NATO, the Western European Union (WEU) and EUROCONTROL, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (see: Political center, below).
April
Plastic Bertrand was a new wave punk-rock group and solo artist (Roger Jouret, born February 24, 1958) from Belgium, most famous for the parody "Ça plane pour moi" (roughly translated as "That's alright with me"), although the song was neither written nor sung by Jouret and used the backing track from Elton Motello's "Jet Boy, Jet Girl". The group also appeared at the Eurovision Song Contest, representing Luxembourg, in 1987.
When he was a Scout, Jouret formed his first band Bison Scout Band (as a singer and drummer), then Les Pélicans, then Passing the Time, and then in the early days of Punk rock in Belgium Hubble Bubble.
Plastic Bertrand was the cover star of the first ever issue of UK pop magazine Smash Hits in September 1978.
Plastic Bertrand's "Stop Ou Encore" was featured in David O. Russell's Three Kings, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. "Ça Plane Pour Moi" was featured in the films National Lampoon's European Vacation, Winning London, Eurotrip, and Beerfest.
May
Dirk Bouts, also spelled Dieric, Dierick and Dirck (c. 1410/1420 d. 1475) was a Dutch painter.
According to Karel van Mander (Het Schilderboeck, 1604), Bouts was born in Haarlem and was mainly active in Leuven (Louvain), where he was city painter from 1468. Van Mander confused the issue by writing biographies of both "Dieric of Haarlem" and "Dieric of Leuven," although he was referring to the same artist. The similarity of their last names also led to the confusion of Bouts with Hubrecht Stuerbout, a prominent sculptor in Leuven. Very little is actually known about Bouts' early life, but he was greatly influenced by Jan van Eyck and by Rogier van der Weyden, under whom he may have studied. He is first documented in Leuven in 1457 and worked there until his death in 1475.
Bouts was among the first northern painters to demonstrate the use of a single vanishing point (as illustrated in his Last Supper). His work has a certain primitive stiffness of drawing, but his pictures are highly expressive, well designed and rich in color.
June
The Town Hall (Dutch: Stadhuis) of Oudenaarde, Belgium was built by architect Hendrik van Pede in 1526-1537 to replace the medieval Schepenhuis (Aldermen's House) that occupied the same site. Another older structure, the 14th-century Cloth Hall, was retained and now forms a sort of extension at the back of the Town Hall proper.
The Oudenaarde Town Hall was a late flowering of secular Brabantine Gothic architecture, carrying on the stylistic tradition of the town halls at Leuven, Brussels, and Middelburg. Above the ground-story arcade with vaulted ceiling, the building displays typical features of its regional forerunners: a richly decorated facade with pointed-arch windows separated by canopied niches, and a steep, dormered roof surrounded by an openwork parapet. The niches, although designed to contain statues, stand empty.
Atop the central belfry tower of six stories with three terraces, a stone crown supports a gilded brass figure of Hanske de Krijger (Hans the Warrior), mythical guardian of the city. The crown on the tower and the double-headed eagles over the attic windows pay homage to a famous visitor to Oudenaarde, Emperor Charles V, who fathered Margaret of Parma here a few years before construction of the Town Hall began.
July
dEUS is an indie rock band based in Antwerp, Belgium, currently consisting of Tom Barman (vocals and guitar), Klaas Janzoons (keyboards and violin), Stéphane Misseghers (drums), Alan Gevaert (bass) and Mauro Pawlowski (guitar and vocals).
The band, whose songs are primarily sung in English, was founded in Antwerp in 1989, but did not get its form until after Humo's Rock Rally of 1992. In the tour that followed through Spain they laid the foundation for their sound. dEUS displays a bewildering array of influences, including Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Big Star, Sonic Youth, Sun Ra and Mingus-style jazz, Leonard Cohen and the Velvet Underground. Consequently, they incorporate a wide variety of styles, including Pop, Folk, Free Jazz, Neo-Prog, Punk and Heavy Metal into their work. They became one of the most successful (and influential) Belgian rock bands ever.
August
Josquin des Prez (c. 1450 to 1455 – August 27, 1521) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime.
During the 16th century, Josquin gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression universally imitated and admired. He was so admired that many anonymous compositions were attributed to him by copyists, probably to increase their sales; at least 374 works are attributed to him; it was only after the advent of modern analytical scholarship that some of these mistaken attributions have been challenged, on the basis of stylistic features and manuscript evidence. Yet in spite of Josquin's colossal reputation, which endured until the beginning of the Baroque era, and was revived in the 20th century, his biography is shadowy, and we know next to nothing about his personality.
September
Gallia Belgica was a Roman province located in what is now the southern part of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, northeastern France, and western Germany. The indigenous population of Gallia Belgica consisted of a mixture of Celtic and Germanic tribes, often described as the Belgae. According to Julius Caesar, the border between Gallia and Belgica was formed by the Marne and the Seine and that with Germania by the Rhine The area is the historical heart of the Low Countries, a region corresponding roughly to the current Benelux group of states, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg as well as the French Flanders and some part of the Rhineland.
November
The Menin Gate Memorial at the eastern exit of the town of Ypres in Flanders, Belgium, marks the starting point for one of the main roads out of the town that led Allied soldiers to the front line during World War I. Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and built by the British government, the Menin Gate Memorial opened on 24 July 1927 as a monument dedicated to the missing British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the fierce battles around the Ypres Salient area who have no known grave.
Its large Hall of Memory contains the names of 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died without graves, incised into vast panels. Following the Memorial's opening in 1927, the citizens of Ypres wanted to express their gratitude towards those who had given their lives for Belgium's freedom. As such, every evening at 8.00, buglers from the local fire brigade close the road which passes under the Memorial and play the Last Post.
December
Willy Vandersteen (February 15, 1913 - August 28, 1990) was a Flemish creator of comic books. In a career spanning 50 years, he created a large studio and published more than 1,000 comic books in over 25 series, selling more than 200 million copies worldwide.
Considered together with Marc Sleen the founding father of Flemish comics, he is mainly popular in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Hergé called him "The Brueghel of the comic strip", while the creation of his own studio and the mass production and commercialization of his work turned him into "the Walt Disney of the Low Countries".
Vandersteen is best known for Suske en Wiske (known in English as Spike and Suzy, Willy and Wanda or Bob and Bobette), which still sells some 5 million copies a year. His other major series are De Rode Ridder with over 200 albums and Bessy with in Germany almost 1,000 albums.