Welcome, guest

With biomass plants, the government wanted to ensure that the climate targets would be met. The government set aside 10 billion euros for the construction of 628 biomass plants. Objections to the biomass plants soon arose: they would not be as CO2-neutral as was assumed and there would be more useful ways to use the biomass.

In 1905, the popsicle was invented by eleven-year-old Frank Epperson. He made a drink with water and some soda powder that he stirred through with a stick. Because his mother told him to go to sleep, he left the drink. When he woke up the next morning, it had frozen and the drink with the stick in it was frozen too. This was the first popsicle.

Columbus was looking for a faster sailing route to the Dutch East Indies. He planned to sail there via the West. With the financial support of the Spanish Queen Isabella, his ships left for the West, but instead of finding a new route to the Dutch East Indies there, he found the undiscovered continent of America.

It was going to be the year of the Golden Grand Slam for tennis player Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 in the world rankings. For a Golden Grand Slam, he must win all four grandslam tournaments that year and the Olympics. He won the first three grand slams, but during the Olympics he missed the boat, so a Golden Grand Slam was out of the question. A Calender Slam is still possible. Then he lost the US Open final and his dream went up in smoke.

Due to an accident at BP, a lot of oil unintentionally ended up in the sea near the Gulf of Mexico. In order to ensure that this would disappear more quickly, chemicals were thrown into the water that were supposed to make the oil droplets smaller and speed up the decomposition process. Unfortunately, the chemicals had the opposite effect: the chemicals caused microorganisms to flourish and drive out the microorganisms that were breaking down the oil.

An analysis by the FD shows that large ICT projects by the Dutch government are still seriously overrunning: cost overruns amount to an average of 36% and the average overrun is 37%. The FD looked at 125 large projects for which the original budget was 2.5 billion euros and the expected costs have now risen to 3.5 billion.