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Dateline
1st century B.C. The area's first inhabitants -- Frisians, Batavians, and other tribes -- settle the coastal territory along the Rhine River. The Batavians become allies of Rome.
4th-5th century A.D. Barbarian invasions. Saxons settle in the east and Franks in the south.
843 Treaty of Verdun splits the empire of the Franks. Most of the Low Countries become part of the Middle Kingdom, squeezed between the German lands and France.
10th century The counts of Holland and Zeeland and the bishopric of Utrecht begin to gain greater control of their own affairs.
1275 Count Floris V of Holland grants "Aemstelledamme" freedom from tolls on travel and trade. The year is regarded as Amsterdam's official foundation date.
1384 Duke Philip the Bold begins to gain control of the Low Countries for Burgundy.
1421 A storm on St. Elizabeth's Day breaks dikes along the Maas and Waal rivers, causing a flood that drowns 10,000 people.
1477 Beginning of the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs.
1506 Holland is inherited by the future Habsburg Emperor and King of Spain Charles V.
1555 Philip II of Spain introduces Catholic Inquisition persecution against Protestants.
1567 Philip II of Spain sends the duke of Alba to the Low Countries to confront the Protestant Reformation.
1568 Dutch rally against Spain in the beginning of the Eighty Years' War.
1574 William of Orange's relief of besieged Leiden turns the tide of the war against Spain.
1578 Amsterdam abandons the Spanish, and Catholic, cause; Calvinists take over the city in what is called the Alteratie.
1579 The Union of Utrecht unites the seven provinces of the northern Low Countries.
1581 The United Provinces declare their independence from Spain.
1602 The United East India Company (V.O.C.), destined to become a powerful force in Holland's "Golden Age" of discovery, exploration, and trade, is founded.
1609 Beginning of the 12-year truce with Spain. The English navigator Henry Hudson, under contract to the United East India Company, sails from Amsterdam and "discovers" Manhattan Island and the future site of New York.
1621 Dutch West India Company chartered to control trade with the Americas.
1634 "Tulip mania" begins; the price of tulip bulbs soars to crazy heights.
1637 Great Tulip Crash.
1642 Rembrandt paints The Night Watch.
1648 End of Eighty Years' War with Spain.
1689 Stadhouder William III and his wife, Mary, become king and queen of England.
1782 Dutch become first to officially recognize nationhood of the United States.
1799 The United East India Company is liquidated.
1795 Velvet Revolution. French troops occupy Holland with the aid of Dutch revolutionaries and establish the Batavian Republic. William V flees to England.
1806-10 Louis Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, reigns as king of Holland.
1813-14 The Netherlands regains independence from the French and becomes a constitutional monarchy headed by Willem I, of the House of Oranje-Nassau.
1830 Belgium breaks free from Dutch rule.
1890 Death by suicide of Vincent van Gogh.
1917 Despite Dutch neutrality in World War I (1914-18), the Netherlands suffers from severe food shortages, triggering street riots.
1920 Dutch airline KLM launches the world's first scheduled air service, between Amsterdam and London.
1928 Amsterdam Olympics.
1932 Afsluitdijk (Enclosure Dike) at the head of the Zuiderzee is completed, transforming the sea into the freshwater IJsselmeer Lake.
1934 The Great Depression leads to shortages and riots; the government calls out the army to maintain public order.
1940: World War II: Nazi Germany invades, May 10. The Netherlands surrenders 4 days later after the aerial bombardment of Rotterdam. Queen Wilhelmina goes into exile in London.
1941 Dockworkers and other workers in Amsterdam launch the "February Strike" against persecution and deportation of the city's Jewish community.
1942 Anne Frank and her family, along with other Jewish friends, go into hiding in Amsterdam. Dutch East Indies occupied by Japan.
1944 The Frank family refuge is betrayed and its occupants are transported. Anne dies the following year at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
1944-45 Thousands die during the "Hunger Winter," when Nazi occupation forces blockade western Holland.
1945 May 5: German forces in the Netherlands capitulate.
1947 The Diary of Anne Frank is published.
1948 Benelux Customs union with Belgium and Luxembourg takes effect.
1949 Holland joins NATO. The Dutch East Indies wins independence as Indonesia, after a bitterly fought liberation struggle.
1953 Devastating North Sea storms produce significant coastal flooding. Dutch embark on long-range Delta Project to seal off river estuaries in the southwest.
1958 Holland joins the European Economic Community, the forerunner of today's European Union (EU).
1966 Street protests in Amsterdam mar Princess Beatrix's marriage to German Claus von Amsberg, a former soldier in the World War II German army.
1975 Amsterdam's 700th anniversary. Cannabis use is decriminalized.
1980 Queen Beatrix takes the throne.
1987 The Homomonument, the world's first public memorial to persecuted gays and lesbians, is unveiled in Amsterdam.
2001 The world's first real same-sex marriage, husband and husband, with a legal status identical to that of heterosexual matrimony, takes place in Amsterdam.
2002 Euro banknotes and coins replace the guilder. Crown Prince Willem-Alexander marries Argentine Máxima Zorreguieta. Dutch parliament legalizes regulated euthanasia ("mercy killing"), making the Netherlands the first country in the world to do so. Pim Fortuyn, a flamboyant, gay, populist right-wing politician, is shot to death in Holland's first political assassination of the modern era.
2003 The permanent International Criminal Court, for prosecuting large-scale crimes against humanity, is inaugurated in The Hague, despite opposition to the court from countries that include the U.S. In a project to test the medical efficacy of cannabis, the drug is made legal under controlled conditions and when prescribed by a physician for patients suffering from a range of terminal and chronic illnesses, including cancer and AIDS.
2004 Controversialfilm director Theo van Gogh, 47, is stabbed and shot to death on the streets of Amsterdam; he had received death threats after making a film critical of Muslims. Police arrest and charge a suspect holding joint Dutch and Moroccan citizenship. The killing ignites a wave of anti-Islamic violence across Holland, and national soul-searching about the country's famed tolerance.
2006 Work begins on a 5-year redevelopment of Amsterdam's Centraal Station, preparing the way for a new Metro line, an integrated bus station, and new harbor-ferry docks.
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without
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