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Firmin Van Bree
Firmin van Bree (28 May 1880 – 26 March 1960) was a Belgian engineer who played a leading role in developing the Belgian companies that exploited the mineral and agricultural resources of the Belgian Congo. Although involved in a wide range of activities, his primary interest was in diamond mining. During World War II it was suspected that he helped supply the Germans with diamonds from the Congo. After the war he retired to Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the south of France, where he owned three villas and had a small chapel and a crypt built, where he is buried. Early years (1880–1914) Firmin van Bree was born on 28 May 1880 in Anderlecht, Brussels, Belgium. He attended the ''Université catholique de Louvain'' and graduated in 1903 with a degree in civil engineering and a license in commercial and consular sciences. He joined the Compagnie du chemin de fer du Congo as an engineer, and sailed to the Congo Free State (later to become the Belgian Congo, today the Democratic Republ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anderlecht
Anderlecht (, ) is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the south-western part of the region, it is bordered by the City of Brussels, Forest, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, and Saint-Gilles, as well as the Flemish municipalities of Dilbeek and Sint-Pieters-Leeuw. In common with all of Brussels' municipalities, it is legally bilingual (French–Dutch). There are several historically and architecturally distinct districts within Anderlecht. , the municipality had a population of around 120,887. The total area is , which gives a population density of . Its upper area is greener and less densely populated. History Origins and medieval times The first traces of human activity on the right bank of the Senne date from the Stone Age and Bronze Age. The remnants of a Roman villa and of a Frankish necropolis were also found on the territory of Anderlecht. The first mention of the name ''Anderlecht'', however, dates only from 1047 under the forms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maniema District
Maniema District (french: District du Maniema, nl, District Maniema) was a district of the Belgian Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It roughly corresponded in area to the present Maniema province. Location Henry Morton Stanley explored the area, which he called Manyema after the Bantu people who lived there. The district was created by an ''arrêté royal'' of 28 March 1912, which divided the Congo into 22 districts. A 1912 map shows that the former Stanleyville District had been broken into a much smaller Stanleyville Districts and the new districts of Lowa, Ituri, Kivu and Maniema. Maniema was bordered by Sankuru District to the west, Lomami District and Tanganika-Moero District to the south, Kivu District to the east and Lowa District to the north. Maniema District became part of the Orientale Province created in 1913. A map of the colony in 1926 shows that Lowa District had been merged into Maniema District, but the new Maniema district had lost territory in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legion Of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte, it has been retained (with occasional slight alterations) by all later French governments and regimes. The order's motto is ' ("Honour and Fatherland"); its Seat (legal entity), seat is the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur next to the Musée d'Orsay, on the left bank of the Seine in Paris. The order is divided into five degrees of increasing distinction: ' (Knight), ' (Officer), ' (Commander (order), Commander), ' (Grand Officer) and ' (Grand Cross). History Consulate During the French Revolution, all of the French Order of chivalry, orders of chivalry were abolished and replaced with Weapons of Honour. It was the wish of Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Consulate, First Consul, to create a reward to commend c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commission For Relief In Belgium
The Commission for Relief in Belgium or C.R.B. − known also as just Belgian Relief − was an international (predominantly American) organization that arranged for the supply of food to German-occupied Belgium and northern France during the First World War. Its leading figure was chairman, and future President of the United States, Herbert Hoover. Origins When the Great War broke out, Hoover was a mining engineer and financier living in London. When hostilities erupted, he found himself surrounded by tens of thousands of American tourists trying to get home. Their paper securities and travelers' checks were not being recognized and very few of them had enough hard currency to buy passage home, even if any ships had been sailing; most voyages had been canceled. Hoover set up and organized an "American committee" to "get the busted Yankee home," making loans and cashing checks as needed. By October 1914 the American Committee had sent some 120,000 Americans home, and in the en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Great Depression in the United States. A self-made man who became rich as a mining engineer, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Hoover was born to a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa, but he grew up in Oregon. He was one of the first graduates of the new Stanford University in 1895. He took a position with a London-based mining company working in Australia and China. He rapidly became a wealthy mining engineer. In 1914 at the outbreak of World War I, he organized and headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an international relief organization that provided food to occupied Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war in 191 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comité National De Secours Et D'Alimentation
The ' (CNSA, "National Relief and Food Committee"; nl, Nationaal Hulp- en Voedingscomité) was a relief organization created in 1914 to distribute humanitarian aid to civilians in German-occupied Belgium during World War I. It was directed by the Belgian financier Émile Francqui. The CNSA acted as the network by which the aid brought in by the international Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) could be distributed within Belgium itself. Background Before the outbreak of World War I, Belgium relied on supplies of imports for almost three-quarters of all food consumed. With the German invasion in August 1914, the importation ceased and, as the economic crisis created by the invasion escalated, the distribution of the food that was available began to break down. In particular, the British Royal Navy began a four-year " Blockade of Europe" which, although aimed at Germany, also cut food supplies from neutral countries to German-occupied Belgium. Foundation and operation of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Émile Francqui
Émile Francqui (; 25 June 1863 in Brussels – 1 November 1935 in Brussels) was a Belgian soldier, diplomat, business man and philanthropist. Career As an orphan, Émile Francqui was sent to a military school when he was just 15 years old. At the age of 21, like many young officers, he was sent to Congo Free State by king Leopold II of Belgium. In 1896, he became the Belgian consul in Imperial China and stayed there until 1902. In China he met the future American president Herbert Hoover during negotiations concerning the granting of the Hankow-Canton railroad concession in China in 1901. Although they were competitors, they respected each other very much and became friends. Francqui returned to Belgium in 1902, and began a financial career. He became the managing director of the ''Banque d'Outremer'', and managing director of the ''Union Minière du Haut Katanga'' (UMHK). Ten years after his return to Belgium, he became Director of the ''Société Générale de Belgique'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banque De Bruxelles
Bank Brussels Lambert (BBL, french: Banque Bruxelles Lambert) was a Belgian bank that was created through merger in 1975 and became part of ING Group in 1998. It provided retail and commercial banking services to individuals and businesses in Belgium, together with related financial products such as insurance and asset management. It was formed by the merger of two existing Belgian banks ''Banque de Bruxelles'' and ''Banque Lambert'' in 1975 making it at that time the second largest Belgian bank. It was sold to ING Group in 1998 who renamed the subsidiary in 2002 ING Belgium. History Banque de Bruxelles Banque de Bruxelles was founded in 1871 and grew steadily over the ensuing six decades, acquiring interests in other banks in Belgium's major cities. In 1931, these interests were combined in a single business which operated in traditional banking and in the management of industrial concerns based mainly in Belgium and Africa. Following the reform of the Belgian banking sector in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dannie Heineman
Dannie N. Heineman (23 November 1872 – 31 January 1962) was a Belgian-American engineer and businessman. He was the managing director and controlling shareholder of the Belgian industrial multinational Sofina. He was a prolific sponsor of science especially through Heineman Foundation in medical sciences and awards in mathematical physics and astrophysics. In 1939, while living in Belgium, Dannie Heineman managed to get the Luxembourg government to open its closed borders and admit approximately 100 Jewish families from Germany. The persuasive argument was that hotels in Luxembourg were empty and he would pay for the rooms and give the Jews an allowance, and they would not be working and taking jobs away from Luxembourg workers. This arrangement worked until 10 May 1940 when Hitler invaded. At that point his assistant Mr. Schmidt made a final six months payment to the families. Among the families was the physicist Ernst Ising who survived the war. See also * Dannie Heineman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,Statistics Belgium; ''Loop van de bevolking per gemeente'' (Excel file) Population of all municipalities in Belgium, . Retrieved 1 November 2017. it is the most populous municipality in Belgium, and with a metropolitan population of around 1,200,000 people, it is the second-largest metrop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kwango District
Kwango District (french: District du Kwango, nl, District Kwango) was a district of the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It went through various changes in extent. It roughly corresponded to the present provinces of Kwilu and Kwango. Congo Free State In 1895 the number of the districts in the Congo Free State was increased to fifteen. The districts now included Kwango District. It had been carved out of the west of the Kasai District. A map of the Congo Free State in 1897 shows the Kwango Oriental district bounded by the Stanley Pool District to the west, the Lualaba Kassai District to the east, and Portuguese possessions (Angola) to the south. The district extended south from the point where the combined Kwango and Kwilu rivers entered the Kasai River, and included the watershed of the Wamba River. The Kwango River formed the border with the Portuguese territory to the west, and the eastern boundary was to the east of the Kwilu River. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
