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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.

Using a device, the ECN research center wanted to produce solar cells. The device could vaporize silicon onto solar cells, but unfortunately not with a density of the silicon that was high enough. As a result, the device lay gathering dust, until Christian Rood came across it and saw how useful the device could be for producing batteries.

The yellow fever mosquito in South America transmits several diseases in large numbers, including the dengue virus, the yellow fever virus, chikungunya and the Zika virus. The cost of dengue on Aruba is high and many agreed on the need for these actions. It was not possible to raise the intended amount; more than half was promised, but that was all. More parties were sceptical and eventually the project was stopped.

Until five years ago, Blauwestad was considered a failed project. The idea was to turn an area of farmland into a lake with villas where wealthy Randstadites would buy a house. It was difficult to convince the farmers to sell their land and, due to the economic crisis in 2008, few houses were sold. It all seemed to come to nothing, but in recent years a huge number of houses were suddenly purchased in Blauwestad.