Walloons

Adolphe Sax
Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax (6 November 1814 – c. 4 February 1894) was a Belgian musical instrument designer and musician who played the flute and clarinet, and is best known for having invented the saxophone.
Adolphe Sax was born in Dinant in Wallonia, Belgium. His father, Charles-Joseph Sax, was an instrument designer himself, who made several changes to the design of the horn. Adolphe began to make his own instruments at an early age, entering two of his flutes and a clarinet into a competition at the age of fifteen. He subsequently studied those two instruments at the Royal School of Singing in Brussels.
Having left the school, Sax began to experiment with new instrument designs, while his father continued to produce conventional instruments to bring money into the household. Adolphe's first important invention was an improvement of the bass clarinet design, which he patented at the age of twenty-four.
In 1841, Sax relocated permanently to Paris, and began work on a new set of instruments that were exhibited there in 1844. These were valved bugles, and although he had not invented the instrument itself, his examples were so much more successful than those of his rivals that they became known as saxhorns. They range in approximately seven different sizes, and paved the path to the creation of the flugelhorn. Today, they are widely used in concert bands and sometimes in orchestras. The saxhorn also laid the groundwork for the modern euphonium.

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Alexandre Gendebien
Alexandre Joseph Célestin Gendebien (Mons, 4 May 1789 - Brussels, 6 December 1869) was a lawyer in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and later Belgium, where we also became minister of Justice.
He played an important role during the Belgian Revolution, together with his colleague Sylvain Van de Weyer. He was a proponent of Belgian union with France, and adversary of William I of the Netherlands.

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André Renard
André Renard (Valenciennes 25 May 1911 - Seraing 20 July 1962), was the leader of an important tendency in the Walloon tradeunionism
During the World War II, a left-wing syndicalist faction grew up in the underground labour movement, opposed to close ties with any political parties André Renard was the leader of this faction. He gives his name to the Renardism which is also, both ideologically and pragmatically, the programm of the most important part of the Walloon Movement since the general strike of the winter of 1960-1961 in Wallonia. This strike was managed by the General Federation of Belgian Labour, at least its Walloon components.
In July 1950, Léopold III of Belgium came back to Belgium. On his return to Belgium in 1950, he was met with the General strike against Leopold III of Belgium. As Secretary-General of the General Federation of Belgian Labour, Renard made this statement for Le Soir: From today , the words insurrection and revolution will have for us a practical sense. We will use them in our daily life vocabulary.

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Baron Empain
Édouard Louis Joseph, Baron Empain (20 September 1852 - 22 July 1929) was a wealthy Belgian engineer, entrepreneur, financier and industrialist, as well as an amateur Egyptologist.
Empain was born at Belœil, Belgium, and was the son of schoolteacher François Julien Empain and his wife Catherine (née Solivier). He went into business with his brother, Baron François Empain and other family members, and amassed a great fortune.
Empain began his career a draughtsman at a metallurgical company, Société métallurgique, in 1878, and became involved in railway construction when he noticed that transport infrastructure in the countryside was inadequate. After success in Belgium with the Liege-Jemeppe line, his companies developed several railway lines in France, including the creation of the Paris Métro.
Because he felt that he depended too much on the banks for his industrial plans, in 1881 he founded his own bank, Banque Empain, which later became the Belgian Industrial Bank ("Banque Industrielle Belge"). The Empain group of companies expanded greatly throughout the 1890s, constructing electric urban tramlines in Europe, Russia, China, the Belgian Congo, and in Cairo, Egypt. Desiring to also be independent of electricity producers, Empain also was involved in forming a number of electricity companies to power his projects.

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Charles Plisnier
Charles Plisnier (1896 – 1952) was a Belgian writer from Wallonia. He was a Communist in his youth and briefly belonged to the Trotskyist movement in the late 1920s.
He disavowed communism, and became a Roman Catholic, remaining nevertheless a Marxist. He turned to literature, writing family sagas against bourgeois society. Mariages (1936; "Nothing to Chance") deals with the limitations of social conventions; the five-volume Meurtres (1939–41; "Murders") centres on an idealistic tragic hero, Noël Annequin, in his fight against hypocrisy. In 1937, he won the Prix Goncourt for Faux passeports, short stories denouncing Stalinism, in the same spirit as Arthur Koestler. He was the first foreigner to receive Prix Goncourt. He was also a Walloon movement activist and at the end of the Walloon National Congress there was a standing ovation after his speech, the assembly then singing La Marseillaise.

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Charles Rogier
Charles Latour Rogier (17 August 1800–27 May 1885) was a Belgian liberal statesman and a leader in the Belgian Revolution of 1830. He became Prime Minister of Belgium on two separate occasions: from 1847 to 1852, and again from 1857 to 1868.
Rogier descended from a family settled in the department of the Nord in France. He was born at Saint-Quentin. His father, an officer in the French army, perished in the Russian campaign of 1812. The family then moved to the Belgian city of Liege, where the eldest son, Firmin, held a professorship. Rogier studied law at the University of Liège (ULg) and was admitted to the bar. However, he devoted himself with greater zeal to journalistic campaigns against Dutch rule in Belgium. In 1824, in collaboration with his lifelong friends Paul Devaux and Joseph Lebeau, he founded the journal Mathieu Laensberg (afterwards Le Politique). With its ardent patriotism and its attacks on the Dutch administration, the journal soon achieved widespread influence.
On the outbreak of the insurrection at Brussels in August 1830, Rogier went there with a militia of about 300 citizens of Liège. In Brussels he gained recognition as one of the most active among the patriot leaders. He became a member of the provisional government established in October of the same year, and after the election of Leopold as King in June 1831, he was made Governor of Antwerp. During his first stint as Interior Minister, from 1832 to 1834, he brought into existence the Belgian railway system. From 1840 to 1841 he was Minister of Public Works and Education, and from 1861 to 1868 he served as Minister for Foreign Affairs.

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César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life.
He was born at Liège, in what is now Belgium (though at the time of his birth it was under the Netherlands' control). In that city he gave his first concerts in 1834. He studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a disastrous reception to an early oratorio Ruth, he moved to Paris, where he married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a reputation as a formidable improviser, and travelled widely in France to demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
In 1858 he became organist at Sainte-Clotilde, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He became professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872; he took French nationality, a requirement of the appointment. His pupils included Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Guillaume Lekeu, and Henri Duparc. After acquiring the professorship Franck wrote several pieces that have entered the standard classical repertoire, including symphonic, chamber, and keyboard works.

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Dardenne brothers
Brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne (born 21 April 1951 in Liège, Belgium) and Luc Dardenne (born 10 March 1954 in Liège, Belgium) are a Belgian filmmaking duo. They write, produce and direct their films together.
The Dardennes began making narrative and documentary films in the late 1970s, but they first came to international attention in the mid-1990s with La Promesse (The Promise). They won their first major international film prize when Rosetta won the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. All their films since have played at the Cannes main competition and won one of the major prizes.
In 2002, Olivier Gourmet won Best Actor at Cannes for the Dardennes' Le Fils (The Son) In 2005, they won the Palme d'Or a second time for their film L’Enfant (The Child), putting them in an elite club of only 7 with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola. Their film, Le silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence), won Best Screenplay at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and was released in Europe in the fall. Their latest film The Kid with a Bike won the Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Jean-Pierre has been announced as the jury president for the Cinéfoundation and Short Films sections of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

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Dominique Pire
Dominique Pire (Georges Charles Clement Ghislain Pire) (Dinant, February 10, 1910 – Leuven, January 30, 1969) was a Belgian Dominican friar whose work helping refugees in post-World War II Europe saw him receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1958. He was the eldest child of Georges Pire, Sr., a civic official, and Berthe (Ravet) Pire.
Georges Pire studied classics and philosophy at the Collège de Bellevue and at the age of eighteen entered the Dominican priory of La Sarte in Huy. He took his final vows on 23 September 1932, adopting the name Dominique, after the Order's founder. He then studied theology and social science at the Pontifical International Institute Angelicum in Rome, where he obtained his doctorate in theology in 1936 with a thesis entitled L’Apatheia ou insensibilité irréalisable et destructrice (Apatheia or unrealisable and destructive insensitivity). He returned to the priory at La Sarte, in Huy, Belgium where he dedicated himself to helping poor families live according to their dignity. During the second world war, Pire served as chaplain to the Belgian resistance, actively participating in its activities, such as helping smuggle Allied pilots out of the country. He received several medals for this service after the war.

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Dutch people
The Dutch people (Dutch:

Nederlanders (help·info)) are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada,Australia,South Africa,New Zealand, and the United States.
The traditional art and culture of the Dutch encompasses various forms of traditional music, dances, architectural styles and clothing, some of which are globally recognizable. Internationally, Dutch painters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van Gogh are held in high regard. The dominant religion of the Dutch is Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant), although in modern times the majority is no longer (openly) religious. Significant percentages of the Dutch are adherents of humanism, agnosticism, atheism or individual spirituality.
In the Middle Ages the Low Countries were situated around the border of France and the Holy Roman Empire, forming a part of their respective peripheries, and the various territories of which they consisted had de facto become virtually autonomous by the 13th century. Under the Habsburgs, the Netherlands were organised into a single administrative unit, and in the 16th and 17th centuries the Northern Netherlands gained independence from Spain as the Dutch Republic. The high degree of urbanization characteristic of Dutch society was attained at a relatively early date. During the Republic the first series of large scale Dutch migrations outside of Europe took place.

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Ernest Solvay
Ernest Gaston Joseph Solvay (16 April 1838 – 26 May 1922) was a Belgian chemist, industrialist and philanthropist.
Born at Rebecq, he was prevented by acute pleurisy from going to university. He worked in his uncle's chemical factory from the age of 21.
In 1861, he developed the ammonia-soda process for the manufacture of soda ash (anhydrous sodium carbonate) from brine (as a source of sodium chloride) and limestone (as a source of calcium carbonate). The process was an improvement over the earlier Leblanc process.
He founded the company Solvay & Cie and established his first factory at Couillet (now merged into Charleroi, Belgium) in 1863 and further perfected the process until 1872, when he patented it. Soon, Solvay process plants were established in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Austria. Today, about 70 Solvay process plants are still operational worldwide.
The exploitation of his patents brought Solvay considerable wealth, which he used for philanthropic purposes, including the establishment in 1894 of the "Institut des Sciences Sociales" (ISS) or Institute for Sociology at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel), as well as International Institutes for Physics and Chemistry. In 1903, he founded the Solvay Business School which is also part of the Free University of Brussels. In 1911, he began a series of important conferences in physics, known as the Solvay Conferences, whose participants included luminaries such as Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Marie Curie, Henri Poincaré, and (then only 32 years old) Albert Einstein. A later conference would include Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Erwin Schrödinger.

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Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène Ysaÿe (French pronunciation: [øʒɛn iza.i]; 16 July 1858 – 12 May 1931) was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar". His brother was pianist and composer Théo Ysaÿe (1865–1918), and his great-grandson is Marc Ysaÿe, drummer of rock band Machiavel.
Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe came from a background of peasants, though a large part of his family played instruments. As violinist Arnold Steinhardt describes, a legend was passed down through the Ysaÿe family about the first violin brought to the lineage:

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Flemish people
Today, the Flemings or Flemish (Dutch: “de Vlamingen”; French: “les Flamands”) refers to the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium, where they are mostly found in the northern region of Flanders. They are one of two principal cultural-linguistic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons. The Flemings make up the majority of the Belgian population (about 60%). Historically, “the Flemings” also refers to the inhabitants of the ancient county of Flanders, including the French-speaking or Picard-speaking Flemings of the regions around Tournai (today in Wallonia), Lille and Douai (today in French Flanders), who were called “les Flamands wallons” (the Romance Flemings).
The feel of 'Flemish' being a national identity increased heavily, shortly after the Belgian Revolution. Prior to this, the term 'Flemings' in the Dutch language was in first place used for the inhabitants of the former County of Flanders. Flemish however had been used since the 14th century to describe the language of both the peoples of Flanders and the Duchy of Brabant. Italians started in 15th century to describe both peoples as 'Fiamingi', the English and the French followed in the 16th. The sentiments of having somehow a common identity, despite belonging to different states (most notably the share of a common language, the deeply felt need to 'act as one' against any foreign state) existed already in the Middle Ages. An example is the 'Flemish-Brabant Co-operation Treaty' (Vlaams-Brabants samenwerkingsverdag) from 3/12/1339 imposed by the main cities of both states upon their rulers. It must noted that the modern Belgian province of Limburg -nowadays Flemish- was not part of this.

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French people
The French (French: Français) are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups. Within France, the French are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence.
However, the word can also refer to people of French descent who are found in other countries, with significant French-speaking population groups or not, such as Argentina (French Argentines), Brazil (French Brazilians), French West Indies (the French Caribbean people), Canada (French Canadians) and the United States (French Americans), and some of them have a French cultural identity. The United Kingdom also has a large French population, mainly in England, and due to historic relations and immigration.
To be French, according to the first article of the Constitution, is to be a citizen of France, regardless of one's origin, race, or religion (sans distinction d'origine, de race ou de religion). According to its principles, France has devoted herself to the destiny of a proposition nation, a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live together, as defined by Ernest Renan's "plébiscite de tous les jours" ("daily referendum" on the willingness to live together, in Renan's 1882 essay "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?").

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Frisians
The Frisians are a Germanic ethnic group native to the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia, that was a part of Denmark until 1864. They inhabit an area known as Frisia. The Frisian languages are still used by 500,000 speakers; dialects of Frisian are recognized as official languages in both the Netherlands and Germany.
The ancient Frisii enter recorded history in the Roman account of Drusus' 12 BC war against the Rhine Germans and the Chauci. They occasionally appear in the accounts of Roman wars against the Germanic tribes of the region, up to and including the Revolt of the Batavi around 70 AD. They are not mentioned again until c. 296, when they were deported into Roman territory as laeti (i.e., Roman-era serfs). The discovery of a type of earthenware unique to 4th century Frisia, called terp Tritzum, shows that an unknown number of them were resettled in Flanders and Kent, probably as laeti under Roman coercion.

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Félicien Rops
Félicien Rops (7 July 1833 - 23 August 1898) was a Belgian artist, and printmaker in etching and aquatint.
Rops was born in Namur, the only son to Nicholas Rops and Sophie Maubile. He was educated at the University of Brussels. Rops's forté was drawing more than painting in oils. He first won fame as a caricaturist.
In 1857, he married Charlotte Polet de Faveaux, with whom he had two children: Paul and Juliette. Juliette died at a young age.
After the failure of his marriage, he moved to Paris in 1874. There, he lived with the Duluc sisters: Aurélie and Léontine Duluc. With Léontine Duluc, he had one daughter, Claire. Claire went on to marry Belgian author Eugène Demolder.
Rops's eyesight began to fail in 1892. He kept up his literary associations until his death.
Félicien Rops was a freemason and a member of the Grand Orient of Belgium.
Rops met Charles Baudelaire towards the end of the poet's life in 1864, and Baudelaire left an impression upon him that lasted until the end of his days. Rops created the frontispiece for Baudelaire's Les Épaves, a selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal that had been censored in France, and which therefore were published in Belgium.

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Félix de Mérode
Philippe Félix Balthasar Otto Ghislain, Count de Merode (13 April 1791 – 7 February 1857), known as Félix de Merode, was a Belgian politician.
Born in Maastricht, Merode's father was mayor of Brussels during the period in which modern Belgium formed part of France. Under the First French Empire, Merode lived in Paris. In 1809 he married Rosalie de Gramont, niece by marriage of the Marquis de Lafayette.
Merode settled in the southern part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands—modern Belgium—and was one of the leaders of the Belgian Revolution of 1830. He served in the Provisional Government of Belgium and in the Belgian National Congress which was elected in November 1830. Merode was proposed as a candidate for the throne of the newly created Belgium, but refused to be considered as he was not a prince, merely a count. Merode's brother Frédéric was killed during the fighting against the forces of King William I following the revolution.
He formed part of the delegation to Paris which sought to have Louis, Duke of Nemours, second son of King Louis-Philippe, accept the throne, but this approach was rebuffed by the French king. Merode was a confidant of the eventual king, Leopold I, and was made a Minister of State in 1831.

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Georges Lemaître
Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (

lemaitre.ogg (help·info) 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. He was also the first to derive what is now known as the Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'. As he was a secular priest, he was called Abbé, then, after being made a canon, Monseigneur.
After a classical education at a Jesuit secondary school (Collège du Sacré-Coeur, Charleroi), Lemaître began studying civil engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven at the age of 17. In 1914, he interrupted his studies to serve as an artillery officer in the Belgian army for the duration of World War I. At the end of hostilities, he received the Belgian War Cross with palms.

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Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ simˈnɔ̃]) 13 February 1903 – 4 September 1989) was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret.
Georges Simenon was born at 26 rue Léopold (now number 24) in Liège to Désiré Simenon and his wife Henriette. Désiré Simenon worked in an accounting office at an insurance company and had married Henriette in April 1902. Although Georges Simenon was born on 13 February 1903 superstition resulted in his birth being registered as having been on the 12th. This story of his birth is recounted at the beginning of his novel Pedigree.
The Simenon family traces its origins back to the Limburg region, his mother's family being from Dutch Limburg. One of her more notorious ancestors was Gabriel Brühl, a criminal who preyed on Limburg from the 1720s until he was hanged in 1743. Later, Simenon would use Brühl as one of his many pen names.

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Gilles Binchois
Gilles de Binche (called Binchois), also known as Gilles de Bins (ca. 1400 – 20 September 1460), was a Franco-Flemish composer, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian School, and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century. While often ranked behind his contemporaries Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple, at least by contemporary scholars, his influence was arguably greater than either, since his works were cited, borrowed and used as source material more often than those by any other composer of the time.
Binchois was probably from Mons, the son of Jean and Johanna de Binche, who may have been from the nearby town of Binche. His father was a councillor to Duke Guillaume IV of Hainault, and also had a position in a church in Mons. Nothing is known about Gilles until 1419, when he became organist at the church of Ste. Waudru in Mons. In 1423 went to live in Lille. Around this time he may have been a soldier in the service of the Burgundians, or perhaps the English Earl of Suffolk, as indicated by a line in the memorial motet written on his death by Ockeghem.

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Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon (c. 1060 – 18 July 1100) was a medieval Frankish knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until his death. He was the Lord of Bouillon, from which he took his byname, from 1076 and the Duke of Lower Lorraine from 1087. After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, although he refused the title "king" as he said that title (i.e., "King of Jerusalem") belonged to God.
Godfrey of Bouillon was born around 1060 in either Boulogne-sur-Mer in France or Baisy, a city in the region of Brabant (part of present-day Belgium). During Godfrey's lifetime this region was part of the Holy Roman Empire.
He was the second son of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne, and Ida of Lorraine (daughter of Godfrey III, Duke of Lower Lorraine and his wife, Doda). As second son, he had fewer opportunities than his older brother and seemed destined to become just one more minor knight in service to a rich landed nobleman. However, his uncle on his mother's side, Godfrey the Hunchback, Duke of Lower Lorraine, died childless and named his nephew, Godfrey of Bouillon, as his heir and next in line to his duchy of Lower Lorraine. This duchy was an important one at the time, serving as a buffer between the kingdom of France and the German lands.

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Greeks in Belgium
The Greek community in Belgium numbers between 15,000 and 26,000 people. They are located throughout the country with Brussels being home to the largest concentration.

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Guillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (August 5, 1397? – November 27, 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.
From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of Brussels. Circumstantial evidence claims him to have been born the illegitimate child of an unknown priest and a woman named Marie Du Fayt, though this suggestion is as of yet unproven. Marie moved with her son to Cambrai early in his life, staying with a relative who was a canon of the cathedral there. Soon Dufay's musical gifts were noticed by the cathedral authorities, who evidently gave him a thorough training in music; he studied with Rogier de Hesdin during the summer of 1409, and he was listed as a choirboy in the cathedral from 1409 to 1412. During those years he studied with Nicolas Malin, and the authorities must have been impressed with the boy's gifts because they gave him his own copy of Villedieu’s Doctrinale in 1411, a highly unusual event for one so young. In June 1414, at the age of only 16, he had already been given a benefice as chaplain at St. Géry, immediately adjacent to Cambrai. Later that year he probably went to the Council of Konstanz, staying possibly until 1418, at which time he returned to Cambrai.

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Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux (24 May 1899 – 19 October 1984) was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism. Michaux travelled widely, tried his hand at several careers, and experimented with drugs, the latter resulting in two of his most intriguing works, Miserable Miracle and The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones.
In 1930–1931, Henri Michaux visited Japan, China and India. The result of this trip is the book A Barbarian in Asia. Oriental culture became one of his biggest influences. The philosophy of Buddhism, and Oriental calligraphy, later became principal subjects of many of his poems and inspired many of his drawings.
He also traveled to Africa and to the American continent, where he visited Ecuador and published the book Ecuador. His travels across the Americas finished in Brazil in 1939, and he stayed there for two years.

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Henri Pousseur
Henri Pousseur (23 June 1929, Malmedy – 6 March 2009, Brussels) was a Belgian composer.
Pousseur studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to 1953. He was closely associated with Pierre Froidebise and André Souris. He encountered Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio and thereafter devoted himself to avant-garde research.
In 1954 he married Théa Schoonbrood with whom he had four children: Isabelle (1957), Denis (1958), Marianne (1961), and Hélène (1965).
Beginning around 1960, he collaborated with Michel Butor on a number of projects, most notably the opera Votre Faust (1961–68).
Pousseur taught in Cologne, Basel, and in the United States at SUNY Buffalo, as well as in his native Belgium. From 1970 until his retirement in 1988 he taught at the University and Conservatory of Liège where he also founded the Centre de recherches et de formation musicales de Wallonie. He died aged 79, on the morning of 6 March 2009, of bronchial pneumonia (Machart 2009).

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Indo people
Indo people, short for Indo-European people is a term that originated in the Dutch East Indies of the 19th century. It is used to describe the Eurasian people of mixed European and indigenous Indonesian ancestry in the Dutch East Indies, and their descendants, who generally are people of predominately European ancestry, as a result of migration to Western countries. People of Indo ancestry are now primarily found in the Netherlands and Indonesia, but also Australia, Canada, United States and New Zealand.
As a group Indos developed over a period of more than 400 years. Records from the beginning of European colonial activity in the South East Asian region show the range of the origins of the Europeans that settled there. People of Indo ancestry have a great variety of combinations of diverse European and Asian ancestries. The family names indicate the diversity of origins, although all family names are uniformly European.
Other common terms used for this group are Indische people or Dutch-Indonesians, both terms are derived from the Dutch term Indische Nederlanders.

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Jacques Daret
Jacques Daret (c. 1404 - c. 1470) was an Early Netherlandish painter born in Tournai (now in Belgium), where he would spend much of his life. Daret spent 15 years as a pupil in the studio of Robert Campin, alongside Rogier or Rogelet de le Pasture (assumed by scholars to be Rogier van der Weyden, both words meaning "field" or "meadow" in French and Dutch respectively), and afterwards became a master in his own right. He became a favorite of the Burgundian court, and his patron for 20 years was the abbot of St. Vaast in Arras, Jean de Clercq.
Though many works of Daret are mentioned in Jean de Clercq's account books, only four panels of Daret's works are known to have survived: all are from the so-called Arras Altarpiece or Saint-Vaast Altarpiece, painted for the abbot between 1433 and 1435. These paintings show a striking resemblance to the Flemish realism of the Master of Flémalle. This is argued by most scholars to be evidence that the Master of Flémalle was Daret's master, Robert Campin.

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Jean Bodin
Jean Bodin (1530–1596) was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. He is best known for his theory of sovereignty; he was also an influential writer on demonology.
Bodin lived during the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, and wrote against the background of religious conflict in France. He remained a nominal Catholic throughout his life, but was critical of papal authority over governments, favouring the strong central control of a national monarchy as an antidote to factional strife. Towards the end of his life he wrote, but did not publish, a dialogue between different religions, including representatives of Judaism, Islam and natural theology, in which all agreed to coexist in concord.
Bodin was successively a monk, academic, professional lawyer and political adviser. An excursion as a politician having proved a failure, he lived out his life as a provincial magistrate.
Bodin was born near Angers (perhaps the son of a master tailor), with modestly prosperous middle-class background. He received a decent education, apparently in the Carmelite monastery of Angers, where he became a novice monk. Some claims made about his early life remain obscure. There is some evidence of a visit to Geneva in 1547/48 in which he became involved in a heresy trial. The records of this episode, however, are murky and perhaps refer to another person.

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Jessé de Forest
Jessé de Forest (1576 – October 22, 1624) was the leader of a group of Walloon Huguenots who fled Europe due to religious persecutions. Jessé de Forest emigrated to the New World, where he planned to found New-Belgium. He died before reaching what is now New York, but his family settled in Long Island, where it is remembered by the name of Forest Hill.
Jessé de Forest was born in Avesnes (County of Hainaut, now Nord, France). The family name originated from the village of Forest in the canton of Landrecies near Avesnes. Around 1609 he left Avesnes for Sedan and Montcornet before settling in Leiden, Holland.
In Leiden, he moved to obtain the right to emigrate with his own and other Walloon families to the New World. During his stay, he also met Pilgrim Fathers, future passengers of the Mayflower. De Forest served with Prince Maurice of Nassau as a lieutenant and captain.
On February 5, 1621, Jessé de Forest sent a petition, to Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester, English ambassador to The Hague. It applied for permission to settle about fifty Walloon and French Huguenot families that planned to follow the Puritans to America (then called the West Indies) in Virginia. De Forest asked to dispose over a territory of eight English miles radius. Known as the Round Robin, this document is now preserved in the British Public Record Office. On August 11, 1621, the Virginia Company gave an agreement in principle, but raised some restrictions. The worse one was the refusal to have the settlers dwell together in one autonomous colony. De Forest declined the proposition.

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Joachim Patinir
Joachim Patinir, also called de Patiner (c. 1480 – 5 October 1524), was a Flemish Northern Renaissance history and landscape painter from the area of modern Wallonia. He was probably the uncle of Herri met de Bles, his follower in establishing a distinct style of panoramic northern Renaissance landscapes.
Originally from Dinant or Bouvignes in present-day Belgium, Patinir became registered as a member of Antwerp's painters’ guild Guild of Saint Luke in 1515, where he spent the rest of his life. He may have studied with Gerard David at Bruges, who had been registered as a guild member in the same year as Patinir. In 1511, Patinir is believed to have travelled to Genoa with David and Adrien Ysenbrandt.

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Johannes Ciconia
Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370 – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was a Flemish composer and music theorist of the late Middle Ages who worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly in the service of the Papal Chapels and at the cathedral of Padua.
Ciconia was born in Liège, the son of a priest also named Johannes Ciconia and a woman of high standing. The composer had the same name as at least three other men around Liège, and this has created confusion about his biography. A Johannes Ciconia, probably the composer's father, worked in Avignon in 1350 as a clerk for the wife of the nephew of Pope Clement VI. Another Johannes Ciconia is recorded in Liège in 1385 as a duodenus, generally a person of young age; scholars agree that this is the composer himself.
Papal records suggest that Ciconia was in the service of Pope Boniface IX in Rome in 1391. His whereabouts between the early 1390s and 1401 are unknown. From this time until his death in 1412, he remained connected with the cathedral of Padua. It is unclear whether he arrived in Padua earlier than 1401. His lament, Con lagrime bagnadome, is described in one source as written for the death of Francesco of Carrara. If this refers to Francesco il Nuovo, then it would date from after 1406. If, however, it was written for the death of Francesco il Vecchio, as scholars have assumed, then it would place him in Padua by 1393. The possibility of an intermediate stay in Pavia has also been suggested by Nádas and Ziino, on the grounds that this is where he would have formed his connection with the House of Visconti and acquired knowledge of the ars subtilior style and the compositions of Philipoctus de Caserta quoted in his Sus un fontayne (see below).

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Joseph Lebeau
Jean Louis Joseph Lebeau (3 January 1794 - 19 March 1865) was a Belgian liberal politician and statesman, the second Prime Minister.
Born in Huy, he received his early education from an uncle who was parish priest in Hannut, and became a clerk. He raised money to study Law at the University of Liège, and was called to the bar association in 1819. While in Liège, he formed a fast friendship with Charles Rogier and Paul Devaux, together with whom he founded at Liege in 1824 the Mathieu Laensbergh, afterwards Le politique, a journal which helped to unite the Catholic Party with the Liberals in their opposition to the cabinet, without manifesting any open disaffection to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Lebeau had not aimed for the separation of the Netherlands and Belgium, but his hand was forced by the August Revolution of 1830. He was sent by his native district to the National Congress, and became minister of foreign affairs in March 1831 during the interim regency of Érasme-Louis Surlet de Chokier. By proposing the election of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg as King of the Belgians he secured a benevolent attitude on the part of the United Kingdom, but the restoration to the Netherlands of part of the duchies of Limburg and Luxembourg provoked a heated opposition to the 1839 Treaty of London, and Lebeau was accused of treachery to Belgian interests.

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Jules Bordet
Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet (13 June 1870 – 6 April 1961) was a Belgian immunologist and microbiologist. The bacterial genus Bordetella is named after him.
Bordet was born at Soignies, Belgium. He graduated in the year 1892 as Doctor of Medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium) and began his work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1894, where, in the laboratory of Elie Metchnikoff, he described phagocytosis of bacteria by white blood cells. In 1898 he described hemolysis evoked by exposure of blood serum to foreign blood cells.
In 1900, he left Paris to found the Pasteur Institute in Brussels, and made his discovery that the bacteriolytic effect of acquired specific antibody is significantly enhanced in vivo by the presence of innate serum components which he termed alexine (but which are now known as complement). This mechanism became the basis for complement-fixation testing methods that enabled the development of serological tests for syphilis (specifically, the development of the Wassermann test by August von Wassermann). The same technique is used today in serologic testing for countless other diseases.

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Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet (21 August 1798 – 9 February 1874) was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.
His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press. A place was offered him in the imperial printing office, but his father was able to send him to the famous Collège or Lycée Charlemagne, where he distinguished himself. He passed the university examination in 1821, and was soon appointed to a professorship of history in the Collège Rollin.
Soon after this, in 1824, he married. This was one of the most favourable periods ever for scholars and men of letters in France, and Michelet had powerful patrons in Abel-François Villemain and Victor Cousin, among others. Although he was an ardent politician (having from his childhood embraced republicanism and a peculiar variety of romantic free-thought), he was above all a man of letters and an inquirer into the history of the past. His earliest works were school textbooks.

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Juliana of Liège
Saint Juliana of Liège, O.Praem. (also called Juliana of Mount-Cornillon), (1193–1252) was a medieval canoness regular and mystic in what is now Belgium. Traditional scholarly sources have long recognized her as the promoter of the Feast of Corpus Christi, first celebrated in Liège in 1246, and later adopted for the universal church in 1264. More recent scholarship includes manuscript analysis of the initial version of the Office, as found in The Hague, National Library of the Netherlands (KB 70.E.4) and a close reading of her Latin vita, a critical edition of which was published in French by the Belgian scholar, Jean-Pierre Delville.
Newer scholarly work notes the many references to her musical and liturgical performances. Modern women scholars recognize Juliana as the "author" of the initial version of the Latin Office, Animarum cibus, which takes its title from the beginning of its first antiphon.
Juliana and her twin sister Agnes were born in the village of Retinnes in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. They were orphaned at age five and placed in a newly-founded hospice at Mont-Cornillon, right outside of Liège. The canonry seems to have been established on the model of a double monastery, with both canons and canonesses, each living in their own wing of the monastery. The two girls were initially placed on a small farm next to the canonry. Agnes died young. Juliana, after entering the Order at the age of 13, worked for many years in its leprosarium. The new community benefited greatly from the sisters' dowries.

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Justine Henin
Justine Henin (French pronunciation: [ʒys.tin enɛ̃]; born 1 June 1982), known as Justine Henin-Hardenne between 2002 and 2007, is a retired professional Belgian tennis player and former World No. 1.
Henin won 43 WTA singles titles and seven Grand Slam singles titles, including four French Open titles, one Australian Open title, and two US Open titles. She has also won the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships twice and the singles gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
Tennis experts cite her mental toughness, the completeness and variety of her game, her footspeed and footwork, and her one-handed backhand (which John McEnroe has described as the best single-handed backhand in the women's or men's game) as the principal reasons for her success.
Critics and all-time-great players have made testament to Henin's talent. Upon Henin's first retirement from the WTA in the early part of the 2008 season, Billie Jean King said that "pound for pound, Henin is the best tennis player of her generation", as well as that "Justine is the best women's athlete I've ever seen."Andre Agassi said of Henin, "Justine Henin is one of the most talented women ever to have played the game of tennis." In 2007, 18 time Grand Slam winner Martina Navratilova said that "She is head and shoulders above everyone else right now." John McEnroe concurred, saying that Henin is "The player I most like to watch." Henin made a return to the WTA in early 2010, losing the final of the Australian Open in only her 2nd tournament back.

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Louis Dewis
Louis Dewis (1872–1946) was a Belgian Post-Impressionist painter, who lived most of his adult life in France.
Dewis was born Isidore Louis Dewachter in Mons, Belgium, the son of Isidore Louis Dewachter and Eloise Desmaret Dewachter. He spent his formative years in Liege where his closest boyhood friend was Richard Heintz (fr:Richard Heintz) (1871–1929), who also became an internationally known landscape artist.
Although the name "Dewachter" may have Flemish roots, Dewachter always considered himself a Walloon.

Louis' successful merchant father was embarrassed that his son would waste his time with something as useless as painting. In a vain attempt to break his young son of this "bad habit", the elder Dewachter would, on occasion, throw away the boy’s canvases, paints and brushes.
Young Louis' love of art could not be deterred. It could, however, be overwhelmed by business and family responsibilities
As the eldest son, Louis was expected to take over the family business, a chain of men's clothing stores called Maison Dewachter. This was a duty that his father would not allow him to shirk. Dewis would come to manage the store in Bordeaux but there were Maison Dewachters in cities across France and Belgium, usually run locally by one cousin or another. Louis would bear this responsibility until after his father's death and the conclusion of World War I.

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Louis Hennepin
Father Louis Hennepin, O.F.M. baptized Antoine, (12 May 1626 – c. 1701) was a Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan Recollect order (French: Récollets) and an explorer of the interior of North America.
Hennepin was born in Ath in the Spanish Netherlands (now in the province of Hainaut, Belgium). In 1659 Béthune, the town where he lived, was captured by the army of Louis XIV of France.
At the request of Louis XIV the Récollets sent four missionaries to New France in May 1675, including Hennepin, accompanied by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. In 1678 Hennepin was ordered by his provincial superior to accompany La Salle on a voyage to explore the western part of New France. Hennepin was 39 when he sailed in 1679 with La Salle from Canada through the Great Lakes aboard Le Griffon to explore the unknown West. Local historians credit the Franciscan Récollect friar as the first European to step ashore at the site of present-day Hannibal, Missouri.
Two great waterfalls were brought to the world's attention by Louis Hennepin: Niagara Falls, with the most voluminous flow of any in North America, and the Saint Anthony Falls in what is now Minneapolis, the only waterfall on the Mississippi River.

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Léon Degrelle
Léon Joseph Marie Ignace Degrelle (15 June 1906 – 31 March 1994) was a Walloon Belgian politician, who founded Rexism and later joined the Waffen SS (becoming a leader of its Walloon contingent) which were front-line troops in the fight against the Soviet Union. After World War II, he was a prominent figure in neo-nazi movements.
After studying at a Jesuit college and successfully studying for a law doctorate at the Université catholique de Louvain, Degrelle worked as a journalist for the conservative Roman Catholic periodical Christus Rex. During his time at this publication, he became attracted to the ideas of Charles Maurras and French Integralism. Until 1934, Degrelle worked as a correspondent for the paper in Mexico, during the Cristero War. He led a militant tendency inside the Catholic Party, which he formed around the Éditions de Rex he founded. The Éditions drew its name from the battle cry of the Cristeros: Viva Cristo Rey y Santa María de Guadalupe, alluding to Christ the King.

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Maltese in Belgium
Maltese in Belgium are people from Malta resident in Belgium, whether permanently or temporarily. They include Maltese who have acquired Belgian citizenship, students and workers with International organizations.
Before 2003 the Maltese in Belgium were mostly people married to Belgians who had emigrated to the country or Maltese diplomats. In 2003 the employment of Maltese nationals with the European Union (EU) started in earnest in view of Malta's membership of the organisation.
Belgian national statistics show that the number of Maltese in Belgium stood at 252 as of 1 January 2008. Of these, 159 lived in Brussels, 70 in Flanders and 23 in Wallonia. This represents a significant increase over previous years: in 2005 the number of Maltese in Belgium stood at 133 and at 192 in 2006. A more recent estimate quotes the figure of 400 Maltese in Belgium in 2010.
Most of the Maltese are in Belgium because of their employment with the EU. It is in fact estimated that of the 324 Maltese employed with the EU in 2010, around 250 worked in Belgium. This is why they consider themselves to expatriates rather than emigrants as was the case with the Maltese Diaspora in the demographic movements of previous generations.

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Marc Dutroux
Marc Dutroux (born 6 November 1956) is a Belgian serial killer and child molester, convicted of having kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls during 1995 to 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was also convicted of having killed a suspected former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, later proved insane. He was arrested in 1996, four years after the disappearance of his victims had begun, and has been in prison ever since, with the exception of reportedly escaping for a brief amount of time in April 1998. Dutroux's widely publicised trial took place in 2004. A number of shortcomings in the Dutroux investigation caused widespread discontent in Belgium with the country's criminal justice system, and the ensuing scandal was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of Belgium's law enforcement agencies.
Born in Ixelles, Belgium on 6 November 1956, Dutroux was the oldest of five children. His parents, both teachers, emigrated to the Belgian Congo, but returned to Belgium when Dutroux was four. They separated in 1971 and Dutroux stayed with his mother. He married at the age of 19 and fathered two children; the marriage ended in divorce in 1983. By then he already had had an affair with Michèle Martin. They would eventually have three children together, and married in 1989 while both were in prison. They divorced in 2003, also while in prison.

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Michael Baius
Michael Baius (1513 – September 16, 1589) was a Belgian theologian. He came up with the school of thought Baianism.
He was born at Meslin L'Eveque near Ath in Hainaut as Michel De Bay. Educated at the Catholic University of Leuven, he studied philosophy and theology with distinguished success, and was rewarded by a series of academic appointments. In 1552 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, appointed him professor of scriptural interpretation in the university. In 1563 he was nominated one of the Belgian representatives at the Council of Trent, but arrived too late to take an important part in its deliberations. Indeed, there was resistance to his presence at the Council, and was allowed to attend only under the auspices of the King of Spain. The Council Fathers looked upon him with not a little suspicion. At Leuven, however, he obtained a great name as a leader in the anti-scholastic reaction of the 16th century. The champions of this reaction fought under the banner of Augustine of Hippo though paradoxically undermined Augustine's doctrine of grace; as a result, Baius' heterodox-Augustinian predilections brought him into conflict with Rome on questions of grace, free-will and the like. In various respects, Baius was rightly seen as Pelagian. In 1567 Pope Pius V condemned seventy-nine propositions from his writings in the papal bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus. To this Baius submitted; though certain indiscreet utterances on the part of himself and his supporters led to a renewal of the condemnation in 1579 by Pope Gregory XIII. Baius, however, was allowed to retain his professorship, and even became chancellor of Leuven in 1575.

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Orlande de Lassus
Orlande de Lassus (also Orlandus Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Roland de Lassus, or Roland Delattre) (1532 (possibly 1530) – 14 June 1594) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance. He is today considered to be the chief representative of the mature polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school, and one of the three most famous and influential musicians in Europe at the end of the 16th century (the other two being Palestrina and Victoria).
Lassus was born in Mons in the County of Hainaut (modern day Belgium). Information about his early years is scanty, although some uncorroborated stories have survived, the most famous of which is that he was kidnapped three times because of the singular beauty of his singing voice. At the age of twelve, he left the Low Countries with Ferrante Gonzaga and went to Mantua, Sicily, and later Milan (from 1547 to 1549). While in Milan, he made the acquaintance of the madrigalist Spirito l'Hoste da Reggio, a formative influence on his early musical style.

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Paul Delvaux
Paul Delvaux (23 September 1897 – 20 July 1994) was a Belgian painter, associated with Surrealism, famous for his paintings of female nudes.
Delvaux was born in Antheit in the Belgian province of Liège, the son of a lawyer. The young Delvaux took music lessons, studied Greek and Latin, and absorbed the fiction of Jules Verne and the poetry of Homer. All of his work was to be influenced by these readings, starting with his earliest drawings showing mythological scenes. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, albeit in the architecture department owing to his parents' disapproval of his ambition to be a painter. Nevertheless, he pursued his goal, attending painting classes taught by Constant Montald and Jean Delville. The painters Frans Courtens and Alfred Bastien also encouraged Delvaux, whose works from this period were primarily naturalistic landscapes. He completed some 80 paintings between 1920 and 1925, which was the year of his first solo exhibition.
Delvaux's paintings of the late 1920s and early 1930s, which feature nudes in landscapes, are strongly influenced by such Flemish Expressionists as Constant Permeke and Gustave De Smet. A change of style around 1933 reflects the influence of the metaphysical art of Giorgio de Chirico, which he had first encountered in 1926 or 1927. In the early 1930s Delvaux found further inspiration in visits to the Brussels Fair, where the Spitzner Museum, a museum of medical curiosities, maintained a booth in which skeletons and a mechanical Venus figure were displayed in a window with red velvet curtains. This spectacle captivated Delvaux, supplying him with motifs that would appear throughout his subsequent work. In the mid-1930s he also began to adopt some of the motifs of his fellow Belgian René Magritte, as well as that painter's deadpan style in rendering the most unexpected juxtapositions of otherwise ordinary objects.

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Peter Minuit
Peter Minuit, Pieter Minuit, Pierre Minuit or Peter Minnewit (1580 – August 5, 1638) was a Walloon from Wesel, in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, then part of the Duchy of Cleves. He was the Director of the Dutch colony of New Netherland from 1626 until 1633, and he founded the Swedish colony of New Sweden in 1638. According to tradition, Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from Native Americans on May 24, 1626 for goods to the value of 60 Dutch guilders, which in the 19th century was estimated to be the equivalent of $24 USD.
Peter Minuit was born in 1580 in Wesel. This was during a period of religious tensions between Protestants and Catholics polities following the Protestant Reformation that culminated in the Thirty Years' War. Minuit's Walloon family, originally from the French-speaking city of Tournai in modern day Belgium, was among those Protestants who migrated away from suppression under the Roman Catholic government of the Spanish Netherlands. In 1580, Minuit's family took refuge in the city of Wesel, which had become a haven for Protestants as early as 1540.

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Philippe Gilbert
Philippe Gilbert (born 5 July 1982 in Remouchamps (Aywaille)) is a Belgian professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTour team BMC Racing Team. Gilbert is a classics specialist. He is the second person (and first Belgian) in history to win all three Ardennes classics in a single year.
Gilbert has won several classic cycle races, including Paris-Tours (2008, 2009), Giro di Lombardia (2009, 2010), Amstel Gold Race (2010, 2011), La Flèche Wallonne (2011), Liège–Bastogne–Liège (2011) and Clásica de San Sebastián (2011). He has also won a stage at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France and two stages at the Vuelta a España.
Gilbert turned professional in 2003 by joining FDJeux.com after riding as stagiaire for the team in late 2000. During this season he recorded his first victory by winning a stage in Tour de l'Avenir. In 2004 he began by winning a stage in the Tour Down Under as well as the young rider classification. He participated in the men's road race at the 2004 Summer Olympics where he finished 49th. He also won the Paris–Corrèze. In 2005 he won several races in France, which allowed him to win the Coupe de France de cyclisme sur route. These victories included Trophée des Grimpeurs, Tour du Haut-Var and the Polynormande. He also took stages in Four Days of Dunkirk and Tour Méditerranéen.

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Pierre de la Rue
Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452 – 20 November 1518), called Piersson, was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance. A member of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, and a long associate of the Habsburg-Burgundian musical chapel, he ranks with Agricola, Brumel, Compère, Isaac, Obrecht, and Weerbeke as one of the most famous and influential composers in the Netherlands polyphonic style in the decades around 1500.
La Rue was probably born at Tournai, in modern Belgium, and likely educated at the Notre-Dame Cathedral there, which had a substantial musical establishment. He may have been the son of Jean de la Rue, a master enlumineur of the town of Tournai.
While no records remain of his childhood, a Peter vander Straten (the Flemish equivalent of his name) is mentioned in the archives of the cathedral of Ste. Gudule in Brussels in 1469-1470, as an adult (tenor) singer; this is considered very likely to have been him. In 1471 he was in Ghent at the Jacobskerk as a part-time singer, paid from the cathedral's miscellaneous fund, suggesting he was brought in for special performances of polyphony. Subsequently he was employed in Nieuwpoort in 1472, at the church of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw, probably initially as a temporary arrangement, but by the end of the year the church authorities hired him on a more permanent basis. He was no longer employed there by 1477/8 for his name had vanished from the account-book.

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Rennequin Sualem
Rennequin Sualem was a Walloon carpenter and engineer (Jemeppe-sur-Meuse (Walloon Country) 1645 - Bougival (France 1708 ).
In 1667-1668 Lieutenant-Governor of the castle of Huy ordered the building of an hydraulic machine in order to pump up the water of the Hoyoux to his Castle in Modave 50 m higher. Rennequin Sualem was commissionned to build the mechanism.
This mechanism is the model of the huge Machine de Marly which lifted the waters from the Seine to the palace of Louis XIV in Versailles, in this case 150 m higher. Rennequin built also a pump for the coalmine of Decize. The originality of the Rennequin's performance in Versailles was a transfer of a Walloon technology with a change of size which let reach it to its limits... Rennequin died in Bougival, at the machine, in 1708.

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Robert Campin
Robert Campin (c. 1375 – 26 April 1444), now usually identified as the artist known as the Master of Flémalle, is usually considered the first great master of Flemish and Early Netherlandish painting. This had been a matter of controversy for decades; Campin's life is relatively well documented for the period, but no works in assessable condition could be securely connected with him, whilst a corpus of work had been attached to the unidentified "Master of Flémalle", named after the supposed origin of a work.
Campin first appears as settled in Tournai from the archives of 1405-6, as a free master of the guild of painters, and there has been a lot of speculation about his origin and birthplace which is actually unknown. However, in 1410 he bought citizenship, which suggests he was not born there. He eventually attained the office of dean of the guild, and wardenship of a church and other civic offices, and was running a large workshop. By 1432, however, he lost his civic positions because of scandals, and probably his role in political disturbances in the city. In 1429 he was found guilty of withholding evidence, and sentenced to go on a pilgrimage, and in 1432 was convicted of adultery and banished for a year. Margaret of Burgundy, wife of the Count of Holland and sister of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy intervened on his behalf, and this was reduced to a fine. The dated Werl Altarpiece (1438) shows he continued to work (the two outer wings are in the Prado; the main panel is lost).

wn.com/Robert_Campin

Romanians
The Romanians (dated: Rumanians or Roumanians; in Romanian: români pronounced [roˈmɨnʲ] or — historically, but now a seldom-used regionalism — rumâni; dated exonym: Vlachs) are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania.
The Romanian people are a nation in the meaning of ethnos (Romanian: etnie), defined by the sense of sharing a common Romanian culture, descent, and having Romanian as mother tongue, as well as by citizenship or by being subjects to the same country. The Romanian citizenship law legislated in March 1991 establishes the rights of second and third generation descendants of Romanian citizens to obtain a Romanian citizenship, if they speak fluent Romanian and are able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge in Romanian history and culture. 89.4 percent of Romania's people declared themselves as Romanians at the 2002 Romanian Census.
In one interpretation of the census results in Moldova, Moldovans are counted as Romanians, which would mean that the latter form part of the majority in that country as well. Romanians are also an ethnic minority in several nearby countries.

wn.com/Romanians

Sylvain Van de Weyer
Jean-Sylvain Van de Weyer (19 January 1802–23 May 1874) was a Belgian politician, and then the Belgian Minister at the Court of St. James's, effectively the ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Van de Weyer was born in Louvain (Leuven); his family relocated to Amsterdam in 1811. The family returned to Leuven when his father, Josse-Alexandre (1769–1838), was named police commissioner for the city. Jean-Sylvain studied law at the State University of Louvain and set up as a lawyer in Brussels in 1823. Here he frequently defended newspapers and journalists which fell foul of the government of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, of which modern Belgium then formed the southern half.
On the outbreak of the Belgian Revolution in 1830, Van de Weyer was in Leuven, but hurried to Brussels where he became a member of the central committee of the Provisional Government of Belgium. His command of the English language resulted in him serving as a diplomatic representative of the revolutionaries. King Leopold I appointed Van de Weyer his "special representative" in London.

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Turks in Belgium
Turks in Belgium (Turkish: Belçika Türkleri) are either Turkish people who live in Belgium even though having been born outside Belgium, or are Belgian-born, but have Turkish roots. By Turkish roots, this could mean roots linking back to Turkey, the island of Cyprus or the communities of the Turkish diaspora.
Turkish migration to Belgium started in the 1960s when Turkey signed a bilateral agreement with Belgium in July 1964 which was actively encouraged by Belgium to meet man power needs in an era of rapid economic expansion. Three types of immigration can be distinguished: immigration as a result of recruitment by the Belgian government, the immigration tourists, and the arrival of political figures. In 1963 and 1964, a total of 12,256 workers were sent to Belgium. This was organised by an international agreement between Turkey and Belgium and was due to economic factors. Turkish immigrants, mostly from eastern Turkey and the Black Sea region but also Turks of Balkan descents (mainly of Albanian, ex-Yugoslavian or Greek origins), were welcomed to Belgium as guest workers. They settled in industrialised areas and were allowed later to bring in their families. As unskilled labourers, they hoped to make a fortune in a short time and then return to Turkey. But things moved more slowly than expected, and a chain of immigration developed over the years. Moreover, between 1964–1967, Belgium attempted to resolve the growing problem of low population by encouraging family reunions.

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Walloons
Walloons (/wɑːˈluːnz/; French: Wallons, IPA: [walɔ̃]; Walloon: Walons) are a French-speaking people who live in Belgium, principally in Wallonia. Walloons are a distinctive community within Belgium. Important historical and anthropological criteria (religion, language, traditions, folklore) bind Walloons to the French people. More generally, the term also refers to the inhabitants of the Walloon Region. They speak regional languages such as Walloon (with Picard in the West and Lorrain in the South).
The term Walloon is derived from *walha, a Proto-Germanic term used to refer to Celtic and Latin speakers.
Walloon originated in Romance languages alongside other related terms, but it supplanted them. Its oldest written trace is found in Jean de Haynin's Mémoires de Jean, sire de Haynin et de Louvignies in 1465, where it refers to Roman populations of the Burgundian Netherlands. Its meaning narrowed yet again during the French and Dutch periods and at Belgian independence the term designated only Belgians speaking a Romance language (French, Walloon, Picard, etc.) The linguistic cleavage in the politics of Belgium adds a political content to «the emotional cultural, and linguistic concept».Walloon also designates the inhabitants of Wallonia — a monolingual French-speaking territory — as opposed to Flemish. The words Walloon and Wallons can be seen in the book of Charles White, The Belgic revolution (1835): "The restless Wallons, with that adventurous daring which is their historical characteristic, abandoned their occupations, and eagerly seizing the pike and the musket marched towards the center of the commotion.". The Spanish term Walon and Walona from XVII Century were referred to a Royal Guard Corps recruited in the Spanish Flanders. They were involved in many of the most significant battles of the Spanish Empire. The French word Wallons in English is also used in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

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World War I
World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.

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Zénobe Gramme
Zénobe Théophile Gramme (4 April 1826, Amay - 20 January 1901) was a Belgian electrical engineer. He invented the Gramme machine, a type of direct current dynamo capable of generating smoother (less AC) and much higher voltages than the dynamos known to that point.
In 1873 he and Hippolyte Fontaine accidentally discovered that the device was reversible and would spin when connected to any DC power supply. The Gramme machine was the first usefully powerful electrical motor that was successful industrially. Before Gramme's inventions, electric motors attained only low power and were mainly used as toys or laboratory curiosities.
Gramme died at Bois-Colombes, France and was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
In the city of Liège there is a High School, L'Institut Gramme, named after him.
In 2005 he ended at 23rd place in the election of Le plus grand Belge (The Greatest Belgian), the television show broadcast by the French-speaking RTBF and based on the BBC show 100 Greatest Britons.

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Zénon Bacq
Zénon Bacq (1903 in La Louvière - 1983 in Fontenoy) was a Belgian radiobiologist and inventor. He studied medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), and became an MD in 1927. He studied at Harvard University (1929–1930), with a grant from the FNRS. He taught animal physiology, pathology, as well as pharmacology and radiobiology at the University of Liège (ULg).
While studying the chemical transmissions of nerve impulses, he invented processes to guard himself against ionizing radiations. In 1948 he was awarded the Francqui Prize on Biological and Medical Sciences.

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