Groningen

Diederik Maarten Samsom is a Dutch politician. As a member of the Labour Party he has been an MP since January 30, 2003. He is the party's... spokesperson on environmental issues. On 16 March 2012 he was elected parliamentary leader. Before his election to parliament he was CEO of a green energy company and a campaigner for Greenpeace Netherlands. Samsom was raised in Leeuwarden. His father worked as an internist and his mother as a physiotherapist. Between 1983 and 1989 he attended the Municipal Gymnasium in Leeuwarden. There he became interested in physics and so he went on to study Applied Physics at Delft University of Technology. Samsom specialised in nuclear physics and became a level three radiation expert. He graduated in May 1997, obtaining a Dutch Engineer's degree . He was also on the board of the National Students' Union LSVb and edited a yearly edition of the Poenboek, which is basically a students' guide concerning monetary issues. Samsom had been involved in environmentalism long before entering politics.
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Julia Bertha Culp , the "Dutch nightingale", was an internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano in the years 1901–1919. Culp was born in... Groningen, the Netherlands into a Jewish family of musicians and comedians. She was the daughter of contrabass player Baruch Culp and his wife Sara Cohen. At the age of seven she began to practice the violin, and at 11 had her first public violin performance. Her first performance as a singer was on 30 December 1893. In the summer of 1896, she left Groningen for Amsterdam, where she studied at the Conservatory under renowned former opera singer Cornélie van Zanten. Soon after completing her studies in 1900, Culp's singing career took flight. She was discovered by German-American conductor Wilhelm Berger, who took her to Berlin to perform at the concert hall Saal Bechstein in 1901. Before long, she was performing all over Europe and America, sharing the stage with such notable composers, conductors and singers as Edward Grieg, Richard Strauss, Camille Saint-Saëns, Enrico Caruso, Otto Klemperer, Willem Mengelberg, Pablo Casals, Percy Grainger, Enrique Granados and Thomas Beecham.
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Ben Woldring is a Dutch internet entrepreneur and millionaire from Usquert who first rose to fame in the fall of 1998 when, for a school assignment,... he made a website where consumers could compare prices for mobile phone services. As a result, he appeared on television programmes like Kassa and the Jeugdjournaal. In 1999, the website Bellen.com registered its 100,000th visitor; a year later, Woldring started the company Bencom B.V. and hired his mother as an employee. In 2003, he won Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award and on November 14, 2006 he was named the best European Entrepreneur under 25 by Business Week. He is also an ambassador for the Beatrix Kinderkliniek in Groningen and the Stichting voor het Gehandicapte Kind. As of September 2009, he owns 9 price comparison websites, with the hotel comparison site LookingforBooking.com as his most recent project. Woldring also wrote an autobiography, Ik Ben Internet-ondernemer!, published in 2000, in which he describes his life, explains his work and also gives advice.
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Kim Mendoza is a Dutch model of Indonesian descent. She was named the winning contestant of Cycle 2 of Holland's Next Top Model. Her prize was a... €50,000 modeling contract with Max Models, a cover for Glamour magazine, 3 months all expenses paid modelling in South Africa for Ice Models, and a Mercedes-Benz A-Class. Mendoza came to prominence as a contestant on cycle two of Holland's Next Top Model. She became known for her irritating voice. Later in the show she confessed to being partly deaf at both ears due to an accident when she was a child. Mendoza gained popularity by her comic sentences and grammar mistakes, while the jury confessed not being 'wowed' by her sexy posing. However, by the end of the competition she won over the jury members with her skill at posing, and her walk. In the final Yfke Sturm called her the perfect candidate with potential for both runway and photographic modelling, and that Mendoza had the most potential of all the contestants to make it on either the national or international stage. Mendoza will star on the cover of Glamour magazine's Summer edition.
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Egbert Jan Weeber is an actor.