Lucas Bols to a stream. By 1612 the city's walls had expanded to encompass the distillery, and the stream was dug out into a canal called the because of rose nurseries in the area. Around the same time, a new stone building was constructed to house the distillery. The first official mention is in 1640 in Amsterdam town papers, where "Pieter Jacobszoon Bols" is documented as operator of "t Lootsje" on the "Rozengracht". Lucas Bols was born in 1652. His era corresponded with the Dutch golden age, when the Netherlands were a colonial power, and led the world in international commerce. The
Eric de Kuyper music, and sometimes singing and acting. Eric de Kuyper was born and spent his early childhood in Brussels and then, as he put it, his teenage years of choices swayed by "faith, sexuality, and the future" in Antwerp. According to him, his family mostly spoke Dutch while they "thought in French and felt the more subtle emotions" in that language. After graduating from Notre Dame Jesuit High School, he returned to the city of his birth to study in the Department of Audiovisual and Dramatic Arts and Techniques (Rits), Erasmus University College Brussels, and took courses in philosophy and mass