Anyone who watched the Olympic final 3×3 basketball can remember the last second of the game. A brilliant throw by Worthy de Jong. What fewer people know is the role that 83-year-old Haarlem native Eef Halewijn played in achieving this success. After all, he is the founder of 3×3 basketball. In 1978, he worked at the Dutch Basketball Association and was tasked with getting more people to play basketball. He came up with this new form, which was an instant success. Soon matches were organized on squares throughout the Netherlands, such as on the Grote Markt in Haarlem. Now it is an Olympic sport and the players are real heroes, all thanks to Eef.
Who in his day would also have scored a lot on a basketball court is Cajanus. If only because of his height. After all, this man of Finnish origin was a whopping 2.64 meters. You understand that he was quite a striking presence and he took full advantage of that. What's more, he made a good living at it. Sovereigns and wealthy citizens were happy to show Cajanus to their guests and were willing to pay handsomely for it. After wandering through Europe, he settled permanently in Haarlem in 1745, in the Proveniershuis on the Grote Houtstraat. Many tall tales circulate about his stay. Such as that he lit his pipe on a street lamp. This anecdote was the inspiration for the facade stone above the gateway underpass to the Proveniershof. An ode to the special resident of our city.
For another special Haarlemmer, we have to go back a few centuries. To the fifteenth century. At that time, Laurens Janszoon Coster lived in our city. And for a long time he was seen as the inventor of the art of printing. For centuries, especially in the Netherlands, he was seen as the inventor. Today this invention is attributed to the German Johannes Gutenberg. But inventor or not, he does have his own statue on the Grote Markt. Indeed, the place where Eef Halewijn's invention caused a furor.
