Tulipmania - Money, Honour, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

...Cornelis Guldewagen of Haarlem, who became embroiled in a singularly ill-advised transaction involving 1,300 tulip bulbs in February 1637, acquired his name from his family’s house on the Grote Houtstraat, De Vergulde Wagen (the gilded wagon). There are many similar names, resulting in people named things like Jacob Pietersz Olycan (oil can), Pieter Jacobsz Indischeraven (Indian raven, that is, parrot), Gerrit Ghuersz Doodshooft (death’s head), Pieter Dircksz Spaerpott (savings bank), and Pieter van Alderwerelt (all the world; one of his two houses on the Herengracht in Amsterdam sported a globe on the roof).

The Haarlem lottery of 1606–1607, held to fund the building of an almshouse for the aged, sold 308,047 lots of 6 stuivers apiece to nearly 25,000 people throughout the region. And when announcing the results, in which every lot, and the little verse the lot-holder wrote when he bought it, was read out in turn, lottery offi cials arrived in the Grote Markt in Haarlem on April 17, 1607, and proceeded to draw lots day and night for a staggering fifty- two days. The top prize, a gilded silver cup weighing 1.6 kilos plus ƒ600, was won by an Amsterdammer, Jan Jansz Cooninck, on May 3 at three o’clock in еhe morning.