Tradition has it that Terneuzen was once the home of the legendary Flying Dutchman, Van der Decken, a captain who cursed God and was condemned to sail the seas forever, as described in the Frederick Marryat novel The Phantom Ship and the Richard Wagner opera The Flying Dutchman.
Born in Terneuzen Van Damme received his MA in Mathematics at the Radboud University Nijmegen in 1979, and his PhD in Technical Sciences in 1983 at the Eindhoven University of Technology for the thesis entitled "Refinements of the Nash Equilibrium Concept" under supervision of Jaap Wessels and Reinhard Selten.
The biggest Reformed Congregations in the Netherlands churcheas are in Opheusden and Barneveld with both 3,500 members in 2012, and Alblasserdam, Terneuzen, Ederveen, Gouda, De Beek-Uddel.