The United States Congress has passed a special resolution celebrating the long-lasting friendship between the US and the Netherlands.

The House of Representatives passed the resolution in September, and on Wednesday it was approved by the Senate.

The resolution reaffirms “historic ties between the United States and the Netherlands by recognizing the Quadricentennial celebration of the discovery of the Hudson River”. It thus rounds off festivities to celebrate 400 years of relations between the Netherlands and this part of North America, now the United States. It was in 1609 that Captain Henry Hudson’s Dutch ship anchored off the coast of what is now New York.

The resolution commemorates the fact that the Netherlands was the first country to salute the US flag after the Revolutionary War, on 16 November 1776. Relations with the newly independent country were ushered in when a cannon on Fort Orange on the Antillean island of Sint Eustatius was fired in salute of the US flag on the ship Andrea Doria.

The resolution was introduced into Congress by the founders of the Congressional Caucus on the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra and Chris van Hollen. Mr Hoekstra was born in the Netherlands and moved to the United States as a child.