Tulips near the village of Grolloo in Drenthe province, Netherlands

© plainpicture/Buiten-Beeld/Karin Broekhuijsen

Tulips near the village of Grolloo in Drenthe province, Netherlands

March 20 marks the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, meaning we can look forward to longer daylight hours and plenty of beautiful blooms like the tulips shown here. They were photographed in the Netherlands, a country that’s been famous for tulips since the 17th century. That’s when the price of tulip bulbs climbed and then dramatically collapsed in what’s since become known as the first economic bubble, dubbed ‘tulip mania’. It’s said that at the peak of the mania, some bulbs sold for 10 times the annual income of a craftworker.