It has been more than five decades ago that Henk van de Hulst predicted the observability of the 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen (HI ). Since then use of the 21-cm line has greatly improved our knowledge in many fields and has been used for galactic structure studies, studies of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the Milky Way and other galaxies, studies of the mass distribution of the Milky Way and other galaxies, studies of spiral struc ture, studies of high velocity gas in the Milky Way and other galaxies, for measuring distances using the Tully-Fisher relation etc. Regarding studies of the...