ON THIS DAY: 12 OCTOBER 1645: Archbishop Rinuccini arrives in Ireland to offer assistance to O’Neill and the Irish Confederate Catholics in their war against English Protestant rule He wrote this letter to his brother, describing the Irish he met: “The men are fine-looking and of incredible strength, swift runners, and ready to bear every […]
Following a Catholic uprising in 1641, Cromwell and the New Model Army set sail to Ireland to defeat this coalition and reclaim Ireland for parliament. This proved to be a bloody and brutal affair, forever remembered for a series of controversial massacres. The Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland had begun, which included the destruction of Drogheda […]
ON THIS DAY: 8TH OCTOBER 1974: SEÁN MACBRIDE became the first Irish person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize MacBride was born in Paris in 1904 and remained ther until his father’s execution after the Easter Rising of 1916, when he was sent to school at Mount St Benedict’s, Gorey. In 1919, aged 15, […]
Pádraic Ó Conaire was an Irish writer who wrote extensively in the Irish Language and wrote 26 books, 473 stories, 237 essays and 6 plays. His acclaimed novel Deoraíocht has been described by Angela Bourke as ‘the earliest example of modernist fiction in Irish’. Orphaned by the age of eleven, he spent a period living […]
The Orient Express departs on its first official journey from Paris to Instanbul; It was a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL). It’s routes changed many times with several routes in the past concurrently used the Orient Express name, or slight variations. Although the original Orient Express […]
Ten IRA and INLA hunger-strikers die between 5 May and 12 August; all but one of the men were in their twenties, the youngest, Thomas McElwee, being 23 years of age. The hunger strike had started on March 1st 1981 after years of the prisoners being on the blanket (blanket protest) and the failure of […]
The Whiteboys (na Buachaillí Bána) were a secret Irish agrarian organisation which defended tenant farmer land rights for subsistence farming. They sought to address rack-rents, tithe collection, excessive dues, evictions and other oppressive acts. As a result they targeted landlords and tithe collectors. Their operations were chiefly in the counties of Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and […]
One of Daniel O’Connell’s so-called Monster Meetings took place in Mullaghmast in Kildare, calling for a repeal of the Act of Union. It was the latest in a series of meetings that took place through out the country in places such as M0naghan, Loughrea and Lismore. Such was the support and excitement surrounding the event, […]
Pope John Paul II visited Ireland from Saturday, 29 September to Monday, 1 October 1979, the first trip to Ireland by a pope. Over 2.5 million people attended events in Dublin, Drogheda, Clonmacnoise, Galway, Knock, Limerick, and Maynooth. It was one of John Paul’s first foreign visits as Pope, who had been elected in […]
John Devoy was an Irish nationalist leader and exile. He was the owner and editor of the Gaelic American, a New York weekly newspaper, 1903-1928. He dedicated over 60 years of his life to the cause of Irish independence. He is one of the few people to have played a role in the rebellion […]
In 1066 the course of British history changed forever when William, the Duke of Normandy, landed on the southern coast of England and seized the country from its Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson. The French had a long history of claims in England, and in 1002 the English king Aethelred the Unready married the sister […]
ON THIS DAY: 25 SEPTEMBER 1917: Thomas Ashe died from force feeding during a hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison Thomas Patrick Ashe, Tomás Pádraig Ághas was a member of the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers which he joined in November 1913. […]