Recalling an interview with Dan Keating the last survivor of the Tan War
The Whiteboys (na Buachaillí Bána) were a secret Irish agrarian organisation which defended tenant farmer land rights for subsistence farming.
Muhammed Ali defeated Joe Frazier in the so-called “thrilla in Manila”, on this day, October 1st, 1975. The fight, the third and final between Ali and Frazier, got its name from Ali’s rhyming boast that the fight would be “a killa and a thrilla and a chilla, when I get that gorilla in Manila.” The […]
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 Monaghan, Loughrea and Lismore. Such was the support and excitement surrounding the event, […]
Good for people. Less good for wildlife.
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.
Father of, well, many of us.
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 […]
Mayo agent, Captain Charles Boycott, was sent to a ‘moral Coventry.’ He described his plight in a letter to The Times: “…people collect in crowds upon my farm and order off all my workmen. The shopkeepers have been warned to stop all supplies to my house. My farm is public property, I can get no […]
Manuel I Komnemos of the Byzantine Empire, also known as “Manuel the Great”, breathed his last on this day, September 24th, 1180. He was the last of the great Byzantine Emperors, and with his death, the Empire began to fall into ruin and decay. Manuel was the third son of his father, John II. On […]
On the night of September 23rd, 1846, the German Astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle confirmed the discovery of the planet Neptune, which had been predicted by the French Mathematician Urban le Verrier, based on nothing but numbers. It was one of the great triumphs of 19th century science. Le Verrier discovered Neptune – which cannot be […]