The end of Gaelic Ireland
ON THIS DAY: 3RD SEPTEMBER 1939 The Emergency Powers Act 1939 (EPA) was an Act of the Oireachtas enacted on 3 September 1939, after an official state of emergency had been declared on 2 September 1939 in response to the outbreak of the Second World War. Éamon De Valera was Taoiseach at the time. #gript
Oliver Cromwell, the butcher of Drogheda, died on this day in 1658, having suffered a painful end from a urinary tract infection that caused blood poisoning. Three years after he died, his body was exhumed and ceremonially hanged in chains, and then thrown into a pit, so that his enemies could be sure that he […]
More than 1,000 prisoners were killed within 20 hours.
Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died on this day, September 1st, 1914. With her death, her kind became extinct. The passenger pigeon was driven to extinction by humans, and because they were so easy to catch. As recently as 1850, there were almost a million pigeons in North America. But the passenger pigeon was tasty, […]
He came to the throne at the age of nine months.
The Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) was signed on the HMS Cornwallis anchored at the city, and it ended the First Opium War (1839–1842) between the United Kingdom and the Qing dynasty of China. It was the first of what the Chinese later called the unequal treaties. Trade wars and economic power struggles between Europe […]
The Zulus never had an independent country again.
The sack of Rome, considered by most historians to mark the fall of the Western Roman Empire, happened on this day, August 27th, 410AD. It was the first time in 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy. The Empire had been in decline for almost two centuries, with invasions, on and off, […]
Revolt
A bear-ly believable encounter
The arrival of Strongbow was described in the Annals of Ulster as “the beginning of the woes of Ireland”.