The British statesman, Thomas Cromwell, was beheaded on this day in 1540. It was a messy affair – the executioner was drunk (some say, because Cromwell’s enemies spiked his drink to make the execution worse) and it took three swings of the axe to remove Cromwell’s head. It was a spectacular fall from grace: Cromwell […]
ON THIS DAY, July 26th 1914, hundreds of Irish Volunteers met the Asgard at Howth and took deliverance of 900 guns and ammunition which would arm the rebels of 1916. The need to arm the Irish Volunteers had gained a fresh urgency after the Ulster Volunteer Force landed almost 25,000 rifles and between 3 and […]
The rebellion was crushed and he was captured then tried and executed for high treason against the British king George III of Great Britain Emmet’s speech to the court [The Speech from the Dock] could be regarded as the last protest of the United Irishmen: ‘ I have but one request to ask at my […]
Born in 1550, Aodh Mór Ó Néill (Hugh O’Neill) was born to the Clann Uí Néíll , the ruling noble family in Tír Eoghain. He was the second son of Feardorcha Ó Néill and grandson of Conn O’Neill, the first Earl of Tyrne. At the age of nine he became a ward of Giles Hovenden, […]
Irish Harps go back 1000 years
Orange Order parade
He made the point that Irish nationalists had no need of Marxists to whom nationalism is anathema, to educate them on anything.
He was uncle to a prominent fenian Peter O’Neill who was born two years earlier in 1832.
The Church was anathema to local loyalists and had been attacked in earlier assaults on the Short Strand in the 1920s.
For the day of what Seamus Heaney described as “the final conclave.”
June 20 marks a strange anniversary in Irish history.
Secret Catholic societies against colonialism in Ireland