On the night of 14 November 1920, during the War of Independence, 28-year-old Fr. Michael Griffin, was taken from his home – by men suspected to be Black and Tans – and was never seen again. On 20 November, his body was found in an unmarked grave in a bog at Cloghscoltia near Barna; he […]
Catherine McAuley was born in Dublin in 1778. In 1824 she used her inheritance from an Irish couple she had served for twenty years to build a large House of Mercy where she and other lay women would shelter homeless women, reach out to the sick and dying and educate poor girls. The House on […]
Pádraig Mac Piarais (Padraig Pearse) was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist, republican political activist and revolutionary; he who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. Following his execution along with fifteen others, Pearse came to be seen by many as the embodiment of the rebellion. Pádraig, his brother Willie, […]
Eoghan Ruadh Ó Neill was born around 1580, the son of Art Ó Neill and a daughter of Hugh Conallach O’Reilly of Breifne. He had had least 8 brothers and sisters and many cousins and wider family, all connected through marriage to many of the leading native Irish families of Ulster. The Plantation of Ulster […]
The Traditional Story Tested Against the Evidence. “The Gunpowder Plot” of 1605 – known at the time as the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason -was billed as a failed assassination plot against Protestant King James I of England by a group of English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The official story was that […]
ON THIS DAY: 3 NOVEMBER 1845: Irish Delegation visited LORD Heytesbury to act immediately and stop the export of food from Ireland because millions were starving. He declined. On that date, a delegation of concerned and alarmed Irishmen including Daniel O’Connell, Mayor O’Sullivan of Dublin and twenty others visited Britain’s Viceroy in Ireland, Lord Heytesbury. […]
Eileen Quinn was 24 years old, seven months pregnant, and nursing her nine-month old child outside her farmhouse at Kiltartan when she was shot dead as two lorry loads of an Auxiliary division of the Royal Irish Constabulary passed her home. Eileen Quinn was murdered by British Crown Forces 99 years ago; shot from a military lorry […]
Kevin Gerard Barry was the first Irish republican to be executed by the British since the leaders of the Easter Rising. He was a 18-year-old medical student who had won a merit-based scholarship given annually by Dublin Corporation, which allowed him to become a student of medicine at UCD. Born on Fleet Street, Dublin, the […]
The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time. The bridge extends between Ortaköy (in Europe) and Beylerbeyi (in Asia). Upon its completion in 1973, the Bosphorus Bridge had the fourth-longest suspension bridge span in the world, and the longest outside the […]
Due to the massive imbalance in their demographics, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party announced the decision to relax the one-child policy. Under the new policy, families could have two children if one parent, rather than both parents, was an only child. Apart from the violence endured by many Chinese women who were […]
United Nations votes to expel the Chinese Nationalist ruled Taiwan and admit the Communist People’s Republic of China #gript Photo: Chinese deputy foreign minister Qiao Guanhua (L) and Huang Hua (R), laugh at the news that the UN General Assembly had passed Resolution 2758, recognising Chinese mainland as the only Chinese representative in the UN, […]
“If I die I know the fruit will exceed the cost a thousand fold. The thought of it makes me happy. I thank God for it. Ah, Cathal, the pain of Easter week is properly dead at last.” Terence MacSwiney wrote these words in a letter to Cathal Brugha on September 30, 1920, the 39th […]