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 […]
Charles the Great, known to history as Charlemagne, was crowned King of the Franks on this day, October 9th, 768AD. As King, he would go on, over the next 32 years, to unite most of Europe, and found the Holy Roman Empire. Successive wars brought the Kingdom of Lombardy (modern Italy) under his control, and […]
Michael Schumacher is widely regarded as one of the two or three greatest – if not THE greatest – drivers ever to have lived. But when he joined the legendary Ferrari Formula One team in 1996, he surely did not imagine that it would take five years for him to win a championship with them. […]
October 7th, 1571: The Ottoman Empire has been expanding westwards for over a century. In 1453, over a hundred years earlier, it had conquered Constantinople, and destroyed the Byzantine Empire. Now, the most powerful military force in the world, it threatens the very heart of Christian Europe. Across the continent, children are warned about the […]
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 […]
On October 5th, 1968 a Civil Rights march took place in Derry protesting gerrymandering and discrimination against the minority Catholic population. The march, organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and the Derry Housing Action Committee, had been banned by the authorities in Stormont but it was decided to go ahead in defiance. At the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
It’s the most famous dam in the world, and it was officially dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt on this day, September 30th, 1935. Originally, it was simply called “the Boulder dam”, after the Boulder Canyon, in which it was built. It was renamed for President Herbert Hoover in 1947. The Dam was built to provide […]
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 […]
Father of, well, many of us.