The Legion of Mary, which remains the largest lay organisation in the Roman Catholic Church, was founded in Dublin on this day, September 7th, 1921, by Frank Duff, and celebrates 99 years in existence today. Almost a century after it was founded in a small room on Francis Street, Dublin, the Legion of Mary has […]
After the Treaty of Limerick and the Battle of the Boyne, the Irish and English parliaments brought in draconian measures to crush the Catholic population. Even though Catholics had retained ownership of a mere 22% of the land which was further reduced to 14%, the penal laws attempted to ensure that no Irish Catholic would […]
Directed by Christopher Nolan. Script by Christopher Nolan. Starring John David Washington; Robert Pattinson; Elizabeth Debicki; Dimple Kapadia; Michael Caine; Kenneth Branagh. Running time 150 minutes. Rotten Tomatoes 76%. You thought diving into the concept of layered dreams was hard to follow in Christopher Nolan’s Inception? Or perhaps it was the apparently plausible yet highly theoretical physics of Interstellar that cooked your bacon. Well, none of these […]
Call me old fashioned, but I preferred the old Dukes of Hazzard, which is what a clever executive would call whatever this show ends up being: Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, having resettled in California, on Wednesday unveiled new Hollywood careers. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have founded a yet-to-be-named production company and […]
Jessica Krug, is her name, and she’s spent basically her whole adult life pretending to be a black woman when, in fact, she was just, well, overly fond of the old sun-beds. Here’s her apology, which to be honest, is much more entertaining than the story itself: To an escalating degree over my adult life, […]
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 […]
The tragic and unjust death of George Floyd reignited two discussions that had long been had right the way across the Western World. The first was how to deal with the supposed ‘systemic’ racism that existed within our society? And the second – and what some people see as the root of all evil in […]
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, […]
The Dublin lock-out began led by Jim Larkin. William Martin Murphy dismissed hundreds of workers who he suspected of membership of the ITGWU. William Martin Murphy, a major employer at the time, was chairman of the Dublin United Tramway Company, owned Clery’s department store, and the Imperial Hotel and controlled the Irish Independent, Evening Herald, […]
Several interesting things happened on August 25th. Most prominently, the date saw the liberation of Paris by the Allies in 1944. But that tale pales into insignificance beside the story of Hugh Glass and the Grizzly Bear. Hugh Glass was an American frontiersman, who lived most of his life in that lawless wilderness of the […]
Mickey Devine was the last man to die on the hunger strike started by Bobby Sands in early March. As a young man Bloody Sunday had a deep effect on him, he was there with this brother-in-law who remembered Mickey rhetorically ask “How can you sit back and watch while your own Derrymen are shot […]