“The town of Balbriggan they’ve burned to the ground While bullets Like hailstones were whizzing around; And women left homeless by this evil clan. They’ve waged war on the children, the bold Black and Tan.” (From the ‘Bold Black and Tans, Irish Songs of Resistance, Galvin, 1950) The sack of the north Dublin town […]
Robert Emmett was an Irish Republican and patriot, orator and rebel leader. After leading an abortive rebellion in Dublin against British rule in 1803 he was captured then tried and executed for high treason against the British king George III of Great Britain. When asked if he had any thing to say in response to […]
Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla urged Mexicans to rise up against the Spanish-born ruling class. He made the first cry for independence. After a moving speech in the Mexican town of Dolores, Hidalgo took up the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a Roman Catholic image of the Virgin Mary as she appears to Juan […]
Thomas Davis was an Irish writer who was the chief organiser of the Young Ireland movement, who was born in Mallow to a Welsh father and an Irish mother. Through his mother he was descended from the Gaelic noble family of O’Sullivan Beare. His father died one month after his birth and his family moved […]
The Grand Armee of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte entered Moscow and captured it on this day, September 14th, 1812. It was the culmination of the biggest – and ultimately fatal – mistake of Napoleon’s brilliant career. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was a major miscalculation. At the time of the invasion, he dominated Europe, with only […]
ON THIS DAY: 12TH SEPTEMBER 1919 Dáil Éireann was declared illegal by the British Parliament when Sinn Féin TDs refused to sit in Westminister and set up their own parliament in Dublin, Dáil Éireann The British authorities called it a ‘dangerous assembly, because of this the first Dáil had to meet in secret at different […]
Millions either died or emigrated as a result of the catastrophic failures of the authorities
These laws sowed the seed for further discontent and rebellion.
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, […]
The Zulus never had an independent country again.