According to the Sinn Féin Rebellion handbook (pg. 259), she tended to ‘wounded officers and men’ during the battle on Mount Street Bridge. ‘Miss Nolan went calmly through a hail of bullets and carried water and other comforts to the wounded men,’ the publication notes. Her story made it across the Atlantic, where a Chicago […]
John Philip Holland emigrated to the US in 1873. Holland’s first submarine submission was rejected by the Navy Secretary as ‘a fantastic scheme of a civilian landsman’. The navy eventually relented and purchased it’s first submarine from Holland’s company in 1900 for $150,000. Holland also had a strong interest in aviation writing a paper in […]
1582 – Pope Gregory XIII announces the new Gregorian calendar, replacing the Julian calendar. 1692 – The Treaty of Limerick is ratified by William of Orange. 1721 – Birth of physician and politician, John McKinly, in Ireland (Ulster). He emigrated to Wilmington, Delaware in 1742 and was a veteran of the French and Indian War. […]
Jerome Connor was born in Coumduff, Annascaul, Co Kerry. In 1888, he emigrated to Holyoke, Massachusetts. His father was a stonemason, which led to Connor’s jobs in New York as a sign painter, stonecutter, bronze founder and machinist. Inspired by his father’s work and his own experience, Connor used to steal his father’s chisels as a child […]
On the day of her death, she gave a party to celebrate her 48th birthday; one of those present was the priest who had christened her. He pointed out that it was in fact her 47th birthday – she had been born in 1666, not 1665 as she had always supposed. On hearing this she […]
Thirty-five children and one adult die in a Cavan orphanage fire at St. Joseph’s Orphanage Industrial School run by the enclosed order of Poor Clare nuns. Many of the children were orphans, others were committed either because they were born out-of-wedlock or as in the case of two unfortunates allegedly committed because the local Roman […]
1317 – Bruce’s army marches south and reaches Castleknock, within sight of Dublin. The mayor of Dublin has imprisoned the Earl of Ulster, who is suspected of being sympathetic to Bruce. The citizens of Dublin destroy some of the northern and western suburbs, to prevent Bruce from using them as a base – to the […]
Peat lands, more usually referred to as bogs, cover more than 15 per cent of Ireland and are some of the largest areas of peat in Europe. These large areas of decayed vegetation, laid down over many centuries, were once even more common in Ireland, but a thousand years of cutting peat to use as […]
A school teacher by profession, he taught on Arranmore Island before leaving for Scotland to assist migrant labourers in their strike for improved pay and conditions. Returning to Ireland, he became involved in the Republican Movement and played an active part in the War of Independence. O’Donnell opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and in January 1922 […]
In the north of Ireland there were continual breaches of the Truce by ‘unauthorised loyalist paramilitary forces’. The predominantly Protestant, Unionists government supported polices which discriminated against Catholics in which, along with violence against Catholics, led many to suggest the presence of an agenda by an Anglo-ascendancy to drive those of indigenous Irish descent out […]