The Grave of the Yellow Men

20/01/2019.Reading time 2 minutes.

It’s said that the blood that flows in all of us; every one of us in the country is blood that came from across the sea. Our identity is best understood from a maritime perspective. For centuries, Ireland has been a haven for explorers, settlers, colonialists, navigators, pirates and traders absorbing goods and people from […]

#OTD in 1973 – A car bomb exploded in Sackville Place, Dublin, and killed one person and injured 17 others.

20/01/2019.Reading time 2 minutes.

At 3:08pm, a male caller rang the telephone exchange in Exchequer Street, Dublin, with the following bomb warning: “Listen love, there is a bomb in O’Connell Street at the Bridge”. Although the call was placed from a coin box in the Dublin area, the exact location was never determined. The telephonist immediately contacted the Garda […]

The Travelling People

20/01/2019.Reading time 5 minutes.

“When I was a child we were hunted from place to place and we could never have friends to be always going to school with. The little settled children would run past our camps – they were afeard of the travellers. Other people had a sort of romantic idea about us, because of the horses […]

#OTD in 1902 – Birth of medical student and nationalist revolutionary, Kevin Barry, in Dublin.

20/01/2019.Reading time 3 minutes.

Kevin Barry was 18 years old when he was hanged in Mountjoy Jail on 1 November 1920. His death at such a young age is possibly the most poignant in Irish history. He is one of a group of IRA members executed in 1920-21 collectively known as ‘The Forgotten Ten’. Barry’s execution outraged nationalist public […]

#OTD in Irish History – 20 January:

20/01/2019.Reading time 15 minutes.

In the Liturgical Calendar, today is the Feast Day of St Manchán mac Silláin, Manchianus in Latin sources, is the name of an early Irish saint, patron of Liath Mancháin, now Lemanaghan, in Co Offaly. He is not to be confused with the scholar Manchán or Manchéne, abbot of Min Droichit (Co Offaly). There are […]

#OTD in 1785 – Richard Crosbie became the first person to make a manned flight in Ireland.

19/01/2019.Reading time 3 minutes.

A native of Baltinglass Co Wicklow, Crosbie’s brother Sir Edward Crosbie of Carlow was executed in Carlow town for his part in the United Irishmen Rising of 1798. As a pupil at Trinity College, Richard Crosbie led the notorious gang, Pinking Dindies on the rampage through the streets of Dublin. Many of them connected with […]

#OTD in 1946 – Death of politician, Pádraic Ó Máille.

19/01/2019.Reading time 3 minutes.

Ó Máille was a founder member of Sinn Féin and of the Gaelic League in Galway. He was a member of the Irish Volunteers from 1917 to 1921. He was born in Kilmilkin, in Maam Valley in Co Galway and was a farmer. He was elected as a Sinn Féin MP for Galway Connemara at […]

#OTD in 1916 – James Connolly vanished for a three-day meeting with the IRB military council where they agreed upon joint plans for an insurrection on Easter Sunday.

19/01/2019.Reading time 3 minutes.

A secret meeting between Pádraig Pearse and James Connolly held over three days from 19 January 1916, where the outcome is that Connolly commits the Irish Citizen Army to join with the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and the date for the Rising is agreed. In early January 1916, and in high anxiety that Dublin Castle would […]

#OTD in 1949 – Birth of snooker player and world champion, Dennis Taylor, in Coalisland, Co Tyrone.

19/01/2019.Reading time 2 minutes.

Dennis Taylor’s sole world championship victory in 1985 over world number one Steve Davis provided probably the most compelling moments in snooker history. In a final comprising of the best of 35 frames, Taylor lost all frames in the opening session to ultimately fall behind 8-0. A whitewash was on the cards as Davis was […]

#OTD in Irish History – 19 January:

19/01/2019.Reading time 10 minutes.

1003 – Death of Abbot, Kilian of Cologne. Kilian was a native of Ireland. In 974, he and a group of Irish missionaries, led by Minnborinus of Cologne (died 986), arrived at Cologne where they established St. Martin’s Abbey in an island on the Rhine. Minnborinus ruled as first abbot; upon his death, Kilian succeeded […]