Drogheda was one of the best-fortified towns in Ireland. The main part of the town was north of the River Boyne, with a smaller district to the south. The two districts were connected by a drawbridge across the river. The town was protected by a circuit of walls four to six feet wide and twenty […]
1649 – Siege of Drogheda ends | The first siege occurred during the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when Phelim O’Neill and the insurgents failed to take the town. The second more famous siege happened in 1649 during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, when the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell took the town by storm […]
Red Hugh O’Donnell (Aodh Ruaidh Uí Dhomhnaill) is one of the most famous heroes of Ireland. He was viewed as the fulfilment of an old prophecy, and was imprisoned as a boy by the English who saw him as a threat. He escaped from Dublin Castle in 1591, in company with the sons of the […]
Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa was born in a small village called Reenascreena near Rosscarbery, Co Cork. He was the son of a tenant farmer, Denis O’Donovan and his wife Nellie O’Driscoll. While a young boy, the failure of the main food crop of the Irish population which was the potato, in successive years between 1845 and […]
The Battle of Connor was fought on 10 September 1315, in the townland of Tannybrake just over a mile north of what is now the modern village of Connor, Co Antrim. It was part of the Bruce campaign in Ireland. Edward Bruce landed in Larne, in modern-day Co Antrim, on 26 May 1315. In early […]
In the early 20th century, a Knocker-upper’s job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time, a profession that started in England and Ireland during the Industrial Revolution, before alarm clocks were affordable or reliable. Mary Smith earned six pence a week shooting a pea into the windows of the […]
Tom Kettle was a journalist, barrister, writer, poet, soldier, economist and Home Rule politician. As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for East Tyrone from 1906 to 1910 at Westminster. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, then on the outbreak of World War I in 1914 enlisted […]
To this day, all over Ireland the landscape bears mute testimony to the events that occurred in the horrific period from 1845–1852. Starvation graveyards offer silent tribute to the millions of Irish men, women, and children buried in unmarked mass graves. Thriving villages were replaced by heaps of moss-covered stones. Although historians have not agreed […]
In the Liturgical calendar, this is the feast day of St Ciarán of Clonmacnoise. He was one of the early Irish monastic saints and Irish bishop. He is sometimes called Ciarán the Younger to distinguish him from Saint Ciarán of Saighir. He was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. He dies on this date […]
World Suicide Prevention Day – #WSPD 1315 – Battle of Connor: Major victory for Edward the Bruce in his invasion of Ulster. 1602 – “Red” Hugh O’Donnell dies in Simancas, Spain; evidence suggests he was poisoned by an English spy. 1649 – Oliver Cromwell seizes Drogheda. 1763 – The Freeman’s Journal is founded in Dublin […]
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