Fuair siad bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann. Kevin Lynch was a republican hunger striker and member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) from Park near Dungiven, Co Derry. The Dungiven Hurling team was renamed Kevin Lynch’s Hurling Club in his honour after his death. Lynch’s older brother, Frank, was an amateur boxer and he also […]
Fuair siad bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann! The death of Francis Hughes at the age of 25 after a 59 day hunger strike in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. Hughes was such an effective guerrilla fighter that British authorities at one stage named him as the most wanted man in the north of Ireland. […]
John Mitchel was born in Camnish, near Dungiven, Co Derry. He became a leading Member of both Young Ireland and the Irish Confederation. He also became a public voice for the Southern American viewpoint in the United States in the 1850s and 1860s before ending up elected to the British House of Commons, only to […]
The second republican to join the H-Block hunger-strike for political status – a fortnight after Bobby Sands – was twenty-five-year-old Francis Hughes, from Bellaghy in South Derry.
Coulter’s father, also called Phil, encouraged music in the house. He played the fiddle whilst his wife played the upright piano. The younger Coulter recalls this piano, made by Challen, as ‘the most important piece of furniture in the house’. ‘I always stayed away from the fiddle, having inflicted enough pain on my family with […]
John Mitchel was one of the great propagandists of his day, although the causes he espoused often placed him on the wrong side, he was loved and loathed in equal measure. He was one of the few Irishmen to have incurred the wrath of the British government and of the Federal administration of the USA. […]
The cause of the American Revolution was frequently short of men, commonly short of arms and other military supplies, and almost always deprived of cash. Wars–especially wars against great powers such as the United Kingdom–are expensive. Oliver Pollock, an Irish merchant based in Spanish-controlled New Orleans, helped the nascent American government fund its war efforts. […]
1649 – King Charles I is beheaded for treason. He was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. When Richard Brandon, Executioner for the City of London refused involvement in the execution, emissaries were sent to Ireland, Scotland and Wales in search of a volunteer. There […]
In the Liturgical Calendar, today is All Saints’ Day. 1625 – Birth of Archbishop of Armagh, St. Oliver Plunkett, near Oldcastle, Co Meath, who was canonised in 1975. 1688 – William III of Orange sets a second time from Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands to liberate England, Scotland and Ireland from the tyrannical King James II […]
In what was one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles, a night on the eve of Halloween in 1993, UDA gunmen entered the Rising Sun Bar in Greysteel, Co Derry (an Irish Catholic, nationalist area) and shot dead seven people and wounding thirteen. Another man died later from his injuries. Before opening fire, one […]
