While the Republic of Ireland – Italy game is going on, two members of the Loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force walk into The Heights Bar in Loughinisland, Co Down with assault rifles and kill six Catholics who are watching the game. One of the dead was 87-year-old Barney Green, the oldest victim of the Troubles. No […]
1264 – The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castledermot in Co Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature. 1329 – The Bishop of Ossory is charged with fomenting feuds among the magnates; he flees to England and then, when summoned before the king, he flees to Rome. The king (Edward III, aged […]
Nora Connolly was born in Edinburgh in 1893. She was the second daughter of James Connolly, and the family moved to Dublin having lived for a time in the United States and Belfast. Her father was an organiser for the Dublin Socialist club and the family lived in poverty for much of her childhood. For […]
1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Rebels capture Tinahely, Co Wicklow and burn the town. Tinahely is unusual in that there is no Church in the village. Most of the village dates from the early part of the 19th century as it was rebuilt by Lord Fitzwilliam after it was burnt during the 1798 rebellion. The […]
No musical instrument has ever had to carry so much baggage, surely, as the Irish harp. It has been the symbol both of Ireland under English rule and of the Irish Free State. Unadorned, on a green background, it was a rebel flag in 1916. While its earliest origins are lost, the Irish harp has […]
In the Liturgical calendar, today is the Feast day of St. Colman McRoi, a sixth-century abbot in Dublin. Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce during which the events of his novel Ulysses (which is set on 16 June 1904) are relived. It is observed annually on 16 […]
Jim Larkin, a revolutionary socialist, dominated the Irish Trade Union movement. G. B. Shaw once described him as ‘the greatest Irishman since Parnell’. Today a statue of “Big Jim” stands on O’Connell Street in Dublin. The inscription on the front of the monument is an extract in French, Irish and English from one of his […]
1555 – After Henry VIII suppresses the Chapter of St Patrick’s Cathedral it is restored on this date. 1698 – Count George de Browne, governor of Livonia, Latvia, and field marshal in the Russian army, is born in Camas, Co Limerick. 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: The Rebel’s main division marches to Mountpleasant. 1828 – […]
Caomhan is the patron saint of Inisheer (Inis Oírr), the smallest of the Aran Islands. Even though he is “by far the most celebrated of all the saints of the Aran Islands”, little is known about him. He is said to have been a disciple of Saint Enda of Aran. He is also said to […]
Blues guitarist legend, Rory Gallagher, died in a London hospital from complications following a liver transplant at the age of 47. Rory’s family moved to Cork where he discovered blues music on American Forces Radio. By the time he was twenty-one, he was recognised as one of the finest guitarists in the world. In 1971, […]
