#OTD in 1946 – Birth of film and stage actor, Stephen Rea (born Graham Rea) in Belfast.

31/10/2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

Stephen Rea has appeared in films such as V for Vendetta, The Butcher Boy, This Is My Father, Evelyn, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto. Rea was nominated for an Academy Award for his lead performance as Fergus in the 1992 film The Crying Game. He has had important roles in […]

#OTD in 1968 – Civil Rights March in Derry, considered by many as the start date of ‘The Troubles’.

05/10/2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

The protest movements that broke out across the western world in 1968 had captured the imagination of many people in the north of Ireland, leading to the creation of a local civil rights movement that began a series of marches and protests calling for greater equality for the Catholic/nationalist minority. The civil rights movement formed […]

#OTD in 1994 – Death of Irish patriot, Michael Flannery, in New York City.

30/09/2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

The fight of the Irish against the British was the great theme of Mr. Flannery’s life. As a boy of 14 in Ireland, he joined the Irish Volunteers and learned to fire a machine gun behind a monastery cloister. In 1970, after 43 years in the United States, he was one of the founders of […]

#OTD in 1912 – Ulster Covenant: Edward Carson, leader of Ulster Unionists, stages signing by 500,000 Ulster Protestant Unionists of “Southern League and Covenant” against Irish Home Rule.

28/09/2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

The Ulster Covenant, was signed by just under half a million Irishmen and women, mainly from Ulster, on and before 28 September 1912, in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill introduced by the British Government in the same year. Sir Edward Carson was the first person to sign the Covenant at Belfast City Hall […]

#OTD in Irish History – 15 September:

15/09/2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

1643 – Death of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork aka Great Earl of Cork, was Lord High Treasurer of the Kingdom of Ireland. Boyle is an important figure in the continuing English colonisation of Ireland (commenced by the Normans) in the 16th and 17th centuries, as he acquired large tracts of land in plantations […]

HMS Argenta – Republican Internment Prison Ship

14/09/2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

In an attempt to subvert the nationalist economic position, the Minister of Home Affairs, Dawson Bates, imposed martial law tactics to rend supremacy over both a rural and urban populous through violence, intimidation and economic sanctions. HMS Argenta (originally the American cargo ship S.S. Argenta) was a prison ship of the British Royal Navy. The […]

#OTD in Irish History – 11 September:

11/09/2018.Reading time 11 minutes.

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 and […]

#OTD in 1945 – Birth of Van Morrison “Van the Man” in Belfast.

31/08/2018.Reading time 1 minute.

The Belfast Cowboy first achieved fame with a tight R&B band Them with whom he recorded Gloria, a song that still as fresh today as in 1964. A strong claim could be made that Van Morrison is the finest composer ever produced by the Emerald Isle. His body of work ranges from glorious pop like […]

#OTD in Irish History – 31 August:

31/08/2018.Reading time 11 minutes.

In the Liturgical calendar, it is the Feast day of St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, the Apostle of Northumbria. He was the founder and first bishop of the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne in England. A Christian missionary, he is credited with restoring Christianity to Northumbria. Aidan is the anglicized form of the original Old […]

#OTD in 2013 – World-renowned poet and playwright Seamus Heaney died in the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin following a short illness, aged 74.

30/08/2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

“History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.” ―Seamus Heaney Seamus Heaney was awarded numerous prizes over the years and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He was born to a farming […]

Stair na hÉireann/History of Ireland

Tag: Northern Ireland