#OTD in 1968 – Death of Irish language educator, Margaret Mary Pearse, in Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Margaret Mary Pearse was a Fianna Fáil politician and teacher. She helped to found St Enda’s School with her brothers Patrick and Willie. Following the executions of her brothers in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, Margaret continued to run St Enda’s until 1933. She was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil […]

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#OTD in 1928 – The last active Fenian, John Devoy, dies in Atlantic City, NJ.

Fenian, John Devoy, whom the London Times called ‘the most dangerous enemy of this country Ireland has produced since Wolfe Tone’. John Devoy was born in Kill, Co Kildare, on the 3 September 1842. He worked for a short time as a clerk before joining the Fenian organisation. In 1861 Devoy travelled to France where […]

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#OTD in 1903 – Pádraig Pearse arrives in Ros Muc, Co Galway and takes up residence at his cottage in Inbhear.

Pádraig Pearse’s former holiday home in Ros Muc, Co Galway, was restored by Ó Conghaile and then again by Criostóir Mac Aonghusa, by 1943 Pearse’s sisters Senator Margaret Pearse and Mary Brigid Pearse handed the cottage to the State. A new visitor centre, Teach an Phiarsaigh, next to Pearse’s Cottage provides an introduction to the […]

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#OTD in Irish History | 13 September:

908 – Cormac mac Cuilennáin, King of Mhumhain (Munster) and Bishop, died in battle with the forces of Laighin (Leinster) when his neck was broken after he had fallen from his horse. He was regarded as a saintly figure after his death, and his shrine at Castledermot, Co Kildare, was said to be the site […]

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#OTD in 1831 – Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa is born in Rosscarbery, Co Cork.

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 […]

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#OTD in 1908 – Poet, educator and eventual Easter Rising leader, Pádraig Pearse, opens St. Enda’s school for boys (Scoil Eanna).

“I dwell on the importance of the personal element in education. I would have every child not merely a unit in a school attendance, but in some intimate personal way the pupil of a teacher, or to use more expressive words, the disciple of a master … the main objective in education is to help […]

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#OTD in Irish History | 8 September:

In the Liturgical calendar, today is the Feast day of St. Disbode, a 7th century Irish missionary. According to German legend, the Irish saint founded the German wine industry when wine started pouring from his pilgrim’s staff. 1783 – A second convention of Dungannon – a gathering of Volunteers from Ulster – is held and […]

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#OTD in 1913 – Also known as “The Great Dublin Lockout”, the Dublin Transport Strike, led by Jim Larkin and James Connolly, begins.

The Great Dublin Lockout starts and one of the most bitter and divisive labour disputes in Irish history will run until February 1914 when starving workers are forced back to work. Five years previously, in 1908, at a time when Irish labourers were working in atrocious conditions, Union organiser Big Jim Larkin founded the Irish […]

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#OTD in 1915 – Nationalist Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa is buried in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin.

“WHATEVER HIS CRIME, THERE WAS A GREATER CRIMINAL THAN HE – THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT WHO MADE HIM WHAT HE WAS.” On his deathbed at age 83, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa sent for his old friends, John Devoy and Richard O’Sullivan Burke. He died a tired old warrior on 29 June 1915 in St Vincent’s Hospital on […]

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#OTD in 1914 – Irish Volunteers during the Howth Gun Running.

The plan was first conceived in April 1914, in response to the Curragh incident on 20 March. Many Irish believed that the British army could not be relied on to enforce Home Rule when it was enacted, and many Irish Volunteers also felt that availability of arms would aid recruitment. At a lunch attended by […]

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