Tag: Protestant

#OTD in 2014 – Death of loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader, Ian Paisley.

12/09/2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

The career of the Rev Ian Paisley, who has died aged 88, arced from origins as fiery preacher and street agitator, through decades when his harassment helped undermine mainstream unionist leaders who attempted compromise with nationalists. But aged 81 he won praise inside and outside Ireland and made global headlines for sharing the top post […]

Read More

#OTD in 1907 – A memorial arch is dedicated at St Stephens Green Dublin in honour of the Irish soldiers who died fighting for “King and country” in the Boer war.

19/08/2023.Reading time 6 minutes.

Five years on from the war, the Fusiliers’ Arch was unveiled in the heart of Dublin, as a testament to the actions of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in South Africa. While the war ended in a British victory, it was a bloody and costly one. In financial terms, a war that would supposedly be over […]

Read More

#OTD in 1689 – The siege of Derry finally ends as naval boats in support of Williamite forces finally break the boom intended to prevent ships from resupplying the starving Protestant masses.

28/07/2023.Reading time 1 minute.

The failure of the siege of Derry was a major strategic disaster for the Catholic forces of King James, providing William with a powerful, motivated base in Ulster. Protestant forces had suffered terribly during the siege with as many as three thousand dying of starvation and disease. The siege still has huge significance within the […]

Read More

#OTD in 1798 – Death of James Dickey, an Ulster Presbyterian barrister of the Society of the United Irishmen.

26/06/2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

Dickey was captured by the Sutherland fencibles on the Divis Mountain where he hid out. He was court-martialled and hanged at Corn Market, Belfast. Famously; before his hanging Dickey refused to wear a black hood saying to the hangman, “Sir, don’t cover my face!” According to local legend he shouted, “Don’t think gentlemen, I am […]

Read More

#OTD in 1929 – Death of historian and nationalist, Alice Stopford Green, in Dublin.

28/05/2023.Reading time 3 minutes.

Born Alice Sophia Amelia Stopford in Kells, Co Meath, she lived in London where she met the historian John Richard Green. They were married in Chester on 14 June 1877. He died in 1883. John Morley published her first historical work Henry II in 1888. In the 1890s she became interested in Irish history and […]

Read More

#OTD in 1798 – United Irish Rebellion begins in Wexford and in Leinster.

23/05/2023.Reading time 1 minute.

The short-lived, brutal 1798 Rebellion instigated by the United Irishmen commences when on the night of the 23rd May, the mail coaches leaving Dublin were seized – as a signal to those United Irishmen outside the capital that the time of the uprising had arrived. Founded in 1791, The United Irishmen had been inspired by […]

Read More

#OTD in 1848 – The tricolour national flag of Ireland was presented to the public for the first time by Thomas Francis Meagher and the Young Ireland Party, in Dublin.

15/04/2023.Reading time 1 minute.

In 1848, Thomas Meagher and William Smith O’Brien went to France to study revolutionary events, and returned to Ireland with the new Flag of Ireland, a tricolour of green, white and orange made and given to them by French women sympathetic to the Irish cause. The acquisition of the flag is commemorated at the 1848 […]

Read More

#OTD in 1778 – Robert Emmet, one of Ireland’s most famous revolutionaries, is born in Dublin.

04/03/2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

O! BREATHE not his name! let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid; Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed, As the night dew that falls on the grave o’er his head. But the night dew that falls, though in silence it weeps, Shall brighten with […]

Read More

#OTD in 1978 – La Mon Restaurant Bombing | Twelve people, all Protestant civilians, were killed and 23 seriously injured when an incendiary bomb exploded at the restaurant of the La Mon House Hotel, Gransha, near Belfast.

17/02/2023.Reading time 11 minutes.

The La Mon restaurant bombing was an incendiary bomb attack by the IRA on 17 February 1978 that is widely considered to have been one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. It took place at the La Mon House hotel and restaurant near Belfast. The IRA left a large incendiary bomb, containing a napalm-like […]

Read More

#OTD in 1896 – Birth of stage and film actor, Arthur Shields (younger brother of Barry Fitzgerald), in Portobello, Co Dublin.

15/02/2023.Reading time 9 minutes.

While Sean Connolly claimed the unfortunate title of being the first rebel fatality, others were luckier and escaped from Easter Week, 1916 with their lives. For Arthur Shields, his role in the Rising was to become merely an interesting titbit in what was a fascinating career as an actor at home and in the US. […]

Read More