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#OTD in 1613 – A charter incorporates Derry as the city of ‘Londonderry’ and creates the new county of ‘Londonderry’.
Despite the official name, the city is more usually known as simply Derry, which is an anglicisation of the old Irish Daire, which in modern Irish is spelt Doire, and translates as ‘oak-grove/oak-wood’. The name derives from the settlement’s earliest references, Daire Calgaich (‘oak-grove of Calgach’). The name was changed from Derry in 1613 during the Plantation of Ulster to reflect the…
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stairnaheireann · 3 hours
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#OTD in 1955 – Birth of actor, Brendan Gleeson, in Dublin.
“I tend to look for the good in bad people and the bad in good people, to make them human. ‘Cause I don’t think that people generally are that black and white. Maybe in movie-land they can be… but that isn’t necessarily all there is.” –Brendan Gleeson He is the recipient of three IFTA Awards, two BIFA’s, and a Primetime Emmy Award and has been nominated twice for a BAFTA Award, five times for a…
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stairnaheireann · 7 hours
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#OTD in 1873 – Birth of Blasket Island storyteller, Peig Sayers, in Dunquin, Co Kerry.
Born Máiréad Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, Dunquinn, Co Kerry, the youngest child of the family. She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret “Peig” Brosnan, from Castleisland. Her father Tomás Sayers was a renowned storyteller who passed on many of his tales to Peig. At age 12, she was taken out of school and went to work as a servant for the Curran family in the nearby town of Dingle,…
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stairnaheireann · 9 hours
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#OTD in Irish History | 29 March:
1613 – A charter incorporates Derry as the city of ‘Londonderry’ and creates the new county of ‘Londonderry’. Despite the official name, the city is more usually known as simply Derry, which is an anglicisation of the old Irish Daire, which in modern Irish is spelt Doire, and translates as ‘oak-grove/oak-wood’. The name derives from the settlement’s earliest references, Daire Calgaich (‘oak-grove…
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stairnaheireann · 21 hours
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#OTD in 1892 – Birth of Tom Maguire, an Irish republican who held the rank of Commandant-General in the Western Command of the IRA and led the South Mayo flying column.
Tom Maguire was an Irish republican who held the rank of commandant-general in the Western Command of the IRA and led the South Mayo flying column.   On 18 September 1920, the Mayo Brigade was reorganised, it was split up into four separate brigades. Tom Maguire was appointed commander of the South Mayo one.   On 3 May 1921, Maguire led an ambush on an RIC patrol in Tourmakeady, Co Mayo,…
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stairnaheireann · 1 day
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#OTD in 1916 – Roger Casement leaves Munich for the last time and meets Robert Monteith in Berlin and tells him that he had decided not to take the men to Ireland.
He has meetings with both the Admiralty and the General Staff to try to get his plan accepted. Casements feels that the Germans tried to blackmail him, by saying unless he took all the men to Ireland with the 20,000 rifles, then the rifles would not go either and further the Irish-Americans would be told that it was Casement’s fault that the guns were not going. Casement felt that whichever…
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stairnaheireann · 1 day
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#OTD in 1881 – Birth of Martin John Sheridan. He was 'one of the greatest athletes [the United States] has ever known' according to his obituary in the New York Times.
Martin John Sheridan was ‘one of the greatest athletes the United States has ever known’ according to his obituary in the New York Times. He was born in Bohola, Co Mayo, and died in St Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, New York, the day before his 37th birthday, a very early casualty of the 1918 flu pandemic. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York. He was part of a group of…
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stairnaheireann · 1 day
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#OTD in 1879 – Birth of Irish patriot and Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, in Co Cork.
Terence Joseph MacSwiney was a playwright, author and politician. He was elected as Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork during the Irish War of Independence in 1920 after the murder of his friend Tomás Mac Curtain, the Lord Mayor of Cork on 20 March 1920. Like Tomás Mac Curtain, he had been a member of the Irish Volunteers and an enthusiast for the Irish language. He had also been imprisoned following…
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stairnaheireann · 1 day
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#OTD in Irish History | 28 March:
1646 – Peace between the confederates and James Butler, the Marquis of Ormond and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, leads to a split within the confederation, i.e. between confederates and royalists. 1719 – John Cairnes, son of David Cairnes, former MP for the city of Derry, was killed in a duel in Newcastle, England. 1772 – An Act to repress Steelboy disturbances in five Ulster counties was passed.…
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stairnaheireann · 2 days
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#OTD in 1650 – Kilkenny surrendered to Oliver Cromwell.
The success of Oliver Cromwell’s Irish campaign during the autumn of 1649 caused further divisions in the Marquis of Ormond’s Royalist-Confederate coalition. With the defeat of British and Scottish forces in Ulster and the defection of most of Lord Inchiquin’s Protestant troops to the Parliamentarians, Ormond was obliged to rely increasingly upon Catholic support. Early in December 1649, the…
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stairnaheireann · 2 days
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#OTD in 1915 – Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of the disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
Mary Mallon was born in 1869 in Cookstown, Co Tyrone. She emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1884. An Irish immigrant cook, Mallon became the focus of one of the best-known episodes in the history of communicable disease when U.S. health officials identified her as a healthy carrier of the organism causing typhoid fever. Mallon, who refused to acknowledge her role in spreading the…
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stairnaheireann · 2 days
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#OTD in 1872 – Birth of Irish patriot, Mary MacSwiney (Maire Nic Shuibhne), in London.
Mary MacSwiney (Máire Nic Suibhne) was born in London to an Irish father and English mother. The family returned to Cork when she was six and she was educated at St. Angela’s Ursuline convent school. She obtained a teaching diploma at Cambridge University and taught at schools in England before returning to Cork on the death of her mother in 1904 to care for younger members of the family. She…
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stairnaheireann · 2 days
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#OTD in 1876 – The Molly Maguires | The murder trial of Edward Kelly, a member of the militant Irish labour group The Molly Maguires, began in Pennsylvania.
In total, twenty members of the group were found guilty of murder and executed. While the Molly’s were responsible for a large number of violent incidents, a number of those executed were likely innocent. The Dubliners were responsible for reminding us of this group with a stirring rendition of The Molly Maguires a song composed by Phil Coulter and Bill Martin. Image | Historical Marker…
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stairnaheireann · 2 days
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#OTD in Irish History | 27 March:
In the Liturgical calendar, it is the Feast Day of St Suairlech, Bishop of Fore, Co Westmeath. 1174 – Death of St Gelasius of Armagh (meaning ‘servant of Jesus’). He was the learned abbot of Derry for sixteen years and consecrated bishop of Armagh c. 1138, when Saint Malachy resigned and served as primate of Ireland until 1174. 1599 – Robert Devereux became Lieutenant-General of Ireland. 1625 –…
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stairnaheireann · 3 days
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#OTD in 1990 – 'My Left Foot' wins two Oscars.
At the 62nd Academy Awards, My Left Foot (1989) received 5 nominations (including Best Picture) with Day-Lewis and Fricker winning Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively. My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown, also known simply as My Left Foot, is a 1989 Irish biographical comedy-drama film directed by Jim Sheridan adapted by Sheridan and Shane Connaughton from the 1954 memoir of…
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stairnaheireann · 3 days
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#OTD in 1948 – Death of Gearóid O’Sullivan. He had the honour of raising the Tricolour over the GPO as fighting raged the streets of Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising.
Gearóid O’Sullivan, then 25, was the youngest IRB officer fighting in the GPO (three months younger than his cousin Michael Collins). He had been personally chosen by leader Seán Mac Diarmada to serve as his aide-de-camp. He was an Irish teacher, Irish language scholar, army officer, barrister and Sinn Féin and Fine Gael politician. Following the Rising, he was interned in Frongoch in Wales with…
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stairnaheireann · 3 days
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#OTD in 1922 – An IRA anti-treaty army convention announced it would no longer accept the authority of Free State Minister for Defence Richard Mulcahy.
Further movement to Civil War: An IRA convention was held in the Mansion House in defiance of a Dáil Éireann 15th March 1922 decree, despite the Dáil prohibiting it. Richard Mulcahy, the new Minister of Defence having succeeded the anti-Treaty Cathal Brugha, promised that the IRA would remain loyal to the government. However, the army had never been in control of the civil authorities, and…
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