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A century of ‘cinematographing Ireland’

One hundred years ago, on the night of Saturday 13 August 1910, three passengers travelling from New York disembarked from the White Star Line’s steamer Baltic at what was then […]

From ethics to economics:F.Y. Edgeworth, 1845–1926

Family and early years Ysidro Francis Edgeworth’s grandfather, Richard, was a utilitarian, following the philosopher Bentham in believing that sensory pleasure and pain are everything and that morally correct […]

The luck of Andrew J. Byrne

One night in summer 1865, Andrew Byrne returned to his hotel room in New York a little the worse for wear after a night of drinking with friends. Drowsy with […]

Clock Gate, Youghal, Co. Cork

Youghal, Co. Cork, was one of the most significant maritime centres of medieval Ireland, commanding important trading routes to northern and western Europe. Like other urban centres of the time, […]

‘A most ingenious mechanic’:Ireland’s first airman

Richard Crosbie organised three manned balloon flights in Dublin in 1785, and made a final flight from Limerick in 1786. He is rightly celebrated as Ireland’s first aeronaut, and today […]

April 18

1952 Edmund O’Brien (71), County Limerick-born author and yachtsman who in 1923 circumnavigated the globe in his ketch Saoirse, died.
1870 Robert Noonan, house-painter, sign-writer and author, notably of The ragged-trousered philanthropists (1914), born Robert Croker, the illegitimate son of an RIC officer, at 37 Wexford Street, Dublin.
1949 Under the terms of the Republic of Ireland Act (December 1948), designed by John A. Costello’s coalition government to ‘take the gun out of Irish politics’, Ireland formally left the Commonwealth and became a republic.
1918 The Mansion House conference, called by the lord mayor of Dublin, Laurence O’Neill, on the day the Military Service Bill became law, was attended by all shades of nationalist opinion. An anti-conscription pledge, drafted by Éamon de Valera, was issued.
1870 Robert Tressell, nom de plume of Robert Croker, latterly Robert Noonan, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (first unabridged edition published in 1955), was born in Dublin, the illegitimate son of RIC inspector and later magistrate Sir Samuel Croker.
2019 The journalist Lyra McKee (29) was shot dead by a New IRA gunman who opened fire on PSNI officers monitoring disturbances in Derry’s Creggan area. President Michael D. Higgins and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar attended her funeral.

A century of ‘cinematographing Ireland’

From ethics to economics:F.Y. Edgeworth, 1845–1926

The luck of Andrew J. Byrne

Clock Gate, Youghal, Co. Cork

‘A most ingenious mechanic’:Ireland’s first airman

Personal Histories

On this Day

April 18