History Ireland

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The Lumper Potato and the Famine (1:1)

Cormac Ó Gráda The Lumper Indicted Several recent contributions to pre-famine Irish economic history have drawn attention to the apparent contrast between the abject poverty of the Irish masses and […]

The Catholic Question in the Eighteenth Century (1:1)

Thomas Bartlett Irish history without a Catholic question might seem as improbable as Irish history without the potato: all Irish history, at least from 1550 onward, can be regarded as […]

The Bruce Invasions of Ireland (1:1)

Introduction These are the terms in which a near-contemporary described the Bruces’ invasions of Ireland (1315-18). Almost every subsequent commentator has remarked upon the unexpectedness and violence of this intrusion […]

The Earliest World Maps Known in Ireland (1:1)

One the tasks of the historian is to reconstruct how people in earlier societies understood the world they lived in. Their understanding of the world determined the limits of their […]

April 16

1871 John Millington Synge, key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre and playwright, notably of The Playboy of the Western World, born in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
1947 The expression ‘Cold War’, a war waged through proxies, was coined by the US statesman and millionaire financier Bernard Baruch.
1917 After twelve years in exile, the leading Russian Bolshevik, Vladimir Illyich Lenin (47), arrived in St Petersburg after a week-long journey from Zurich in a sealed train.
1862 Sir Thomas Wyse, politician and diplomat and major player in the struggle for Catholic Emancipation, died in Athens.
1660 Sir Hans Sloane, physician and collector, whose natural history collection formed the foundation of the British Museum, was born at Killyleagh Castle, Co. Down.

The Lumper Potato and the Famine (1:1)

The Catholic Question in the Eighteenth Century (1:1)

The Bruce Invasions of Ireland (1:1)

The Earliest World Maps Known in Ireland (1:1)

Personal Histories

On this Day

April 16