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Captain Flora Sandes: ‘the Serbian Joan of Arc’

Flora Sandes (1876–1956) fought with the Serbian army during the Great War, and was awarded the country’s highest military honour. To the soldiers of Serbia she was nashi Engleskinja—‘our Englishwoman’. […]

The Captain and the Fenians: William Henry O’Shea and the IRB

When Charles Stewart Parnell’s coffin was drawn through the streets of Dublin on Sunday 11 October 1891, the carriages immediately following the hearse were occupied, appropriately, by members of his […]

A father’s tribute? The war trophies of Lieutenant Nevill Coghill VC

In 1879 Sir John Joscelyn Coghill of Drumcondra visited the Museum of Science and Art in Dublin (now the National Museum of Ireland) to donate a number of ethnographic items […]

The Great Famine general election of 1847

The ultimate responsibility for failure to cope effectively with the disaster of the Famine lay with the Westminster parliament, but we should remember that Ireland in 1847 returned 105 MPs […]

‘Forced from this world’: massacre on the Mary Russell

On 24 June 1828, as the schooner Mary Stubbs and the brig Mary Russell approached Cork Harbour, a man suddenly jumped overboard from the Mary Stubbs and swam towards nearby […]

September 12

1980 The Republic of Ireland and the People’s Republic of China exchanged ambassadors for the first time, with John Campbell taking up his post in Peking and Madame Gong Pusheng taking up residence in Dublin.
1969 The Cameron Commission report placed the blame for clashes between loyalists and supporters of NICRA and People’s Democracy over the previous year on the discriminatory policies of the Stormont regime and the RUC.
1912 Father Matthew Russell (78), founder-editor of Catholic Ireland (later Irish Monthly) from 1873, died.
1867 The Irish Constabulary was granted the prefix ‘Royal’—Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)—in recognition of its role in suppressing the Fenian Rising in March of that year.
1814 Major-General Robert Ross, from Rostrevor, Co. Down, who famously helped himself to President Madison’s dinner before torching the White House some weeks earlier, was killed in a skirmish with American militia at North Point.
1997 President Mary Robinson, approaching the end of her one term in office, resigned to take up the role of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Captain Flora Sandes: ‘the Serbian Joan of Arc’

The Captain and the Fenians: William Henry O’Shea and the IRB

A father’s tribute? The war trophies of Lieutenant Nevill Coghill VC

The Great Famine general election of 1847

‘Forced from this world’: massacre on the Mary Russell

Personal Histories

On this Day

September 12