From the files of the DIB…

BLAND, Lilian Emily (1878–1971), pioneer aviatrix, was born on 28 September 1878 in Kent, youngest child among one son and two daughters of John Humphrey Bland (1828–1919) of Fernagh, Whiteabbey, […]

It’s the milkman!

Grace Sweeney is getting ready to celebrate her 100th birthday on 15 December in her bungalow at Annagry in the Rosses in west Donegal. Born in 1909, she had a […]

‘The Che Guevara of the IRA’: the legend of ‘Big Joe’ McCann

If, before the death of Bobby Sands in 1981, there was a name most likely to survive in the popular memory of ‘the Troubles’—to join the ranks of Kevin Barry […]

Ardnacrusha Generating Station, Co. Clare

The potential for harnessing power on the River Shannon had long been recognised, with plans dating back to an 1844 report published by Sir Robert Kane (1809–90), a Dublin-born chemist. […]

‘Unrelenting deference’? Official resistance to Catholic moral panic in the mid-twentieth century

The relationship between church and state went to the heart of Irish politics and society for much of the twentieth century and is obviously of central relevance to the history […]