History Ireland

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ON THIS DAY

BY AODHÁN CREALEY JULY 11/1792 The Belfast Harp Festival, a three-day event, opened in the Exchange Rooms. Perhaps the first attempt in Ireland to actively rejuvenate Gaelic culture occurred in […]

The Reids of Ramelton, Jamaica, Glasgow and Belfast

By Dermot Scott It may seem strange that there should have been a connection in the early nineteenth century between Ramelton, a small provincial town in north-west Ireland, and a […]

The wreck of HMS Wasp, 1884

By Tom Sigafoos On 22 September 1884, HMS Wasp, a Banterer-class gunboat of the Royal Navy, ran onto the rocks at the foot of the Tory Island lighthouse, broke apart […]

The Civil War and amnesty

As we move into the ‘difficult’ bit of the ongoing ‘decade of centenaries’—the Treaty split and the Civil War—Joe Coy (Letters, p. 14) reminds us that ‘the Irish Civil War […]

April 20

1968 In what became known as the ‘rivers of blood’ speech, Enoch Powell MP strongly criticised mass immigration, especially Commonwealth immigration to the UK, and the then proposed Race Relations Act.
1954 Michael Manning (25), a carter from Groody, Limerick city, was hanged in Mountjoy Jail for the murder of an elderly nurse. He was the last person to be judicially executed in the Republic of Ireland. The last judicial execution in Northern Ireland took place seven years later, in December 1961, when Robert McGladdery (26) from Newry was hanged for the murder of a local woman.
1912 Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker (65), author, notably of Dracula (1897), died.
1954 Michael Manning (25), a carter from Limerick, was hanged in Mountjoy prison for the murder of an elderly nurse. He was the last man to be judicially executed in the Republic of Ireland.

ON THIS DAY

The Reids of Ramelton, Jamaica, Glasgow and Belfast

The wreck of HMS Wasp, 1884

The Civil War and amnesty

Personal Histories

On this Day

April 20