Nick Maxwell 1970 Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP since 2015 and First Minister of Northern Ireland since January of this year, born in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. 03–05 1970 During a 34-hour illegal curfew on the Lower Falls Road, Belfast, during which over 100 weapons were found, clashes between Official and Provisional IRA gunmen and the British … Read more
BY AODHÁN CREALEY JULY 16/1936 George McMahon (36) achieved instant notoriety when he produced a revolver as King Edward VIII rode down Constitution Hill towards Buckingham Palace after reviewing troops in Hyde Park. The king, however, was unharmed. A special constable struck McMahon, sending the weapon skidding towards him and striking the hind leg … Read more
Just after 11am on 20 September 1942, the quiet Sunday stillness of the Emyvale countryside in north County Monaghan was shattered by the screaming roar of a Spitfire as it dived down, unmanned, from the clouds. Meanwhile, just over the border in Northern Ireland, its Royal Air Force pilot descended safely under his parachute while … Read more
On 14 May 2018, almost a century after he was executed and secretly buried by the IRA, the body of British soldier Private George Chalmers was recovered from a bog near Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare, and reburied in Grangegorman Military Cemetery, Dublin. By Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc George Chalmers, an orphan from Edinburgh, joined … Read more
BY TONY CANAVAN Raise the Endurance An international effort to locate the lost ship of Irish Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton will take place next year. Shackleton’s 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition met with disaster when its ship, the Endurance, was crushed by ice in the Weddell Sea in November 1915. Three previous attempts to find the … Read more