Nick Maxwell By Joseph E.A. Connell Jr There were four assassination attempts on Benito Mussolini, the infamous fascist dictator of Italy who inspired Adolf Hitler, though he survived them all. Only one came close to succeeding, when 50-year-old Irish woman Violet Gibson fired on him on 7 April 1926 and almost altered the course of history. The … Read more
By Joanne Rothwell The workhouse schoolmistress was tasked with instructing the children, taking them out for exercise and ensuring their discipline and moral character. She was subject to inspection by the Board of Guardians and the National Board of Education. In their advertisement for an infant schoolmistress in the Waterford News and Star on 19 … Read more
By Lar Joye Traditionally, from 1922 to 1964 the Irish Defence Forces had relied mainly on Ireland’s old colonial master, Britain, for their armaments. While in the 1930s two Landsverk L60 light tanks and eight L180 armoured cars were purchased from Sweden, generally most equipment was still made in Britain. By 1964 the old Swedish … Read more
By Anna Rose Garvey Gael Linn was established in 1953 to promote and revitalise Irish language and culture through a variety of means, which would eventually include music, film and educational initiatives. A most successful and accessible early venture was the establishment in 1956 of the Amharc Éireann newsreel, the first regular indigenous cinema newsreel … Read more
By Zoë Reid On 18 April 2026 the National Archives will publish online the first census of the Irish Free State, an extraordinary corpus of more than 700,000 individual household returns which were to have been completed on the night of 18 April 1926. Fully searchable and free to access, the census reveals the early … Read more