Handball is known to have been played in Ireland from at least the mid-1500s. Its origins are likely shared with the contemporaneous games of real or royal tennis, palla, pelota and Eton fives. While royal tennis was played in purpose-built courts from the early 1500s, handball, like pelota (Basque region) and palla (Tuscany), was predominantly … Read more
Traditionally, newspapers were owned by businessmen who were keen to protect their own interests. During the early years of independence the two daily nationals, the Irish Independent (which incorporated the Freeman’s Journal after 1924) and the Irish Times, in common with most regional newspapers, were profoundly middle-class and anti-republican. Fianna Fáil published the Nation weekly … Read more
In the summer of 1925, just two years after the IRA’s defeat in the Civil War, the organisation sent a delegation to Moscow to solicit finance and weaponry from the Soviet Union. According to Tim Pat Coogan, the Russians asked their guests, ‘How many bishops did you hang?’, and when the answer was none, they … Read more
The financial deprivations caused by the First World War accelerated the decline of the already unhealthy financial situation of Sligo Corporation. In August 1917 an inquiry blamed its poor financial situation on ‘the neglect of proper administrative procedures’. The borough’s leading ratepayers (largely Protestant) believed that they must gain political representation on the corporation in … Read more
During the 1920s the newly formed Irish Defence Forces began looking for a steel helmet. At first the French Adrian model, named after its inventor, August-Louis Adrian, was tested on a limited scale but was found to be unsatisfactory. Eventually it was decided to choose the German helmet used in the First World War, and … Read more