Sir,—If Ireland is to celebrate an Independence Day, as advocated by Dennis Kennedy (HI 26.3, May/June 2018, Platform), it should be on 14 December, because on that day in 1918 her voters, quietly and peaceably in the polling booths, determined that Ireland should be a sovereign and independent state. The Times, no friend of Ireland, … 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