On May Eve 1858 a fierce storm blew across the west coast of Ireland. On Sunday 2 May, some boys cutting through Drumcliff graveyard, about a mile and a half outside Ennis, Co. Clare, made a shocking discovery—a grave had been excavated, and a coffin that had been buried 7ft deep had been forced open. … Read more
So unpalatable and poisonous is the original potato that anthropologists continue to puzzle over why anyone considered it a possible food in the first place. But over 8,000 years ago someone began experimenting with this unfriendly tuber (the potato is not a root at all but a tuber, a swollen underground stem). While various species … Read more
The PSNI reference to Dolours Price opened another strand of history reaching from the dark days of the early 1970s to the present. Sisters Dolours and Marian Price famously endured a hunger strike of over 200 days in England, from November 1973 to June 1974, prolonged by force-feeding. They and fellow republicans Gerry Kelly and … Read more
Following the defeat of Gladstone’s first Home Rule bill in June 1886, some of Charles Stewart Parnell’s lieutenants decided to raise morale and lower rents by renewing the land war that had caused so much havoc and fear since the founding of the Irish National Land League in October 1879. Although Parnell opposed this new … Read more
Irish History Online (IHO) is a fully searchable electronic bibliography of publications on Irish history, which is making it much easier to discover what has been published on particular topics in Irish history. This free online resource, based in the Department of History, NUI Maynooth, Co. Kildare (principal investigator: Professor Jackie Hill), was set up … Read more