HUNDREDS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN SLAUGHTERED ON RATHLIN ISLAND [ 26 July 1575 ] Rathlin Island forms a rugged rocky L-shape six miles long, lying just off the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland. By the mid 1570s, Walter Devereux, the first Earl of Essex and a rising star in the Elizbethan court, was increasingly frustrated…

ENGLAND’S NAZI SALUTE It was the most infamous occasion of English sporting deference to the Nazi regime. On 14 May 1938, the England football team gave the Nazi salute in front of a crowd of one hundred thousand in the German Olympic Stadium.  The most shocking aspect however was not the event, but the press…

ROUTINE USE OF TORTURE IN ULSTER EXPOSED [ 17 October 1971 ] On this day in 1971, The Sunday Times published a front page article entitled “How Ulster Internees are Made to Talk,” in which former detainee Pat Shivers recounted how, over a period of several days, he was hooded and forced into agonizing stress…

BRITISH SOLDIERS OPEN FIRE ON DUBLIN CROWD AFTER CHILDREN THROW ORANGE PEEL On the evening of Sunday 26 July 1914 three Dubliners were shot dead by British troops on Bachelor Street. They were Mary Duffy, a 50 year old widow, Patrick Quinn, a coal labourer and father of six, and James Brennan, an eighteen year…

IRAQ WEAPONS EXPERT JOHN KELLY FOUND DEAD AFTER “SEXED UP” DOSSIER LEAK. [ 18 July 2003 ] On this day in 2003, Dr. David Kelly, a 59 year old chemical weapons expert and former UN weapons inspector, was found dead in the woods, just one mile from his Oxfordshire home. Two days earlier he had…

IRISH REBEL POET JOSEPH PLUNKETT SHOT BY THE BRITISH ON HIS WEDDING DAY. Joseph Plunkett, a poet, playwright and rebel who left a hospital bed to participate in the 1916 Easter Uprising in Dublin, was executed by a British firing squad at Kilmainham jail at dawn on Thursday 4 May, less than two hours after…