All articles in History
30th March, 2017 in History, Society & Culture
The price of a bouquet: Vincent van Gogh and the art market
In his ten years of working as an artist Vincent van Gogh created 900 paintings and over 1,000 drawings. In 1889 alone, during his stay at a psychiatric institution in Saint-Remy in France, he produced over 100 works, including the now-illustrious The Starry Night. The Starry Nig…
24th March, 2017 in History, Women in History
Anne Boleyn and the Irish connection
Up to a couple of years ago, though very few of us knew of the law, it was an offence punishable by death for any person in Ireland to speak against or in any way to criticize the marriage between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Luckily, our president, Michael D. Higgins, has now rep…
21st March, 2017 in History, Women in History
Pocahontas: The English connection
The Native American princess, associated with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, is famously said to have intervened to save the life of pioneer Captain John Smith. Later captured by the English during Anglo-Indian hostilities in 1613, she was held for ransom but dur…
20th March, 2017 in History, Society & Culture
The Black Death: Human history’s biggest catastrophe?
The first outbreak of the Black Death in Europe killed millions (claims range between 25 to 50 percent of Europe’s population) and it remains one of the greatest catastrophes in human history. The Plague By 1340, medieval Europe was beset by a range of problems. Ploughing of the…
15th March, 2017 in Biography & Memoir, History
Captain Lawrence Oates: Antarctic tragedy
‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ Most people will know that these simple words, so famous and so often repeated over the past decades, were uttered by Captain Lawrence Oates who, according to legend, gallantly gave his life to help save his comrades in an Antarctic…
10th March, 2017 in History, Local & Family History, Society & Culture
The March of the Blanketeers 1817
March 2017 marked two hundred years since the Manchester Radicals (better known as the ‘Blanketeers’) organised a demonstration with the intention of marching to London to petition the Prince Regent over the desperate state of the textile industry in Lancashire and the recent sus…
3rd March, 2017 in History, Maritime
John Cabot and the first English expedition to America
During Tudor times Italian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto to give him his Italian name) led English ships on voyages of discovery and is credited with prompting transatlantic trade between England and the Americas. In an attempt to find a direct route to the markets of…
27th February, 2017 in History, Society & Culture
The Reichstag on fire
It was four to five degrees below zero in Berlin’s city centre on the evening of 27 February 1933; an icy easterly wind made it seem even colder. In every other way, however, this appeared to be an ordinary winter evening. There was nothing to suggest that the events of this nigh…
22nd February, 2017 in History, True Crime
The myth of highwayman Dick Turpin outlives the facts
Georgian highwayman Dick Turpin, like America’s Jessie James or Australia’s Ned Kelly, lives on in our collective imagination more as a myth than as a man. Nearly everything we know about him – or think we know about him – is false. He didn’t make a midnight ride to York, his fai…
21st February, 2017 in History, Local & Family History, Military
Britain’s last invasion: Fishguard 1797
With the French Revolution raging across the channel, there was much alarm in Britain in 1797. The newly formed French revolutionary government devised a plan that involved harnessing the poor country folk of Britain to rally in support of the French liberators. When the French i…
21st February, 2017 in History, True Crime
Napoleon is dead! The Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814
For as long as they have existed, stock markets have attracted fraudsters. An early stock exchange scam, involving one of the greatest seamen of the age, Lord Cochrane, is a powerful and fascinating tale of greed, deceit and public humiliation. In February 1814, news arrived in D…
9th February, 2017 in History
The diabolical death of Henry, Lord Darnley
It’s over 450 years since the second husband of Mary Queen of Scots, Henry, Lord Darnley, was murdered smack-bang (literally) in the middle of Edinburgh. By all accounts it was to have been a spectacular demise for the 21-year old king, with the house he was staying in (whilst ap…