Ireland
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On may 26,1992,Israel’s President Chaim Herzog unveiled a rock from Jerusalem, at Auschwitz. The rock serves as a permanent memorial to the 1.65 million Jews who were murdered there. Visibly anguished and tearful, President Herzog said the following words during the unveiling. “In this dread place, I stand here brokenhearted. This ground on which we…
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Germany Calling was an English-language propaganda radio programme broadcast by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It was aimed primarily at audiences in the British Isles and North America, using news, political commentary and entertainment to promote the German regime’s version of the war. Each broadcast opened with the distinctive announcement: “Germany calling! Here…
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I never got the whole Jane Austen hype. I find her stories boring and there is nothing I can identify with. However the fact that there is a Limerick connection to her I do find intriguing. And I believe if she had lived in Limerick her stories may have been a lot more exiting, but…
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World War II officially started on 3 September 1939. The Nazis wasted very little time in committing their first mass murder during the war. It was only hours after the war was declared. The S.S. Athenia was commanded by Captain James Cook. He left Glasgow for Montreal via Liverpool and Belfast. She carried 1,103 passengers,…
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Nowadays boarding a plane is nearly as common as get on a train. Come to think of it I have been probably more on a plane then in a train. However in 1954 flying was quite expensive and was only affordable for a few or after saving money for it for possibly year, especially for…
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I was reminiscing on TV shows I watched as a kid in the Netherlands. One of my favourite shows was a series called “Q&Q”. It was about 2 teenage detectives. The boys named Aristides Quarles and Wilbur Quant accidentally snap a photo of a dead body in the woods. After finding the place where the…
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(First published September 2, 2018) The position of Ireland during World War II was a bit of a tricky one. A lot of people actually were pro-German, not so much because they agreed with the German policies but more because they were at war with Britain, and there was still this feeling that Britain’s enemy…
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Because today is International Day of the Disappeared There are few things more unsettling than a person who simply disappears. When someone dies, however tragically, there is usually a funeral, a grave, a place where flowers can be laid, and eventually—however painful—some measure of acceptance. When a person vanishes without trace, none of those things…
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On the morning of 27 August 1979, Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, a member of the British royal family and one of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century, was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The bombing, carried out while Mountbatten was aboard his fishing…
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In the years 535 and 536, several remarkable aberrations in world climate took place. They were the most severe and protracted short-term episodes of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2 Millennia. Including bizarrely low-temperatures, with snow fall during the summer months in some locations; widespread crop-failures and famine; greatly decreased levels of…
