Ireland
-
Tuam is an idyllic town in Ireland. It is the second-largest settlement in County Galway. Unfortunately, since 2014, it has become known for all the wrong reasons. The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (also known as St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home or simply The Home) in Tuam, operated between 1925 and 1961. It…
-
So many people think that the Holocaust only lasted as along as WWII. But they could not be further away from the truth. It could be argued that the foundation of the Holocaust goes back to 1879, when Wilhelm Marr becomes the first proponent of racial anti-Semitism, blaming Jews for the failure of the German…
-
Willem Jacob van Stockum was born on November 20,1910 in Hattem,the Netherlands. Willem moved to Ireland in the late 1920s, Where he studied mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he earned a gold medal. He went on to earn an M.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. The…
-
Although the tide had already turned for the Nazis , June 6-1944 was to become the final push for the allied troops to free Europe from the Nazi regime. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of former US President Theodore Roosevelt,was the only general on D-Day to land by sea with the first wave of troops. At…
-
A Stolpersteinplural Stolpersteine; literally means “stumbling stone”, metaphorically a “stumbling stone” is a sett-size, ten-centimetre (3.9 in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Created by the artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, Stolpersteine is brass-topped cobblestones embedded in the pavement outside a…
-
In February 1995, Nick Cave released the album “Murder Ballads”. On the album is one of my all time favourite songs “Where the wild roses grow” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Kylie Minogue first performed the song publicly on 4 August 1995 in Cork, Republic of Ireland. I have often wondered why they…
-
I remember the celebration in 2016 when Ireland was commemorating the centenary of the Easter Rising. There had already been events months beforehand. On 20 January 2016. Ireland’s first ever commemorative €2 coin went into circulation to mark the centenary year of the Easter Rising. The Easter Rising , was an armed insurrection in Ireland…
-
Many people think that Halloween is a festival of evil, where the aim is to scare people by dressing up in very scary costumes, or what I find more bizarre is the whole “trick or treat” notion. Everyday we tell our kids not to take sweets or candies from strangers, come 31 October we turn…
-
I was on Irish National radio this afternoon, discussing the sale of Nazi uniforms as Halloween costumes in Ireland. It was on Joe Duffy’s Liveline show. I enjoyed being on it, but the show was a bit manipulated. I received a call from one of the researchers at 10 a.m. this morning. He asked me…
History of Sorts 