seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: United Kingdom


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Birth of Dolores O’Riordan, Singer & Songwriter

dolores-o-riordanDolores Mary Eileen O’Riordan, Irish musician, singer and songwriter, is born in Ballybricken, County Limerick on September 6, 1971. She leads the rock band The Cranberries from 1990 until their break-up in 2003. They reunite in 2009. She is known for her lilting mezzo-soprano voice, her emphasised use of yodeling, and her strong Limerick accent.

O’Riordan is the youngest of nine children, two of whom die in infancy. Her father, Terence Patrick “Terry” O’Riordan (1937–2011), is a farm labourer who is left unable to work due to brain damage caused by a motorbike accident in 1968. Her mother, Eileen, is a school caterer. She attends Laurel Hill Coláiste FCJ school in Limerick. She leaves school without any qualifications.

In 1989, brothers Mike and Noel Hogan form The Cranberry Saw Us with drummer Fergal Lawler and singer Niall Quinn, in Limerick. Less than a year later, Quinn leaves the band. The remaining band members then place an advertisement for a female singer. O’Riordan responds to the advertisement and auditions by writing lyrics and melodies to some existing demos. When she returns with a rough version of “Linger,” she is hired, and they record Nothing Left At All, a three-track EP released on tape by local record label Xeric Records, which sells 300 copies. The group changes their name to “The Cranberries.” The owner of Xeric Studios, Pearse Gilmore, becomes their manager and provides the group with studio time to complete another demo tape, which he produces. It features early versions of “Linger” and “Dreams,” which are sent to record companies throughout the United Kingdom (UK).

This demo earns the attention of both the UK press and record industry and sparks a bidding war between major British record labels. Eventually, the group signs with Island Records. As part of The Cranberries she releases along with them five albums: Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? (1993), No Need to Argue (1994), To the Faithful Departed (1996), Bury the Hatchet (1999), and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2001), and a greatest-hits compilation, Stars: The Best of 1992–2002. In 2003, the band decides to take a temporary time-out to experiment on solo projects.

In 2003, O’Riordan embarks on a solo career which includes an appearance with the Italian artist Zucchero Fornaciari on the album Zu & Co., with the song “Pure Love.” The album also features other artists such as Sting, Sheryl Crow, Luciano Pavarotti, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Macy Gray, and Eric Clapton.

In 2005, O’Riordan appears on the Jam & Spoon‘s album Tripomatic Fairytales 3003 as a guest vocalist on the track “Mirror Lover.” She makes a cameo appearance in the 2006 Adam Sandler comedy Click as a wedding singer performing an alternate version of The Cranberries’ “Linger” set to strings. Her first single, “Ordinary Day,” is produced by BRIT Awards winner Youth, whose previous credits include The Verve, Embrace, Primal Scream, U2, and Paul McCartney.

Are You Listening? is released in Ireland on May 4, 2007, in Europe on May 7, and in North America on May 15. In 2008, O’Riordan wins a European Border Breakers Award (EBBA) which is presented annually to recognize the success of ten emerging artists or groups who reach audiences outside their own countries with their first internationally released album in the past year. Her second album, No Baggage, featuring eleven tracks, is released in August 2009.

In January 2009, the University Philosophical Society at Trinity College, Dublin invites The Cranberries to reunite for a concert celebrating O’Riordan’s appointment as an honorary member of the Society, which leads the band members to consider reuniting for a tour and a recording session. On August 25, 2009, while promoting her solo album No Baggage in New York City on 101.9 RXP radio, O’Riordan announces the reunion of the Cranberries for a world tour. The tour begins in North America in mid-November, followed by South America in mid-January 2010 and Europe in March 2010. She remains in the band until her unexpected death.

She appears as a judge on RTÉ‘s The Voice of Ireland during the 2013–2014 season. In April 2014, O’Riordan joins and begins recording new material with the trio D.A.R.K.

On January 15, 2018, at the age of 46, while in London for a recording session, O’Riordan dies suddenly at the London Hilton on Park Lane hotel in Mayfair. The cause of death is not immediately made public. Police say it is not being treated as suspicious. The coroner’s office says the results of its inquiry would not be released until April 3 at the earliest. On April 3 the inquest is cancelled with no new date announced.

A three-day memorial in her hometown, with O’Riordan lying in repose, lasts from January 20-22 at St. Joseph’s church. On January 23, she is buried after a service at Saint Ailbe’s Roman Catholic Church, Ballybricken, County Limerick. It begins with the studio recording of “Ave Maria” as sung by O’Riordan and Luciano Pavarotti. She is buried alongside her father.

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The Catalpa Rescue

catalpaThe whaling ship Catalpa is given a tumultuous welcome as it sails into New York harbor on August 19, 1876. She has no whales on board, but a far more valuable cargo, six Fenian prisoners from the British penal colony of Western Australia.

Clan na Gael‘s John Devoy, with the help of his friend John Boyle O’Reilly, a Fenian who had once escaped from Australia himself and editor of the Boston newspaper The Pilot, plan the escape. Somehow maintaining the secrecy of the mission, the two arrange to buy and crew the whaler Catalpa, purchased in New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the attempt.

The Catalpa sets out in April 1875 with most of the crew unaware of their actual mission. They reach western Australia in March 1876.

The first intended day for escape from the penal colony is April 6, but the appearance of HMS Convict and other Royal Navy ships and customs officers quickly lead to a postponement. The escape is rearranged for April 17, when most of the Convict Establishment garrison is watching the Royal Perth Yacht Club regatta.

Catalpa drops anchor in international waters off Rockingham and dispatches a whaleboat to shore. At 8:30 AM, six Fenians, Thomas Darragh, Martin Hogan, Michael Harrington, Thomas Hassett, Robert Cranston and James Wilson, who are working in work parties outside the prison walls abscond. They are met by Fenian agents John Breslin and Thomas Desmond and picked up in horse traps. A seventh Fenian, James Kiely, is left behind. The men race 12 miles south to Rockingham pier where Captain George Smith Anthony awaits them with the whaleboat. A local named Bell he had spoken to earlier sees the men and quickly alerts the authorities.

As they row to the Catalpa a fierce squall strikes, breaking the whaleboat’s mast. The storm lasts until dawn on April 18 and is so intense that Anthony later states that he did not expect the small boat to survive. At 7:00 AM, with the storm over, they again make for the Catalpa but an hour later spot the screw steamer SS Georgette, which has been commandeered by the colonial governor, heading for the whaler. The men lay down in the whaleboat and it is not seen by the SS Georgette. The SS Georgette finds the Catalpa, but in Captain Anthony’s absence the First Mate refuses to allow the colonial police to board as the ship is outside the colony’s three-mile limit. The steamer is forced to return to Fremantle for coal after following the Catalpa for several hours.

As the whaleboat again makes for the ship a police cutter with 30 to 40 armed men is spotted. The two boats race to reach the Catalpa first, with the whaleboat winning, and the men climbing aboard as the police cutter passes by. The cutter turns, lingers briefly beside the Catalpa, and then heads to shore.

Early on April 19 the refuelled and now heavily armed SS Georgette returns and comes alongside the whaler, demanding the surrender of the prisoners and attempting to herd the ship back into Australian waters. They fire a warning shot with the 12-pounder cannon that had been installed the night before. Ignoring the demand to surrender, Anthony raises and then points towards the U.S. flag, informing the SS Georgette that an attack on the Catalpa will be considered an act of war against the United States, and proceeds westward.

Governor William Cleaver Robinson has ordered the police on the SS Georgette not to create an incident outside territorial waters. After steaming around threateningly for about an hour, the SS Georgette heads back to Fremantle and Catalpa slips away into the Indian Ocean.

The Catalpa does its best to avoid Royal Navy ships on its way back to the United States. O’Reilly receives the news of the escape on June 6 and releases the news to the press. The news sparks celebrations in the United States and Ireland and anger in Britain and Australia, although there is also sympathy for the cause within the Australian population. The Catalpa arrives in New York Harbor on August 19, 1876. Clan na Gael and the Fenians achieve one of their greatest victories over the British Empire.


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Birth of Geologist Richard Dixon Oldham

richard-dixon-oldhamRichard Dixon Oldham, British geologist who makes the first clear identification of the separate arrivals of P-waves, S-waves and surface waves on seismograms and the first clear evidence that the Earth has a central core, is born in Dublin on July 31, 1858.

Born to Thomas Oldham, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a geologist, Oldham is educated at Rugby School and the Royal School of Mines.

In 1879 Oldham becomes an assistant-superintendent with the Geological Survey of India (GSI), working in the Himalayas. He writes about 40 publications for the Survey on geological subjects including hot springs, the geology of the Son Valley and the structure of the Himalayas and the Indo-Gangetic plain. His most famous work is in seismology. His report on the 1897 Assam earthquake goes far beyond reports of previous earthquakes. It includes a description of the Chedrang fault, with uplift up to 35 feet and reported accelerations of the ground that have exceeded the Earth’s gravitational acceleration. His most important contribution to seismology is the first clear identification of the separate arrivals of P-waves, S-waves and surface waves on seismograms. Since these observations agree with theory for elastic waves, they show that the Earth can be treated as elastic in studies of seismic waves.

In 1903, Oldham resigns from the GSI due to ill health and returns to the United Kingdom, living in Kew and various parts of Wales. In 1906 he writes a paper analyzing seismic arrival times of various recorded earthquakes. He concludes that the earth has a core and estimates its radius to be less than 0.4 times the radius of the Earth.

In 1908 Oldham is awarded the Lyell Medal, in 1911 made a Fellow of the Royal Society and from 1920 to 1922 serves as the President of the Geological Society of London.

Richard Dixon Oldham dies at Llandrindod Wells in Wales on July 15, 1936.


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Transplant Patient Adele Chapman Leaves the Hospital

adele-chapmanSeven-year old Adele Chapman from Belfast, Britain’s first triple-organ transplant child, leaves the hospital on July 20, 1998. Twelve weeks earlier, she undergoes a pioneering liver, pancreas, and small intestine transplant at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

Chapman has to wait two years for a donor to come forward. The hospital releases pictures of Adele in March 1998 in a bid to get donors to come forward. Her donor is of a similar age to her and also donates her heart and kidneys for transplants.

The youngest of five children, Chapman says the first thing she plans to do when she gets home is to “give my daddy and brothers and sisters a hug and a kiss.” Her mother Doreen says the family has been on a “roller coaster of emotion” over the past two years. At times, they had thought Adele would not survive. “Three months ago she was lying absolutely devastated on the bed and could not move. The transformation is just wonderful,” she said. “Now we are looking to the future.”

Chapman’s complex 10-hour operation is carried out by a team led by Jean de Ville de Goyet from Birmingham Children’s Hospital and David Mayer from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. The Children’s Hospital is the only centre in the United Kingdom which can perform small intestine and liver transplants on children.

Chapman had a rare bowel disease which prevented her from eating solid food for two years. But only four weeks after her operation she is tucking into toast and doughnuts. Shortly after the surgery, the hospital says there has been no major medical or surgical problems as a result of the operation, although she still has a single feeding tube attached to her nose.

Chapman’s family calls for more donors to come forward. Donor organisations are trying to get more people signed up to the national organ donor register. The number of transplants has fallen by 10% in the years prior to 1998. Beverley Cornforth, a transplant educationalist, says the real problem is the 30% who say no to donating organs. This is often because people who die have not stated in advance that they would like to donate their organs and families are too distressed to decide for them.

(From BBC News, July 20, 1998)


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Death of James Kelly, Irish Army Intelligence Officer

james-kellyJames Kelly, former Irish Army intelligence officer who is found not guilty, along with two former Irish government ministers, of attempting to illegally import arms for the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the Arms Crisis of 1970, dies on July 16, 2003.

Kelly is the eldest of ten children, born on October 16, 1929 into a staunchly Irish republican family from Bailieborough, County Cavan.

Kelly is a central figure in the Arms Crisis, having traveled to Hamburg to arrange the purchase of arms. It emerges later that Neil Blaney had ordered him to do so outside normal legal channels, but before the weapons arrive the Gards Special Detective Unit hears of the plan and informs the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, aborting the importation and resulting in criminal charges for the plotters. Although in his summation the judge says it is no defence for Kelly to say that he believes that the government authorised the importation of arms, Kelly is acquitted.

Despite his acquittal, Kelly suffers financially because he had felt compelled to resign from the Army even before the prosecution was brought. He prints and publishes a personal memoir in paperback format called Orders for the Captain? in 1971.

Kelly never denies his involvement in extra-legal arms purchase talks, but contends that he had been ordered to do so by some ministers. A typical version of the events is found in a 1993 hostile biography of Charles Haughey, claiming: “As early as October 1969, to the certain knowledge of Charles Haughey, James Gibbons, the Department of Justice, the Special Branch and Army Intelligence, there were meetings with leading members of the IRA, when they were promised money and arms. The critical encounter took place in Bailieborough, County Cavan, on Saturday, 4 October 1969. It had been arranged by Captain James Kelly, an army intelligence officer, and Cathal Goulding. Kelly, at that stage, was already the subject of several security reports to the Secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry, from the Special Branch, implicating Kelly with subversives and with promises of money and of arms.” Kelly never objected to such versions of the events of 1969.

Kelly is elected vice-chairman of Aontacht Éireann. Aontacht Éireann meets with little success at the polls and by 1980 he has joined Fianna Fáil, becoming a member of its national executive. Following the first applications of the 1987 Extradition (European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism) Act, he resigns from the party in 1989 in opposition to the extradition of Provisional IRA prisoners to the United Kingdom. He also serves twice as President of the 1916-1921 Club. He launches a successful defamation case against Garret FitzGerald over an article in The Irish Times.

James Kelly dies on July 16, 2003 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. The epitaph on his grave is “Put not your trust in princes,” a quote from Psalm 146.


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Birth of Richard Todd, Stage & Film Actor

richard-toddRichard Andrew Palethorpe Todd OBE, an English soldier, stage and film actor and film director, is born in Dublin on June 11, 1919.

Todd spends a few of his childhood years in India, where his father, an officer in the British Army, serves as a physician. Later his family moves to Devon and he attends Shrewsbury School. Upon leaving school, he trains for a potential military career at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst before beginning his acting training at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London. This change in career leads to estrangement from his mother. When he learns at age 19 that she has committed suicide, he does not grieve long for her, he admits in later life.

Todd first appears professionally as an actor at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in 1936 in a production of Twelfth Night. He plays in regional theatres and then co-founds the Dundee Repertory Theatre in Scotland in 1939. He also appears as an extra in British films like Good Morning, Boys (1937), A Yank at Oxford (1938) and Old Bones of the River (1939).

At the beginning of World War II, Todd enlists in the British Army, receiving a commission in 1941. On June 6, 1944, as a captain, he participates in Operation Tonga during the Normandy landings. He is among the first British officers to land in Normandy as part of Operation Overlord.

After the war, Todd is unsure what direction to take in his career. His former agent, Robert Lennard, has become a casting agent for Associated British Picture Corporation and advises him to try out for the Dundee Repertory Company. He does so, performing in plays such as Claudia, where he appears with Claudia Grant-Bogle. Lennard arranges for a screen test and Associated British offers him a long-term contract in 1948. He is cast in the lead in For Them That Trespass (1949), directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. The film is a minor hit and his career is launched.

Having portrayed the role of Yank in the Dundee Repertory stage version of John Patrick‘s play The Hasty Heart, Todd is subsequently chosen to appear in the 1948 London stage version of the play, this time in the leading role of Cpl. Lachlan McLachlan. This leads to his being cast in that role in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of the play, which is filmed in the United Kingdom, alongside Ronald Reagan and Patricia Neal. He is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role in 1949.

Todd is now in much demand. He appears in the thriller The Interrupted Journey (1949), Alfred Hitchcock‘s Stage Fright (1950), opposite Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman, Portrait of Clare (1950), Flesh and Blood (1951), The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), 24 Hours of a Woman’s Life (1952), with Merle Oberon, Venetian Bird (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953) and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1953). In 1953, he appears in a BBC Television adaptation of the novel Wuthering Heights.

Todd’s career receives a boost when 20th Century Fox signs him to a non-exclusive contract. He appears the film version of Catherine Marshall‘s best selling biography, A Man Called Peter (1955), which is a popular success. Other films in which he appears include The Dam Busters (1955), The Virgin Queen (1955), Marie Antoinette Queen of France (1956), D-Day the Sixth of June (1956), Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst (1957), Saint Joan (1957), Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958), Intent to Kill (1958), Danger Within (1958), Never Let Go (1960) and The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961).

Todd’s career in films rapidly declines in the 1960s as the counter-culture movement in the Arts becomes fashionable in England, with social-realist dramas commercially replacing the more middle-class orientated dramatic productions that Todd’s performance character-type had previously excelled in.

In retirement, Todd lives in the village of Little Ponton and later in Little Humby, eight miles from Grantham, Lincolnshire. Suffering from cancer, he dies at his home on December 3, 2009. He is buried between his two sons, Seamus and Peter, at St. Guthlac’s Church in Little Ponton, Lincolnshire, England.


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The Hull of the RMS Titanic is Launched

titanic-launch-at-belfast-1911The hull of the RMS Titanic, is launched at 12:15 PM on May 31, 1911 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the presence of Lord William Pirrie, J. Pierpoint Morgan, J. Bruce Ismay and 100,000 onlookers. Twenty-two tons of soap and tallow are spread on the slipway to lubricate the ship’s passage into the River Lagan. In keeping with the White Star Line‘s traditional policy, the ship is not formally named or christened with champagne. The ship is towed to a fitting-out berth where, over the course of the next year, her engines, funnels and superstructure are installed and her interior is fitted out.

The construction of RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic take place virtually in parallel. The sheer size of the RMS Titanic and her sister ships pose a major engineering challenge for Harland and Wolff. No shipbuilder has ever before attempted to construct vessels this size. RMS Titanic‘s keel is laid down on March 31, 1909. The 2,000 hull plates are single pieces of rolled steel plate, mostly up to 6 feet wide and 30 feet long and weigh between 2.5 and 3 tons.

Some of the last items to be fitted on RMS Titanic before the ship’s launch are her two side anchors and one centre anchor. The anchors themselves are a challenge to make with the centre anchor being the largest ever forged by hand and weighing nearly 16 tons. Twenty Clydesdale draught horses are needed to haul the centre anchor by wagon from the N. Hingley & Sons Ltd. forge shop in Netherton, near Dudley, United Kingdom to the Dudley railway station two miles away. From there it is shipped by rail to Fleetwood in Lancashire before being loaded aboard a ship and sent to Belfast.

The work of constructing the ships is difficult and dangerous. For the 15,000 men who work at Harland and Wolff at the time, safety precautions are rudimentary at best. Much of the work is dangerous and is carried out without any safety equipment like hard hats or hand guards on machinery. As a result, deaths and injuries are to be expected. During RMS Titanic‘s construction, 246 injuries are recorded, 28 of them “severe,” such as arms severed by machines or legs crushed under falling pieces of steel. Six people die on the ship herself while she is being constructed and fitted out, and another two die in the shipyard workshops and sheds. Just before the launch a worker is killed when a piece of wood falls on him.

(Pictured: Launch of the hull of the RMS Titanic with an unfinished superstructure in 1911)