Search Results for 'Billy Naughton'

The late Billy Naughton, College Road, said he spluttered into his cup of tea, when he instantly recognised the upper-class, nasal drawl, of William Joyce reporting continuous Nazi victories on Radio Hamburg, Reichsrundfunk, during its English-language broadcast in October 1939. He was ridiculed as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ and was the butt of Musical Hall jokes, yet he was listened to and despised for his clever mix of fact and lies.

Fifteen years before the Galway-Clifden railway started, the first light-rail track laid in Galway was the tram service to Salthill. For more than 39 years a series of horse-drawn trams ran from the depot in Forster Street, along the east and south sides of Eyre Square, heading west through Shop Street and Dominick Street, over the bridge, and along the Salthill road. Then it was in the countryside with open fields and thatched cottages. The line came to an end at the Eglinton Hotel (now a hostel), where the horse was switched to the other end of the tram for the return journey. The Eglinton became Europe’s most westerly tram terminus.

Lady Mary Heath was a famous pioneering pilot. She was born in Knockaderry near Newcastle West, Co Limerick, in 1896. She was an accomplished sportswoman who helped introduce women’s track events to the Olympics. The 1920s was an era when the world seemed to have gone aviation mad, thanks to the exploits of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. In 1927, Lady Mary became the first woman to hold a commercial licence in Britain, the first woman to parachute out of an aircraft, and the first pilot to fly a small open-cockpit plane from Cape Town to London. She set records for altitude in a small plane. For much of the 1920s she was one of the best known women in the world, brave, determined, and accomplished.