Search Results for 'Commonwealth Day'

Tourism bosses are confident next week's royal visit to Galway will lead to a surge in the number of visitors from the UK. Views of the city and county will be beamed across the world due to the presence of Prince Charles and Camilla The Duchess of Cornwall on Tuesday. The world's media, which avidly follows members of the royal family to every destination, will undoubtedly ensure the city and county gets a well deserved share of the spotlight.

Despite all his bravura and political showmanship, his coarse humour,* a great fixer, a downright trickster and grafter, yet with a genuine kindness that endeared him to vast swathes of Boston voters, James Michael Curley’s personal life was unusually tragic. Following the death of his first wife ‘ Mae’ (nee Herlihy), he remarried a widow, Gertrude Dennis with two sons. This was on the last day of his term as Governor of Massachusetts, January 7 1937, “ to give her at least one day as first lady of the Commonwealth.” Between his two wives he had nine children; but incredibly seven of them predeceased him.

Winston Churchill was 66 years of age when he became prime minister of Great Britain on May 10 1940. It was a moment of extreme crisis in Europe. Belgium, Holland and France were collapsing under the fierce onslaught of the German invasion. A large British army was retreating in the direction of Dunkirk. There was opposition within the government to Churchill.

There are among you people who can remember exactly where you were when Kennedy was shot down in Dallas, when Diana died in that tunnel in Paris, where you heard about the horrors of 9/11, when Michael Jackson was rushed by ambulance to the hospital in Los Angeles. They were all events that marked out our lives, momentous you could call them, just as we will no doubt all remember where we were when this week we heard that Eamon O Cuiv was to make the most difficult decision of his life...and stay in Fianna Fail.

What has happened to Eamon O Cuiv in the past year that has him throwing off all the old shackles of conformity and has him coming across as a latter day revolutionary? It is as if he surrendered himself to stylist Gok Wan for a political makeover on How To Look Good Naked, and when he was stripped down from his traditional dark suit, he uncovered underneath the Kryptonite garments of a political superhero that has him shooting for the stars.

Islandeady’s Ray Moylette will get his World Championships underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, today when he takes on Latvian Aturs Ahmetovs in the last 64 of the competition. Three wins for the St Anne’s club man who claimed the European Light Welterweight title during the summer will book his place in next year’s Olympics in London. Having won the European title Moylette has been ranked fourth by the AIBA in the World Championship, but his place in this week’s competition was only secured a few weeks ago when be defeated Irish champion Ross Hickey in a box off in the National Stadium.

ONE OF our most esteemed political commentators, Fintan O’Toole, is appearing at the Town Hall Theatre next week in a reading/discussion centred around his provocative new book Enough Is Enough; How to Build a New Republic.

Smoke-filled room, Leinster House. Wednesday evening. Around teatime— Testing wan, two three. Let the meeting of the Cabinet begin. Say the prayer, Tanaiste.

The writers’ residency at the Heinrich Böll Cottage in Dugort continues through the spring. There is a reading by Canadian poet Jason Rotstein at the Cyril Gray Memorial Hall Dugort Achill tonight (February 27) at 8.30 pm. All interested are invited to attend.