ON THIS DAY
MAY 7, 2021
FROM THE ARCHIVE MAY 7, 1971
THREE young boys have told RTÉ’s Newsbeat programme that the Blessed Virgin appeared to them at a cemetery in the Wexford village of Taghmon. They claim to have seen Our Lady, who was wearing a blue dress and white shawl, while they were playing at the mart beside an old cemetery. Two other children playing with them saw nothing. Local reaction to the alleged sighting is noncommittal. However, most believe the children saw something and that it was not a prank.
MAY 7, 1981
A MAJOR clean-up is under way on Dublin’s Dawson Street following yesterday’s rioting by a breakaway group at the rally for Bobby Sands. Almost every shop on the street had its windows smashed in by the group after the 1,000-strong event ended at 10pm. Premises affected include Lombard and Ulster Bank, Brown Thomas, Laura Ashley, Gilbert, Leon White, the Irish National Insurance Company of Ireland, Jackson Stops and McCabe, Dublin Regional Tourism, Pronuptia and Hodges Figgis. The Royal Hibernian Hotel also lost many of its windows, while a Fiat outside the Royal Irish Automobile Club was burned out.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CHRISTOPHER ANDREW MOORE (1945-) is officially Ireland’s greatest living musician – an accolade he was awarded in 2007’s RTÉ People Of The Year awards. Born in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Christy, right, whose love of music was inspired by his mother Nancy, was originally a bank employee. During a strike in 1966, he took himself off to England where he worked as a labourer. After becoming a regular on the folk scene, he recorded his first album, Paddy On The Road, produced by Dominic Behan (no less) in 1969. ‘I had a wild and wonderful time in England, with no bank manager looking over my shoulder,’ Christy later said.
BORN ON THIS DAY
DONAL McCANN (1943-1999) was a film, stage, and TV actor whose work was described by Brian Friel as ‘deeply spiritual’. While he is most famous for his role as Gabriel Conroy in John Huston’s The Dead, McCann, right, is probably best loved for his heartbreaking portrayal of Gar in Philadelphia, Here I Come! The son of twice Lord Mayor of Dublin John J McCann, Donal started out as a sub-editor in The Irish Press. He battled depression and alcoholism for most of his life and died aged just 56 from pancreatic cancer.
ON MAY 7. . .
In 1865, 1916 rebel Major John MacBride is born in Westport, Co. Mayo. In 1915, the Lusitania is sunk by a U-boat off Kinsale. Some 1,100 lives are lost In 1931, An Óige, the Irish Youth Hostel Association, is set up in Dublin. In 1992, the controversial Bishop of Galway, Dr. Eamonn Casey, resigns. In 2001, islanders off the Cork coast rescue a 20ft pilot whale that had become stranded at Hare Island.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Banausic (coined c1840)
A) Having a pearly lustre. B) Not operating on an elevated level, mundane. C) Sullen, shy and repellent manner. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED Pecking order:
Refers to seniority in a group; it alludes to the social order of chickens which ranks them according to their strength, where each is pecked by the one above it in rank.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did the astronaut do when he crashed into the Moon? Apollo-gise. Guess The Definition answer: B