Hidden Histories

With so much opposition to Donald Trump's visit to these shores next week, Donal Fallon has a look at previous presidential visits that were met with a less than enthusiastic Irish public.

Earlier this week, Garda detectives in Dundalk quizzed a man about an IRA attack. The attack happened in 1959, and the quizzed man is in his 80s. The man was quizzed in relation to a recently published memoir, My Life In The IRA. Donal Fallon joins Gavan to discuss.

The village of Bohola in Mayo is a quiet place. It has a population of 203, and its Wikipedia says “it consists of 2 pubs, a post office, and a Catholic Church.”

Yet Bohola produced the remarkale O’Dwyer brothers, William and Paul O’Dwyer. Emigrating to the United States at young ages, the O’Dwyer’s became leading figures in the New York legal and political arenas in the 1930s and 40s, with William central to the prosecutions that led to the eventual collapse of the infamous ‘Murder Inc.’ mafia.

Donal Fallon tells us all about this remarkable pair.

In recent years, images of refugees fleeing from war torn regions have made a deep imprint on our collective consciousness, and debate surrounding sustainable immigration is one which has been ongoing for many years - not just since the European Refugee Crisis back in 2015.

In fact this year marks the 40th anniversary of the arrival of 200 of the so-called Vietnamese ‘Boat People’ in Ireland, fleeing from the ravages of war in their home country.

In a time when the Irish were more accustomed to emigration than immigration, this were a somewhat curious spectacle, but what happened to them?

Donal Fallon joins Gavan for another episode of Hidden Histories.

Sports fans among you will have heard the urban myth that the German soccer team’s away kit is green because they borrowed the colour from Ireland.

Indeed, Ireland has lent its colours to other sports, and today we’re going to talk about motor racing and specifically ‘British Racing Green’ - the colour worn by British motor racers.

In 1903, the Irish public - and beyond - were captivated by something called the Gordon Bennett Cup, the first ever motor-race to be held in these islands. Motorsports were illegal in England, and so the fast-paced event took place in rural Ireland. The first ever closed-circuit motor race, it brought massive media attention onto Ireland.

Donal Fallon joins Gavan Reilly for another episode of Hidden Histories

Easter Sunday is, for the State and many others, a day of reflection and commemoration. We know the names of many who died in the Easter Rising – but sometimes, it is the stories of those who survived that can fascinate.

Easter Rising volunteer Diarmuid Lynch for instance, in the midst of a food crisis which threatened starvation, led a group of men who ‘commandeered’ pigs destined for exportation, slaughtering them and distributing the bacon to Dublin’s poor. The story made heroes of Volunteers in 1918, in the very streets where they’d been booed and jeered two years earlier.

Donal Fallon joins Gavan Reilly for another episode of Hidden Histories.

Rabindranath Tagore is perhaps the most famous poet you’ve never heard of, but his bust sits in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, not far from one honouring W.B Yeats.

With this weekend marking the centenary of the Amritsar Massacre - an event which had a profound impact on the Indian poet - it seems only right to honour “the Bard of Bengali”.

For another edition of Hidden Histories; Sean Defoe is joined by Donal Fallon to discuss.

In April 1919, members of the global media gathered in Limerick to report on a transatlantic Air race beginning in the county. It didn’t go ahead. Instead, visiting journalists from England, Europe and America found themselves covering the story of the so-called ‘Limerick Soviet’, one of the most dramatic episodes of revolutionary Ireland.

Donal Fallon has been looking into the life of Jimmy Hasty and joins Gavan for another episode of Hidden Histories.

It’s probably fair to say that only the League of Ireland die-hards among you might have ever heard of Jimmy Hasty.

But there was a time when Jimmy was known all across the country, not only for his outstanding footballing skills, but for the fact that he also only had one arm. Known as the 'One Armed Wonder' Jimmy was tragically killed on the streets of Belfast in 1974, shot dead in an unprovoked sectarian attack.

Donal Fallon has been looking into the life of Jimmy Hasty and joins Gavan for another episode of Hidden Histories.

‘Garradrimma’, in Co Westmeath has, like many places in Ireland, its own troubles - family breakdown, crisis pregnancy, and the likes - but there are two things that are slightly less usual about Garradrimma. The first is that it doesn’t exist, it’s a fictional place that exists only in writing… and the second is that all of those very 21st-century problems, were described in 1918.

All of these themes were in a book, The Valley of the Squinting Windows… which, as you might expect for a book dealing with such “non-traditional” family values, was burned at the bonfires when it was published…

All of which sounds like a perfect topic for Hidden Histories with Donal Fallon.