40th anniversary of the Contraceptive Train
Forty years ago this month, Ireland’s first radical women’s rights organisation got the Contraceptive Train to Belfast.
They bought all manner of contraceptives to highlight their illegal status here. On their arrival back at Connolly Station in Dublin, they publicly displayed their illegally bought products to the horror of many at the time.
This campaign was the brainchild of the Irish Women’s Liberation Organisation who had formed only months earlier.
At the time, women in the public service were forced to give up work when they married, single mothers and widows faced dire poverty, divorce was illegal – and Ireland was a male dominated society.
So, a group of women got together and decided they wanted to do something about these and other inequities. Three of the founder members of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, Mairin Johnston, Marie MacMahon and Mairin de Burca talked about their stories and the first ever public challenge to the ban on contraceptives in this country.
Workers' songs
The 1st of May – Labour Day - is celebrated worldwide as a salute to workers everywhere. Nuala O’Connor explored the stories behind songs of labour and work.
History Websites
There was a time when people who wanted to explore the past would often have had to travel some distance to a library that they hoped would have what they were looking for – during office hours!
But the internet has opened up a 24 hour world of information for people at the click of a switch – and it offers an Aladdin’s cave of historical gems for anyone who’s interested.
Historians Juliana Adelman, Kevin O'Sullivan and Tina Morin of the history blog, Puesoccurrences.com came in to talk about some of the best history websites and blogs on offer.
Some of the blogs and websites they mentioned are:
Cedar lounge
It’s a don’s life
Georgian London
Victorian Peeper
Google Books
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online
iTunes U
Freeman’s Journal
The Irish Times
National Library’s collection of digitized photographs and ephemera
National Archives, UK tutorial for learning palaeography
Hansard.com
Guttenburg.org
Archive.org
Antarctica Conservation Blog http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/community/antarctic-conservation?view=blog&fromGateway=true
The Rosnaree Archaeological Project blog (http://rossnareedig.wordpress.com/)
The Little Review (http://thelittlereview.wordpress.com/)
Come Here to Me! (http://comeheretome.wordpress.com/)
History Compass Blog (http://exchanges.history-compass.com/)
puesoccurrences.com
Podcasts:
Philosophy Bites
A History of the World in 100 Objects
In Our Time
Documentary On One (RTÉ)