Sultan Abdülmecid: A Tale of Pianos, Telegraphs, Etiquette and Hunger

Sultan Abdülmecid: A Tale of Pianos, Telegraphs, Etiquette and Hunger

May 21, 2025

In 1847, the enlightened Abdülmecid, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, enjoyed a series of private piano performances by Franz Liszt, contributed generously to Irish famine relief, and green-lighted the laying down of Morse’s electrical telegraph, which he had test-run by...
Notes on Heuston Station & Kilmainham, Dublin

Notes on Heuston Station & Kilmainham, Dublin

Oct 13, 2024

Looking at stories of Captain Seán Heuston, St Maighneann, Oliver St John Gogarty, Grizelda Steevens, who founded a hospital, and Prior Keating’s defiance, alongside events like the Crimean Banquet and the Phoenix Park Tunnel. Become a member of Turtle’s History...
The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854

The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854

Oct 4, 2021

114 Irishmen rode out with the Light Brigade in their famous charge. Indeed, a third of the ‘British’ soldiers who fought in the Crimean War are reckoned to have been Irish, including 7,000 who died. This article looks at the charge, and those manifold...
John Walsh & the Connaught Rangers

John Walsh & the Connaught Rangers

Aug 11, 2021

Often considered the most Irish of regiments in the British army, ‘The Devil’s Own’ excelled from the Peninsula War through to the horrors of the First World War trenches. This story also looks at the career of John Walsh, a sergeant, whose career...

Ballintemple: Dark Knights, Blue Bells

Aug 11, 2021

BALLINTEMPLE: DARK KNIGHTS, BLUE BELLS Major Piers Butler had been living in America for close on 20 years when he embarked on his first return trip to his Irish homeland in the summer of 1785. Life on the 41-year-old Carlow man’s plantations in South Carolina had...