Portal:Ireland

Harland and Wolff Heavy Industries is a heavy industries and shipbuilders located in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Formed in 1861 by Edward James Harland (1831–1895) and Hamburg-born Gustav Wilhelm Wolff (1834–1913, in the UK from age 14), Harland had bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island, in which he was employed as general manager in 1858. The shipyard has built many types of ships continuously since then, the most famous being the RMS Titanic. Their main business today is ship repair and conversion work, ship design and bridge building. Harland and Wolff also owns the world's largest dry dock, which is in Belfast. Belfast's skyline is still dominated today by Harland and Wolff's famous twin cranes Samson and Goliath, built in 1974 and 1969 respectively.

The company was nationalised in 1977 but subsequently bought back from the British government in 1989 in a management/employee buy-out in partnership with the Norwegian shipping magnate Fred Olsen, leading to a new company called Harland and Wolff Holdings Plc. Faced with competitive pressures (especially as regards shipbuilding), Harland and Wolff have sought to shift and broaden their portfolio, focus less on shipbuilding and more on design and structural engineering, as well as ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for other projects to do with metal engineering and construction. This led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and also in the Republic of Ireland. Read more...

Louis le Brocquy (born November 10, 1916) is an Irish painter. Born in Dublin, Louis le Brocquy's work has received much international attention and many accolades in a career that spans seventy years of creative practice. In 1956, he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale, winning the Premio Acquisito Internationale with A Family (coll. National Gallery of Ireland), subsequently included in the historic exhibition Fifty Years of Modern Art at Brussels, World Fair 1958. The same year he married the Irish painter Anne Madden and left London to work in the French Midi.

Le Brocquy is widely acclaimed for his evocative "Portrait ‘Heads" of literary figures and fellow artists, which include William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and his friends Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon and Seamus Heaney, in recent years le Brocquy's early "Tinker" subjects and Grey period "Family" paintings, have attracted headline attention on the international marketplace marking him as the fourth painter in Ireland and Britain to be evaluated within a very select group of artists, alongside Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Francis Bacon.

In Ireland, he is honoured as the first and only living painter to be included in the Permanent Irish Collection of the National Gallery of Ireland. To mark le Brocquy's 90th birthday some eleven one-person exhibitions were organised at home and abroad including the National Gallery of Ireland; the Tate; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork; and the Hunt Museum, Limerick. Read more...

Waterford (Irish: Port Láirge [pˠɔɾˠt̪ˠ ˈl̪ˠaːɾʲ(ə)ɟə]) is a city in County Waterford in the south-east of Ireland. It is located within the province of Munster. The city is situated at the head of Waterford Harbour. It is the oldest and the fifth most populous city in the Republic of Ireland. It is the ninth most populous settlement on the island of Ireland. According to the 2022 census, 60,079 people live in the city, with a wider metropolitan population of 82,963.

Historically the site of a Viking settlement, Waterford's medieval defensive walls and fortifications include the 13th or 14th century Reginald's Tower. The medieval city was attacked several times, and earned the motto Urbs Intacta Manet ('The Untaken City'), after repelling one such 15th century siege. Waterford is known for its former glassmaking industry, including at the Waterford Crystal factory, with decorative glass being manufactured in the city from 1783 until early 2009 when the factory closed following the receivership of Waterford Wedgwood plc. The Waterford Crystal visitor centre was opened, in the city's Viking Quarter, in 2010 and resumed production under new ownership. As of the 21st century, Waterford is the county town of County Waterford and the local government authority is Waterford City and County Council. (Full article...)

• ...the Choctaw tribe in America donated $170 towards famine relief in Ireland in 1847?
• ...that Sir Francis Beaufort, creator of the famed Beaufort scale, was born in Navan in County Meath? Or that his restored Georgian home in Navan was controversially demolished in the 1990s to build a road?
• ...that Newgrange is a 5000 year old passage tomb pre-dating the pyramids and Stonehenge? The builders had astronomical knowledge to precisely illumininate the internal passages of the tomb during the winter solstice?
• ...that the Ó Siochfhradha brothers were Irish Language teachers and writers from Dingle?