One of the most important post-American Civil War sculptors, a world traveller and a native of Abbeyleix. Lancelot (Launt) Thompson was born in Abbeyleix, then Queens County, on February 8, 1833. His mother, who had no means of support as the potato famine ravaged Ireland, moved to Albany, New York in 1847. As a teen, […]

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There’s a possibility that Bram Stoker’s inspiration for his gothic masterpiece, Dracula, might stem from Irish folklore and not Romanian history. Vlad the Impaler was thought to be the original vampire but it may have been a fifth century chieftain in Derry, known as Abhartach that sparked Stoker’s idea for the Count. Back at the […]

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A fascinating theme running through the study of history seems to be the domino effect of seemingly unrelated events on one another. For example how did a volcanic eruption in 1815 lead to a change in the way women dressed in the 1900s, and how was all of this facilitated by the advent of the […]

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