Tag Archives: history

Early South Dublin Man Cave

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029fcThe entrance to Decco’s Cave, Whiterock Beach, Killiney,

He had a ‘crying chair’ made of stones.

Sibling of Daedalus writes:

In the early 20th century, White Rock Cave, Killiney/Dalkey (above) was the home of a mysterious hermit who slept in a hammock.

Some say that he was a veteran of the Boer War, others of the Great War; others that he was an eccentric member of the Kavanagh family who lived nearby at Retreat Cottage. But whatever his origin and history, the name by which he was popularly known as was ‘Decco’, and his cave as ‘Decco’s Cave’.

The cave was a great source of mystery to local children. He had a habit of chasing marauding infant intruders up the beach with an axe; perhaps this was where the other rumour, of White Rock Cave being the home of flesh-eating bandits, originated?

Nowadays Decco is long dead, you’re more likely to find cannabis than cannibals in White Rock Cave and the only mysterious hermit in the locality is Enya, who can afford a grander bolthole.

 

Pic: DunLaoghaire.ie

No Time To Move The Deckchairs

image007-1-2-4-3The Lusitania.

Sister ship of you know who.

There wasn’t enough time to separate the rich and poor.

Sibling of Daedalus writes:

Contemporary news photos [above] showing survivors of the Lusitania, torpedoed off the Old Head of Kinsale on the afternoon of May 7th, 1915.
The liner took between 15-18 minutes to sink, and though there were lots of lifeboats, enough for everyone, the crew wasn’t trained in lowering them and there was no policy of ‘women and children first’.
1198 passengers and crew, among them 94 children and 31 babies, drowned in the disaster.
Those who survived were brought to hotels in Cobh, where some of them caught pneumonia, adding further to the casualties.
The German captain who fired the torpedo, Walter Schweiger, was killed in action a year and a half after the disaster.
The sinking, much used by the British and Americans for propaganda purposes (ghoulish example below), contributed to the subsequent American decision to enter the war.

 

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Pics National Library of Congress

Historical Superimpositions

knowwherestand1knowwherestand2knowwherestand4knowwherestand3A series of superimpositions created for a 2010 History Channel promo by photographer Seth Taras entitled ‘Know Where You Stand’. Taras recreated the angles of images taken of various historical events around the world in an early example of the ‘then and now’ trope.

Above: the 1937 Hindenburg Crash, the Berlin Wall in 1989, the 1944 Normandy Landings and Hitler in Paris in 1940.

petapixel

Dublin At War

Het Leven, a Dutch news magazine that lasted between1906-1941, was a pioneer of photo-journalism

These images, from the magazine’s archive housed at the Netherlands state digital library, were unearthed by the ever-resourceful Sibling of Daedalus, who, like us, had never seen them before.

The collection covers the period1920-1922.

Can you help identify the locations?

Het Leven Collection (Geheugenvannederland)

Bonus ‘Het Leven photo for Cork readers: Twilight’s Edward Cullen a pouting Michael Collins: