Tag Archives: Nixon

ct6sm-vwyaaqrtb

Forty six years ago.

The National Archives of Ireland tweetz:

An official programme of the visit of President Richard Nixon to Ireland this week in 1970.

 

ct6rv6bxeaaqevw

 

To which, Kate Horgan responds:

…and here’s a protester throwing eggs at Nixon in Dublin…

Name that street, anyone?

Meanwhile…

“I was down on the quays. My friend and myself split half a dozen eggs between us. I wouldn’t let Martin stay with me because I felt that the guards might recognise me and if they pulled me in, they’d pull him in too.

“I disguised myself, I made like an American tourist. I had dark glasses, a headscarf and a trench coat, none of which I ever wore normally. We had heard that the secret service had thrown themselves about so much that the guards had said ‘Stuff this, let them look after their own president’ type of thing.

“I knew I wouldn’t get Nixon because I have no aim so I decided to aim for the windscreen. I did an overarm lob and I got it dead centre on the windscreen. I was so proud of myself. Then I was grabbed by the guard and hauled across the bridge with a clatter of an old woman saying ‘throw her in the river, throw her in the river,’” she remembers.

Conall O Fátharta, in the Irish Examiner, in October 2010 reporteing on a new RTE documentary concerning Nixon’s visit to Ireland called The Forgotten Visit.

Nixon’s ‘forgotten visit’ to be recalled in documentary (Irish Examiner, October 2, 2010)

NIXONSCAMPAIGNnixonmonumentEveryone old enough can remember where they were in October 1970.

President Nixon’s visit to reconnect with his Irish roots was a story that touched the hearts of every Irish person both here and ‘abroad’.

The first Irish Quaker President, to set foot on Irish soil.

Nixon had Irish connections on both the maternal and paternal side of the family. His Kildare connections came from his Mother, Hannah Milhouse. Her ancestor Thomas Milhouse of Timahoe emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1729.The Milhouses were members of a Quaker community that were prominent in the Timahoe area throughout the early 18th century.

This  October, Broadsheet will commemorate the visit with a month-long range of activities and poorly researched articles on Nixon, what he means to the Irish and what his legacy can teach our political leaders.

Very little, as it turns out, but you won’t want to miss it.

An American Presidential Visit  to County Kildare (Seamus Cullen)

The Forgotten Visit: Documentary (RTE R1)

To get a moon into the Aras.

Document of the Month from The National Archive.

And this is how we treated his gift.

Also on that day btw:

July 23, 1973: Claiming executive privilege, Nixon refuses to turn over subpoened tapes to the Senate Watergate Committee, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC). (Key Events In The Presidency of Richard Nixon)

NIXON in IRELAND

In his first book, award-winning radio and TV presenter Dominic Hyde tells the fascinating story of the iconic president Richard Nixon’s visit to Ireland. The idolized, handsome and glamorous Nixon was the great-great-great-grandson of Irish immigrants and the first Quaker to be elected as President of the United States.

He was indifferent to his Irish heritage and in June 1970 made an historic three-day trip to his homeland, which he called the “most forgettable days of my life’.

Tragically, four years later he was cut down in his prime and forced to resign the presidency. In this fully illustrated book, Hyde reveals the huge effect Nixon’s visit had on Ireland – a country that at the time was largely agrarian and extremely stupid.

Hyde evaluates whether the well-loved president, whose ‘Watergate’ years some believe would have heralded a golden age, actually inspired Ireland to reinvent itself and instilled pride in the Irish people, or whether the myth of Nixon just left behind an idyllic dream of what could have been.