1 October 1939. Sir Winston Churchill, in a BBC radio broadcast, referred to Russia as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” The phrase captured the difficulty for the Western world in comprehending the intentions of Joseph Stalin at that time. winstonchurchill.org/publications...

30 September 420. St. Jerome, the Bible translator, dies near Bethlehem. Jerome is known mostly for his endeavour to translate most of the Bible into Latin from the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. St. Jerome is considered the patron saint of translators. #InternationalTranslationDay

St Raphael in the war memorial window at Nacton, Suffolk, 1920, probably by Clayton & Bell. Today's the feast of St Michael, St Gabriel and St Raphael.

Happy Michaelmas … traditionally, marking the beginning of the university year.

The parable of Dives and Lazarus, today's gospel. In the background, Dives entertains his rich friends to a feast. In the foreground, Lazarus stands in the garb of a leper, bowl and clapper in hand, the dogs licking his sores. A Flemish roundel of c1530 now at Earsham, Norfolk.

PHOTO OF THE DAY. A Paris cinema in 1958. 📷 alamy images

28 September 1928. Scottish medical researcher Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first broadly effective antibiotic. www.acs.org/education/wh...

27 September 1962. Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a book exposing the harmful environmental impacts of pesticides. The book is credited with sparking the modern environmental movement.

26 September 1665. Height of the Great Plague of London as 7,165 people die throughout the previous week. www.rmg.co.uk/stories/roya...

2025 is turning out to be a mast year for fruit and nuts.

25 September 1976. Larry Mullen Jr., a 14-year-old student and aspiring drummer, posted a note on his school's bulletin board at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, looking for musicians to form a band, which became the nascent U2. www.bbc.com/news/world-e...

24 September 1827. Catherine McAuley opened the first House of Mercy on Baggot Street, Dublin, a date now celebrated annually as Mercy Day. This event marked the beginning of her work in caring for poor and homeless women and children, and it led to the eventual founding of the Sisters of Mercy.

24 September 2015. Pope Francis became the first pontiff to address the U.S. Congress, where he named Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton as exemplary Americans who embody the spirit of the nation. www.npr.org/sections/the...:

23 September 1949. Truman made headlines with an announcement that the Soviet Union had tested a nuclear device several weeks earlier. The White House did not explain how the United States had detected the test, which had occurred on 29 August 1949 at Semipalatinsk, in northeastern Kazakhstan.

22 September 1692. The last mass execution of the Salem Witch Trials took place, with eight people hanged at Gallows Hill in Salem, Massachusetts.

21 September 1973. Blue Poles (aka as Number 11, 1952), the iconic painting by abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, was acquired by the Australian government for A$1.4 million. This record-setting price for an artwork sparked a media sensation and controversy both in Australia and US.

20 September 2021. A rare first edition of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein, sold for $1.17 million at a Christie's auction in New York. It set a new world record for the highest price paid for a printed work by a woman. www.theguardian.com/books/2021/s...

Honoured to have been invited to open this retrospective exhibition by Cork artist John Adams for #culturenight2025

18 September 1948. Ralph Bunche became the acting UN mediator in Palestine after the assassination of Folke Bernadotte. Bunche successfully mediated an armistice between four Arab states and Israel in 1949 and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.

17 September 1683. In his letter to the Royal Society, Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first to report the existence of bacteria, which he described as moving "little animalcules" observed in the plaque from his own teeth.

Today's the feast of St Cyprian, 3rd Century North African bishop and writer. He stands on the left by William Morris with Edward Burne-Jones's St Alban on the right, in glass of 1864 in Bradford Cathedral.

16 September 1620. The Mayflower departs Plymouth, England, with 102 Pilgrims and about 30 crew for the New World [O.S. Sep].

15 September 2024. Storm Boris triggered "catastrophic" flooding in central and eastern Europe between 13-16 September 2024, causing widespread damage, fatalities, and displacement across Poland, Lower Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania.

From the Nurses’ Aids Series of nursing textbooks written by nurse tutors. The series was conceived in the dark days of 1940 as Britain faced the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. The series represent a time when nurse education was a hospital-based apprenticeship as much as profession.

14 September 2001. Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital.

13 September 1989. Archbishop Desmond Tutu led an estimated 30,000 people in a large, peaceful anti-apartheid march through Cape Town, South Africa. This multiracial demonstration marked a pivotal moment in the transition to democracy in South Africa.

12 September 1758. French astronomer Charles Messier mistakes the Crab Nebula for a comet while searching for Halley's Comet, leading him to begin his Messier Catalogue. science.nasa.gov/mission/hubb...

#CorkUniversityPress100 an inspirational symposium highlighting the history of a university press through its seminal publications.

PHOTO OF THE DAY: A storm cloud hovering ominously above New York's Twin Towers (Monday 10 September 2001). 📷 Evan Kuz

11 September 2001. 9/11, a terrorist attack on the U.S. that led to a decade of wars. Steve Reich, WTC 9/11 (2010) for string quartet and pre-recorded tape. youtu.be/e49h2zUKEts?...

10 September 1919. New York City held a massive victory parade to welcome home General John J. Pershing and 25,000 soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) after World War I. The celebration on Fifth Avenue was a landmark event. www.politico.com/story/2012/0...

9 September 2019. Discovery of John Milton's own copy of Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623 survives with his annotations www.theguardian.com/books/2019/s...

8 September 1565. The Great Siege of Malta concluded with a victory for the Knights of St. John and the Maltese people, successfully breaking the Ottoman Empire's massive invasion after months of fierce fighting.

7 September 1812. Napoleon's Grande Armée engaged and defeated the Russian Army of Tsar Alexander I at the Battle of Borodino near Moscow. The Russian army under General Mikhail Kutuzov was able to retreat, leaving Moscow open for occupation but remaining a potent fighting force.

6 September 1914. The First Battle of the Marne, fought until 12 September. French and British stopped the German western advance. Battle of the Marne as a turning point in the war from Commonwealth War Graves Commission: lnkd.in/eMDPwjZj

5 September 1972. Munich massacre during the summer Olympics. Pre-dawn, eight Palestinian fedayeen (fighters for the faith) entered the Israeli residence at the Olympic Village, taking nine Israeli athletes hostage and killing two www.irishtimes.com/sport/athlet...

4 September 476 AD. A date traditionally associated with the fall of the Western Roman Empire when Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the Germanic general Odoacer, who forced the young emperor to abdicate following defeat at the Battle of Ravenna.

3 September 2019. A previously unpublished text by John Locke, “Reasons for Tolerating Papists Equally with Others” (1667-68), an argument for religious toleration, is discovered at St John’s College, Annapolis. It sparked interest in links between toleration and the good society.

2 September 1945. Japan formally surrendered in ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, ending World War II. prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2015/08/27/s...

31 August 1837. Ralph Waldo Emerson gives his famous "The American Scholar" speech to Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, declares American literary independence from Europe. courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-jeffers...

30 August 2013. Irish poet Seamus Heaney died at age 74 in Dublin. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. American poet Robert Lowell famously called him "the most important Irish poet since Yeats". www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

30 August 1590. In Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu entered Edo Castle. This event was a crucial step in the unification of Japan and the eventual establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which began in 1603 with Ieyasu as the first shogun.

29 August 1833. British Government passed a Factory Act to improve conditions for children working in factories. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/re...

28 August 1789. German-born British astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Enceladus, Saturn's sixth-largest moon, using his newly built, 47-inch "Great Forty-Foot" telescope. www.nasa.gov/history/235-...

27 August 1883. The volcanic island of Krakatoa in Indonesia experienced a series of colossal explosions, marking the climax of its cataclysmic eruption. www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the...

PHOTO OF THE DAY. Children from London, hiding in a trench in Kent, watching German planes overhead, during the Battle of Britain (1049). 📷 John Topham (1940).

Alone of the 20 figures on the Cawston screen, St Bartholomew holds a vellum scroll. Vellum is animal skin, usually - well, I'm sure you get the point!