The Emergency: 'On This Day In Irish History'

An event which is to shape the nation and indeed the world for generations to come takes place when a hen lays a chocolate egg in Swords. The hen’s owner, a modest Dublin farmer, attempts to hide the abomination from the eyes of Her Majesty’s Egg Inspector Royal by wrapping it in shiny paper and trying to pass it off as a rebel explosive device. However Lieut-Colonel Richard Albumen-Hallmark is not fooled and goes on to become a successful confectioner in the colonies.

Larry Gogan is born.

The first shipment of mini skirts to hit the heartland of Ireland arrives at Mary’s Woolly Boutique in Longford Town. She is besieged by irate female patrons demanding their money back and complaining that not all of the item has been included. Luckily many local farmers find them snug neck warmers and financial disaster is averted.

The town of Athlone is hit by a money laundering crisis during the harsh economy of the War Years. To preserve scarce currency there are only fourteen pound notes and twenty-five 10 shilling notes in circulation in the state at the time. The crisis in Athlone occurs when due to over-fastidiousness on the part of the citizens, the ten bob note then circulating in the area becomes washed completely blank. There is widespread confusion with people buying large tracts of land, newspapers and even politicians with blank pieces of paper. It brings Athlone disgrace at the time but ironically is adopted 60 years later as the main way of doing business in Ireland.

An eccentric landlord seeking to provide work for poor locals decides to erect the worlds largest spindle on a patch of land near Navan. It collapses within minutes causing massive destruction which is today known as Trim.

The landowner, The Rt. Honourable John Ffoulkes-O’Reilly later achieves success and renown with the erection of the world’s smallest spindle in Lancashire, England. He is arrested and hanged for wasting police time.

The Fethard Futurists are formed and celebrate with a trip in their new time machine back to 1985. They are shocked to discover that Charles J. Haughey, on whom all major religions in the 31st Century are based , is not a flaxen haired goddess with a Sword of Truth and the Pomegranate of Vigour, but a small dodgy-looking politician with silent shoes in a pricey suit.

They are about to return to their own time to shatter the illusions of a hundred generations, but are waylaid and persuaded to invest in offshore holdings instead. Some years later when the the shite hits the fan they are called to give evidence before a tribunal but scarper back to the future the day before they are due in court.

The Gardai seize a container load of acid in Cork harbour. It is in the early days of drug policing and several men are badly burned during the operation.

A hurling match takes place between two small Leinster clubs: The Roundwood Heroes and the prophetically named Padraig Pearse Invigilators.

Hurleys and sliothars are in short supply and so the protagonists instead hurl the roots of ash trees indiscriminately at passers-by. This results in the lowest ever injury record at a hurling match with no players being injured and ten per cent fewer spectators than usual drawing blood. It is still known as the Officially Most Fantastic Game Altogether.

This is the day on which a shortage of brown shoes reaches crisis proportions in many parts of Ireland. In Limerick schoolchildren are forced to go to school wearing badgers. Elsewhere individual County Councils cope as best they can.

Some order the painting of schoolchildren’s feet with brown kreosote while one County Council brings in emergency bye-laws requiring inhabitants of Louth to run everywhere in order to make the absence of brown shoes a bit more difficult to notice.

It will be several days before relief arrives in the form of an emergency shipment of uncomfortable slip-ons from Poland.

The great Irish Shakespearean actor Diarmuid Ó’Tooby dies on stage during a production of Hamlet in a tent in Killarney. Ó’Tooby had been the first Irishman to play Othello in a controversial production of Twelfth Night. Colleagues and family remark that the manner of his end is “Exactly how he would have wanted it except for the bit where he was stabbed to death in front of an audience of twelve people and a weasel”.