SeanNorris

Happy Birthday, John Ratzenberger Who would have guessed Postman Cliff Clavin from Cheers would be the 4th-most-successful actor in the world? He's appeared in films like Superman, The Empire Strikes Back... and 24 Pixar movies. His films have grossed over $18 BILLION!

You might like this Jamie @smart_ass1017

Today in 1776, Captain John Barry led the first capture of a British warship by a commissioned American vessel. It was a long way from Tacumshane, Co. Wexford, where he'd lived on a tenant farm before his family were evicted. Barry took to the sea early, learning his trade under his uncle Nicholas, a fishing skipper out of Rosslare. He worked his way up from cabin boy to seaman, and at sixteen emigrated to the Thirteen Colonies. By the time revolution came, he was already a seasoned captain and willing to aid the Continental Congress. He was given command of the brig USS Lexington, fourteen guns, in December 1775. His commission was signed by John Hancock, President of the Congress. The Lexington sailed on 31 March 1776, first slipping past the formidable British warship Roebuck in Delaware Bay, then heading for open water. Off the Capes of Virginia, six days out, Barry found his quarry. The Edward was a tender to HMS Liverpool, a support vessel rather than a fighting ship, but she was armed and she was not willing. The fight lasted an hour and twenty minutes. At the end of it, the British surrendered, and Barry brought the Edward into Philadelphia as the first Royal Navy prize to reach an American port. His report to Congress was brief and gave most of the credit to his crew. 'I have the pleasure to acquaint you,' he wrote, 'that at 1:00p.m. this day, I fell in with the sloop Edward belonging to the Liverpool frigate. We shattered her in a terrible manner as you will see. I have the pleasure to acquaint you that all our people behaved with much courage.' The citizens of Philadelphia turned out to celebrate. Even the dour John Adams remarked that the Americans were beginning to make some small figure in the naval way. Admiration was not confined to the American side. The British captain Andrew Snape Hammond, whose ships had been chasing Barry through the shallows of the Delaware, was more candid than most about the problem. "The North Side of Delaware Bay is encompassed with shoals and shallow water,' he wrote, 'and this passage Mr. Barry is at present master of. I have chased him several times but can never draw him into the sea". Barry went on to fight throughout the Revolution. He took part in the Battle of Trenton, leading a brigade of sailors and marines to Washington's aid. He authored the first American naval signal book. He was seriously wounded in 1781 while capturing HMS Atalanta and her sister ship Trepassey, and in March 1783 he and his crew fought and won the final naval battle of the entire war, off Cape Canaveral. When the new republic commissioned its officer corps, George Washington gave Barry commission number one. The title that has followed him ever since, Father of the American Navy, comes with some dispute, but not much. Back in Wexford, the statue on Crescent Quay was unveiled in 1956, delivered to the town by a US Navy destroyer. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy laid a wreath there. A Wexford man, honouring a Wexford man, on the quayside of the town where it had all begun. Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublin…

Reform UK and the Greens are hoovering up financially insecure voters. Major parties would be well advised to strengthen the middle-class and make housing heaps for affordable if they wanted to remain politically relevant in the long run. Source: economist.com/britain/2026/0…

@simongerman600 What is fascinating about this is the level of support for Labour among the very well off where one would not expect to find it.

I've got a couple of sock puppets for sale. Anyone interested in taking them off my hands?

When Michael Schumacher and the Ferrari pit crew performed a surprise pit stop on a random driver

Chinese firms hold stakes in dozens of European ports (often in strategically located hubs) ranging from minor shares to full ownership, embedding China deeply into Europe’s maritime infrastructure. Source: datavisualizations.heritage.org/defense/chines…

Peace bridge original watercolour on my ride down the Foyle cycle way mallettspallette.co.uk/shop/p/peacebr…

Instead of hiding his daughter with Down syndrome, Charles de Gaulle raised her proudly, and she became the heart of his life. When Charles de Gaulle died in 1970, he made a quiet request that surprised many. He did not want a grand state funeral in Paris. He asked to be buried in the small village of Colombey les Deux Églises, beside his daughter Anne. For him, that resting place mattered more than any monument. Anne was born on New Year’s Day in 1928, the youngest of three children. She had Down syndrome, a condition surrounded by fear and misinformation at the time. Doctors and society often blamed parents and urged families to hide children like her from public view. For families of power and status, sending such children away was considered normal. Charles and his wife Yvonne refused. They raised Anne at home with her brother Philippe and sister Élisabeth. There was no secrecy, no shame, no separation. She was simply their daughter. To the world, de Gaulle was distant and unyielding. A leader shaped by war, discipline, and command. But inside his home, Anne revealed a side few ever saw. With her, he laughed freely. He sang songs, told stories, and played games. Friends noticed that the man who rarely showed emotion softened completely in her presence. He called her my joy. Anne asked nothing of him except love, and in that simplicity, he found peace. She was never treated as fragile or inferior. She was respected fully, included always, and loved without condition. That love did not end within the family. After the war, Charles and Yvonne founded the Fondation Anne de Gaulle. They turned a château into a home for young women with intellectual disabilities, many of whom had been abandoned. At a time when support barely existed, they chose action over silence. Anne’s life was short. She died of pneumonia in 1948, just after turning twenty, in her father’s arms. In his grief, de Gaulle whispered that now she was like the others, finally free from the limits the world had placed on her. After her death, he carried her photograph everywhere. He believed her presence protected him, even during an assassination attempt years later. Whether faith or fate, he never doubted her importance in his life. Charles de Gaulle found his deepest calm not in leadership or victory, but in loving a child the world did not understand. His family showed that dignity is not about ability. It is about how fiercely we choose to care.

@Muinchille This whole thing about the Russian shipping passing back and forth out the West is a load of Hot air. I mean they spent the entire Cold War period up and down there and nobody batted an eyelid then.

Let's just see what happens when Russian shadow fleet tankers pass through the British economic zone to the north of Ireland and west of Scotland.... Oh, wait, nothing. The British do nothing because they have no lawful authority to stop them. Neither do they have the resources.

Ships have been regularly passing West of Ireland for a few hundred years at this point. I understand that they pass Britain to the North, too. Nobody in Ireland or Britain has any lawful authority to stop them, and this heel knows it.

Éirí Amach na Cásca ... Lyrics by Canon Charles O’Neil; the air is that of the Moorlough Shore, a traditional Irish ballad, set in County Tyrone, close to Strabane ... air.youtube.com/watch?v=keWnPZ…

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence (from The Concert in Central Park 1981) One of the greatest songs ever written.

Dublin City Council has approved a monument to be placed on O'Connell Street to honour Irish women of the revolutionary period rte.ie/news/ireland/2…

"If I stand behind the caution tape it can't get me"

Pope Leo's Easter message: "Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!"

It’s because of readers like Mike Flint that @thetimes has the greatest letters page in the world 🤣

Does it have a name @smart_ass1017 ?

Can a Tesla autonomously cross the Walkinstown Roundabout? We're about to find out.