May

May 28
1779 Poet and songwriter Thomas Moore was born in Dublin. He wrote The Minstrel Boy, Believe Me If All Those Young Enduring Charms, The Last Rose of Summer and The Meeting of the Waters.

May 29
2002 Ireland receives many original manuscripts by James Joyce which have been stored in Paris, where he lived for many years. Many of these have never been seen before. They include drafts of several of Joyce’s works including Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses, as well as notebooks and over 500 hand-written notes dating from the early 1900s by Joyce.

May 30
1817 Michael William Balfe (1808 –1870) was a child prodigy, and one of Ireland’s greatest composers. On 30th May in 1817, when he was nine, he gave his first public performance playing the violin. He is best remembered for The Bohemian Girl. Its best-known aria is “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls”. Notable recordings by Dame Joan Sutherland, and Irish singer Enya (video).

May 31
RMS Titanic was built in Belfast, Ireland, for White Star Lines and the hull was launched on May 31, 1911. The Titanic length was 882.5 feet from stem to stern, 93 feet in breadth, and 92 feet from keel to top deck (59 feet from water-line to top deck). It weighed 46328 gross register tonnage. At the time of its construction, it was the largest moving object in the world. It was completed in Southampton and its maiden voyage was 10th April 1912.