Larry Marley
Laurence Marley (c. 1945 – 2 April 1987) was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) member from Ardoyne, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was one of the masterminds behind the 1983 mass escape of republican prisoners from the Maze Prison, where Marley was imprisoned at the time, although he did not participate in the break-out. Marley was described by British journalist Peter Taylor as having been a close friend of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams. Marley was shot dead by an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) unit two years after his release from the Maze. His shooting was in retaliation for the killing of leading UVF member John Bingham the previous September by the Ardoyne IRA. IRA Lawrence Marley was born in Belfast in July 1945 and was raised a Roman Catholic. He grew up in the Ardoyne area in the north of the city and attended Holy Cross Boy's Primary and St. Gabriel's Secondary schools. He became involved with the IRA in the early stages of the Troubles, and was a member of a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ardoyne
Ardoyne () is a working class and mainly Roman Catholic Church, Catholic and Irish republicanism, Irish republican district in north Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1920 the adjacent area of Marrowbone saw at multiple days of communal violence between Protestants and Catholics (see: The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922)). Ardoyne gained notoriety due to the large number of incidents during The Troubles. Foundation The village of Ardoyne was founded in 1815 when businessman Michael Andrews moved his Damask factory from Little York Street. In addition to the factory he built a large house for himself and thirty houses for employees to live in. More mills were built around the growing village and by 1850 there were three additional mills in the area, providing jobs and houses for a growing population. The house in which Andrews lived in is no longer there. It is now the site of the Crumlin Star Social Club, located in Balholm Drive at the top of Ardoyne. The Troubles Crumlin Road ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brendan McFarlane
Brendan McFarlane (1951 – 21 February 2025) was an Irish republican activist. Born into a Roman Catholic family, he was brought up in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast, Northern Ireland. At 16, he left Belfast to train as a priest in a north Wales seminary. He joined the Provisional IRA in 1969. In 1976, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for his leading role in the Bayardo Bar attack which left 4 civilians dead, injuring other 50 others. Early years McFarlane was brought up in a strongly religious Catholic family in the Irish Republican Ardoyne area of North Belfast. He served as an altar boy at the local church, and at the age of 17 joined a missionary school in Wales, where he began training to become a priest. McFarlane joined the Provisional IRA when he was 18 years old, following the outbreak of The Troubles, after he had witnessed the violent disturbances first-hand in 1969. Bayardo Bar attack In 1976, McFarlane was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1981 Hunger Strike
The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Irish republicanism, Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976 when the British government withdrew Special Category Status (prisoner of war rather than criminal status) for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days. The second hunger strike took place in 1981 and was a showdown between the prisoners and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. One hunger striker, Bobby Sands, was April 1981 Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election, elected as a member of parliament during the strike, prompting media interest from around the world. The strike was calle ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Land Rovers
Land Rover is a brand of predominantly four-wheel drive, off-road capable vehicles, owned by British multinational car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), since 2008 a subsidiary of India's Tata Motors. JLR builds Land Rovers in Brazil, China, India, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. The Land Rover name was created in 1948 by the Rover Company for a utilitarian 4WD off-road vehicle. Currently, the Land Rover range consists solely of upmarket and luxury sport utility vehicles. Land Rover was granted a Royal Warrant by King George VI in 1951. In 2001, it received a Queen's Award for Enterprise for outstanding contribution to international trade. Over time, Land Rover grew into its own brand, and for a while also a company, encompassing a consistently growing range of four-wheel drive, off-road capable models. Starting with the much more upmarket 1970 Range Rover, and subsequent introductions of the mid-range Discovery and entry-level Freelander line, in 1989 and 1997, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Peter Taylor (journalist)
Peter Robert Taylor is a British journalist, writer and documentary-maker. He is best known for his coverage of the political and armed conflict in Northern Ireland, widely known as the Troubles, and for his investigation of Al Qaeda and Islamist extremism in the wake of 9/11. He also covers the issue of smoking and health and the politics of tobacco for which he was awarded the WHO Gold Medal for Services to Public Health. He has written books and researched, written and presented television documentaries over a period of more than forty years. In 2014, Taylor was awarded both a Royal Television Society lifetime achievement award and a BAFTA special award. Early life Taylor was born in 1942 in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, and was educated at Scarborough High School for Boys, a state boys' grammar school, followed by Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read classics, Modern History and Social and Political Sciences. Career Taylor's career reporting on political ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Automatic Shotgun
An automatic shotgun is an automatic firearm that fires shotgun shells (thereby making it a shotgun) and uses some of the energy of each shot to automatically cycle the action and load a new round. It will fire repeatedly until the trigger is released or ammunition runs out. Automatic shotguns have a very limited range, but provide tremendous firepower at close range. Design Automatic shotguns generally employ mechanisms very similar to other kinds of automatic weapons. There are several methods of operation, with the most common being gas, recoil, and blowback operated: * Gas operation uses the pressure of the gas (created by the burning propellant) behind the projectile to unlock the bolt assembly and then move it rearward. * Blowback operation uses the backward force applied by the projectile (due to Newton's third law of motion) to retract the bolt assembly. * Recoil operation uses the backward force to retract the entire barrel and bolt assembly, which unlock at the rea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Browning Hi-Power
The Browning Hi-Power is a single-action, semi-automatic pistol available in the 9×19mm Parabellum and .40 S&W calibers. It was based on a design by American firearms inventor John Browning, and completed by Dieudonné Saive at FN Herstal. Browning died in 1926, several years before the design was finalized. FN Herstal named it the "High Power" in allusion to the 13-round magazine capacity, almost twice that of other designs at the time, such as the Walther P38 or Colt M1911. During World War II, Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany and the FN factory was used by the Wehrmacht to build the pistols for their military, under the designation "9mm Pistole 640(b)". FN Herstal continued to build guns for the Allied forces by moving their production line to a John Inglis and Company plant in Canada, where the name was changed to "Hi Power". The name change was kept even after production returned to Belgium. The pistol is often referred to as an HP or BHP, and the terms P-35 an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ulster Volunteer Force
The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) is an Ulster loyalism, Ulster loyalist paramilitary group based in Northern Ireland. Formed in 1965, it first emerged in 1966. Its first leader was Gusty Spence, a former Royal Ulster Rifles soldier from Northern Ireland. The group undertook Timeline of Ulster Volunteer Force actions, an armed campaign of almost thirty years during The Troubles. It declared a ceasefire in 1994 and officially ended its campaign in 2007, although some of its members have continued to engage in violence and criminal activities. The group is a proscribed organisation and is on the List of designated terrorist organizations, terrorist organisation list of the United Kingdom. The UVF's declared goals were to combat Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitaries – particularly the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) – and to maintain Northern Ireland's status as part of the United Kingdom. It was responsible for more than 500 deaths. The vast majority (m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Royal Ulster Constabulary
The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 as a successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Richard Doherty, ''The Thin Green Line – The History of the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC'', pp. 5, 17, 27, 93, 134, 271; Pen & Sword Books; following the partition of Ireland. At its peak the force had around 8,500 officers, with a further 4,500 who were members of the RUC Reserve. The RUC policed Northern Ireland from the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence until after the turn of the 21st century and played a major role in the Troubles between the 1960s and the 1990s. Due to the threat from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who saw the RUC as enforcing British rule, the force was heavily armed and militarised. Officers routinely carried submachine guns and assault rifles, travelled in armoured vehicles, and were based in heavily fortified police stations.Weitzer, Ronald. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by length of tenure, longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold the position. As prime minister, she implemented policies that came to be known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist before becoming a Barristers in England and Wales, barrister. She was List of MPs elected in the 1959 United Kingdom general election, elected Member of Parliament for Finchley (UK Parliament constituency), Finc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gerry Kelly
Gerard Kelly (; born 5 April 1953) is an Irish republican politician and former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer who played a leading role in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998. He is currently a member of Sinn Féin's Ard Chomhairle (National Executive) and a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for North Belfast. Early life Gerard Francis Kelly was born on 5 April 1953 on Raglan Street in the Lower Falls area of Belfast. He went to St Finian's Primary School on the Falls Road. His family was not particularly political; however his grandfather was a supporter of the Labour Party. Kelly later went to St Peter's Secondary School, obtaining his O-Levels, before receiving his first job, aged 17, in the Civil Service as a clerical officer with the Belfast Corporation Electricity Department. In 1971, Kelly joined the militant republican youth organisation, Fianna Éireann. He was later arrested in August 1971 a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bobby Storey
Robert Storey (11 April 1956 – 21 June 2020) was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Prior to an 18-year conviction for possessing a rifle, he also spent time on remand for a variety of charges and in total served 20 years in prison. He also played a key role in the Maze Prison escape, the biggest prison break in British penal history. Early life The family was originally from the Marrowbone area, on the Oldpark Road in North Belfast. The family had to move when Storey was very young due to Ulster loyalist attacks on the district, moving to Manor Street, an interface area also in North Belfast. Storey's uncle was boxing trainer Gerry Storey and his father, also called Bobby, was involved in the defence of the area in the 1970s when Catholics were threatened by loyalists. Storey was one of four children. He had two brothers, Seamus and Brian, and a sister Geraldine. Seamus and Bobby senior had been arrested after a raid on th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |