Daily Archives: November 15, 2021

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We all saw doubletake-inducing news last week that The National Medal of Honor Museum, a museum in Arlington, Texas that exists for "honoring and preserving the history of the highest military decoration awarded for valor in combat", would be partnering with WWE to create visuals and media for the museum's storytelling experience. It's a strange combination for any number of reasons, not the least of which is WWE has a shaky track record with patriotic presentations at best and a highly questionable one at worst. With that in mind, let's take a look at some of WWE's most odd attempts at patriotism as we try to imagine what they'll create for this solemn museum.

The Undertaker has always been a hard sell as far as wrestling characters go, but thanks to decent storylines throughout the years and especially thanks toMark Callaway's steadfast devotion to the character, Taker became one of the all-time iconic WWE superstars.

But what happens when you take a creepy, gothic, undead mystical monster and have him take pride in his country? Awkwardness, you get awkwardness. And it was indeed awkward at the lead-in to the 1993Survivor Series when "the Deadman" officially joinedLex Luger's team of "All Americans" to take on Yokozunaand his team of "Foreign Fanatics" at the pay per view event.

Taker opened his trenchcoat to reveal the United States flag lining the inside and then cut a promo about American pride, still in his grim deadman voice, mind you.

At the onset of "Hulkamania", Hulk Hogan and the WWF debuted a new theme song for the Hulkster, replacing Survivor'sEye Of The Tiger, which he'd been using since co-starring inRocky III. This new song would of course beRick Derringer's immortal classic,Real American. And to accompany this instant hit, WWE gifted us one of their greatest camp accomplishments in history, theReal American music video.

The imagery here is stunning, opening withJ.F.K.'s iconic inaugural speech and then transitioning to baby pictures of the Hulkster, with star wipes that almost make it look as if he were born from the flag. We see the Hulkster grow and learn to play guitar, something that would of course help America win the Cold War.

From there, it's a virtual onslaught of "oh my god!" We see aPower Rangers-sized Hogan rocking out (or barely playing, depending on how closely you're watching) on a guitar as he towers over iconic American settings. We see arguably the most childish editing in motion picture history, as when the lyrics sing of "crashing down", we see that literally happen with footage of a building collapsing. We see magic folks, pure magic.

Then we are treated to images of the founding fathers and other monumental historical figures, such asMartin Luther King Jr., all juxtaposed against Hogan. It would be an amazing bit of humor if it weren't for the fact that we know Hogan andVince McMahon actually believed in what they were putting up there.

The Pice de rsistance of the video comes towards the end when set against footage of protestors burning the U.S. flag in some foreign country, Hogan stands there holding a picture of Muammar Gaddafi, the former Lybian dictator, and crunches it up in his hands, before then ripping off his shirt and flexing.

TheReal American music video is an amazing watch for any number of reasons, but it is indeed a moment where WWE did patriotism in an incredibly odd way.

WWE has often been criticized for their gung-ho "the show must go on!" practices, such as the night ofOver The Edgein 1999 whenOwen Hart died live at the show, or more recently with the company's powering through with the COVID-19 pandemic.

A time when they received a hefty amount of this brand of criticism was on September 13, 2001, only two days after the largest terrorist attacks on the U.S. in history, when WWE refused to cancel an episode ofSmackDownand instead went forward with a live edition of the usually pre-taped show.

To give you some frame of reference if you are too young to remember those grim days following 9/11, there was nothing on TV except news coverage. Every sports league paused, every entertainment industry production stopped; it was a literal ghost town on television. And there were reasons for that. Not only were we in a state of shock and horror after witnessing something we assumed could never happen to us, but there were genuine security concerns as well. No one knew what could or would happen next and with that in mind, every major U.S. institution was willing to hit the brakes for a moment and wait for guidance from law enforcement. Everyone except for WWE, that is.

They forged ahead with a show that they felt was a big patriotic "rah-rah!" display of American bravery and pride, complete with an opening speech by Vince McMahon and the return of the red, white, and blue ropes. But as a viewer, it was an incredibly uncomfortable two hours of wrestling. There was this haunting feeling of "this doesn't feel right" and a knowing inside that despite their patriotic dressing of this, WWE was forcing this show to fruition for financial reasons.

The lasting images of the show will be the solo videos from the WWE superstars, where they each looked into the camera and reflected on what they were thinking/feeling following the attacks. Most of them were solemn, respectful, and honest thoughts from the wrestlers that were probably similar to the things we were all thinking and saying at the time. And then there wasStephanie McMahon

In a still to this day jaw-dropping rant, one that WWE has tried to wipe from existence, by the way, Stephanie McMahon somehow tried to equate the 1994 federal steroid trial with her father to the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Just try to think about that. Try to see where she's coming from. You can't, can you? Well, now you know how some people felt watching WWE push forward with a show only two days after 9/11.

Alright, so, you knowSgt. Slaughter, right? The wrestler whose entire existence is defined by his proudly being a United States military man. The guy who was so synonymous with being an amazing U.S. soldier, that they actually made him into aG.I. Joe. Yeah, so now imagine that guy turning his back on America and joining sides with a country that we are actually at war with, all so that Hulk Hogan, the muscle-head surfer dude, can look like the "real" American hero next to him on the WWE's biggest stage. This wasWrestlemania VII.

Slaughter turned on America and instead became a soldier ofSaddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator. This was an unfathomable event for fans and actually generated some of the most intense heel heat in WWE history, due to America being involved in the Gulf War with Iraq at the time.

After defeatingThe Ultimate Warrior at theRoyal Rumble, the same night Hulk Hogan would win the titular match, thus setting up aWrestlemania battle between the expatriate Slaughter and the "real American" Hogan.

WWE didn't shy away from any of the real-world comparisons to the match and heaped as much red, white, and blue onto it as humanly possible, all leading to theWrestlemania main event, where of course, the Hulkster was triumphant and won the belt from the evil Iraqi Slaughter, before running around the ring waving old glory to end the show.

This was always a strange one, as it was both arguably distasteful to incorporate a real war where people were dying into a fictional wrestling storyline and also an odd bit of character assassination to get Hogan over. If they really wanted the U.S. vs Iraq story, why not just use the already well-established Slaughter as the hero representing America? It would have been more logical than having this guy who bled red, white, and blue turn on America and join a foreign dictatorship for no real reason except the see-through one of making Hogan look even better.

The WWE is home to a lot of things. Insightful, well-thought-out debates on American foreign affairs are not one of them. This was a hideous mistake they made on the April 14, 2003 episode ofRaw, wherein some very weak attempt to be edgy/pound that blind patriotism drum, the company held an in-ring debate (moderated by Jerry"The King"Lawler, of course)between Harvard University Graduate/young wrestlerChris Nowinski and pro wrestling's poster boy of intelligence and vocabulary,Scott Steineron the recently-launched U.S. invasion of Iraq. It went about as well as you can imagine

Nowinski played the "heel" here, by being opposed to the military action in the Middle East and arguing now-widely agreed with points about America not needing to invade any foreign government that they don't agree with, our reliance on foreign oil, and the faults of theGeorge W.Bush administration.

Steiner, wearing a chain-link mesh headdress, then provides a retort that was frighteningly stupid, even considering his surroundings. He provides a rant on America being the best, free speech, assholes, terrorism, revenge, and The Dixie Chicks,all of which can of course be found in any highly-regarded dynamic political debate throughout history.

And as Steiner basically reads off conservative bumper stickers, the crowd goes wild for it, cheering him as their hero and booing the cautious intelligent guy out of the building.

The whole thing ends in violence (not as violent as theTrump/Biden debates, but still pretty raucous) and we are left with a segment that has aged as poorly as anything WWE has ever produced. There are truly few moments in WWE history that can be looked back upon as more purely ignorant and stained by the truth of time than this one. It was bad then and my god is it worse now.

So that's what I've got for you folks. I know there are countless other incidents or things WWE has done that involve patriotism (or their warped view of it) that are either completely laughable (Mr. America) or have aged as something incredibly foul (any instance in their long history of "scary foreign guy" racism). Here, I tried to focus on the ones that have stood out to me or that I think some people may have forgotten about over time.

I hope you enjoyed this trip down WWE memory lane!

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WWE & Patriotism: Their Most Odd Moments Throughout History - Bleeding Cool News

The earliest attempts to record the nations history took the form of accounts of military campaigns, summaries of state and federal legislative activity, dispatches from the frontier and other narrowly focused reports. In the 19th century, these were replaced by a master narrative of the colonial and founding era, best exemplified by the father of American history, George Bancroft, in his History of the United States, From the Discovery of the American Continent. Published in 10 volumes from the 1830s through the 1870s, Bancrofts opus is generally seen as the first comprehensive history of the country, and its influence was incalculable. Bancrofts ambition was to synthesize American history into a grand and glorious epic. He viewed the European colonists who settled the continent as acting out a divine plan and the revolution as an almost purely philosophical act, undertaken to model self-government for all the world.

The scholarly effort to revise this narrative began in the early 20th century with the work of the Progressive historians, most notably Charles A. Beard, who tried to show that the founders were motivated not exclusively by idealism and virtue but also by their pocketbooks. Suppose, Beard asked in 1913, our fundamental law was not the product of an abstraction known as the whole people, but of a group of economic interests which must have expected beneficial results from its adoption? Though the Progressives work was influential, they were bitterly attacked for their theories, which shocked many Americans. SCAVENGERS, HYENA-LIKE, DESECRATE THE GRAVES OF THE DEAD PATRIOTS WE REVERE, blared one headline in an Ohio newspaper.

As the Cold War dawned, it became clear that this school could not provide the necessary inspiration for an America that envisioned itself a defender of global freedom and democracy. The Beardian approach was beaten back by the counter-Progressive or Consensus school, which emphasized the founders shared values and played down class conflict. Among Consensus historians, a keen sense of national purpose was evident, as well as an eagerness to disavow the whiff of Marxism in the progressive narrative and re-establish the founders idealism. In 1950, the Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison lamented that the Progressives were robbing the people of their heroes and insulting their folk-memory of the great figures whom they admired. Seven years later, one of his former students, Edmund S. Morgan, published The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789, a key text of this era (described by one reviewer at the time as having the brilliant hue of the era of Eisenhower prosperity). Morgan stressed the revolution as a search for principles that led to a nation committed to liberty and equality.

By the 1960s, the pendulum was ready to swing the other way. A group of scholars identified variously as Neo-Progressive historians, New Left historians or social historians challenged the old paradigm, turning their focus to the lives of common people in colonial society and U.S. history more broadly. Earlier generations primarily studied elites, who left a copious archive of written material. Because the subjects of the new history laborers, seamen, enslaved people, women, Indigenous people produced relatively little writing of their own, many of these scholars turned instead to large data sets like tax lists, real estate inventories and other public records to illuminate the lives of what were sometimes called the inarticulate masses. This novel approach set aside the central assumption of traditional history, what might be called the doctrine of implicit importance, wrote the historian Jack P. Greene in a 1975 article in The Times. From the perspective supplied by the new history, it has become clear that the experience of women, children, servants, slaves and other neglected groups are quite as integral to a comprehensive understanding of the past as that of lawyers, lords and ministers of state.

An explosion of new research resulted, transforming the field of American history. One of the most significant developments was an increased attention to Black history and the role of slavery. For more than a century, a profession dominated by white men had mostly consigned these subjects to the sidelines. Bancroft had seen slavery as problematic an anomaly in a democratic country but mostly because it empowered a Southern planter elite he considered corrupt, lazy and aristocratic. Beard and the other Progressives hadnt focused much on slavery, either. Until the 1950s, the institution was treated in canonical works of American history as an aberration best addressed minimally if at all. When it was taken up for close study, as in Ulrich B. Phillipss 1918 book, American Negro Slavery, it was seen as an inefficient enterprise sustained by benevolent masters to whom enslaved people felt mostly gratitude. That began to change in the 1950s and 1960s, as works by Herbert Aptheker, Stanley Elkins, Philip S. Foner, John Hope Franklin, Eugene D. Genovese, Benjamin Quarles, Kenneth M. Stampp, C. Vann Woodward and many others transformed the mainstream view of slavery.

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The 1619 Project and the Long Battle Over U.S. History - The New York Times

The Industrial Revolution, which began roughly in the second half of the 1700s and stretched into the early 1800s, was a period of enormous change in Europe and America. The invention of new technologies, from mechanized looms for weaving cloth and the steam-powered locomotive to improvements in iron smelting, transformed what had been largely rural societies of farmers and craftsmen who made goods by hand. Many people moved from the countryside into fast-growing cities, where they worked in factories filled with machinery.

While the Industrial Revolution created economic growth and offered new opportunities, that progress came with significant downsides, from damage to the environment and health and safety hazards to squalid living conditions for workers and their families. Historians say that many of these problems persisted and grew in the Second Industrial Revolution, another period of rapid change that began in the late 1800s.

Here are a few of the most significant negative effects of the Industrial Revolution.

WATCH: America: The Story of Us: Cities on HISTORY Vault

As cities grew during the Industrial Revolution, there wasnt enough housing for all the new inhabitants, who were jammed into squalid inner-city neighborhoods as more affluent residents fled to the suburbs. In the 1830s, Dr. William Henry Duncan, a government health official in Liverpool, England, surveyed living conditions and found that a third of the citys population lived in cellars of houses, which had earthen floors and no ventilation or sanitation. As many as 16 people were living in a single room and sharing a single privy. The lack of clean water and gutters overflowing with sewage from basement cesspits made workers and their families vulnerable to infectious diseases such as cholera.

In his 1832 study entitled Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester, physician and social reformer James Phillips Kay described the meager diet of the British industrial citys lowly-paid laborers, who subsisted on a breakfast of tea or coffee with a little bread, and a midday meal that typically consisted of boiled potatoes, melted lard and butter, sometimes with a few pieces of fried fatty bacon mixed in. After finishing work, laborers might have some more tea, often mingled with spirits and a little bread, or else oatmeal and potatoes again. As a result of malnutrition, Kay wrote, workers frequently suffered from problems with their stomachs and bowels, lost weight, and had skin that was pale, leaden-colored, or of the yellow hue.

Workers who came from the countryside to the cities had to adjust to a very different rhythm of existence, with little personal autonomy. They had to arrive when the factory whistle blew, or else face being locked out and losing their pay, and even being forced to pay fines.

Once on the job, they couldnt freely move around or catch a breather if they needed one, since that might necessitate shutting down a machine. Unlike craftsmen in rural towns, their days often consisted of having to perform repetitive tasks, and continual pressure to keep upfaster pace, more supervision, less pride, as Peter N. Stearns, a historian at George Mason University, explains. As Stearns describes in his 2013 book The Industrial Revolution in World History, when the workday finally was done, they didnt have much time or energy left for any sort of recreation. To make matters worse, city officials often banned festivals and other activities that theyd once enjoyed in rural villages. Instead, workers often spent their leisure time at the neighborhood tavern, where alcohol provided an escape from the tedium of their lives.

Without much in the way of safety regulation, factories of the Industrial Revolution could be horrifyingly hazardous. As Peter Capuano details in his 2015 book Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body, workers faced the constant risk of losing a hand in the machinery. A contemporary newspaper account described the grisly injuries suffered in 1830 by millworker Daniel Buckley, whose left hand was caught and lacerated, and his fingers crushed before his coworkers could stop the equipment. He eventually died as a result of the trauma.

Mines of the era, which supplied the coal needed to keep steam-powered machines running, had terrible accidents as well. David M. Turners and Daniel Blackies 2018 book Disability in the Industrial Revolution describes a gas explosion at a coal mine that left 36-year-old James Jackson with severe burns on his face, neck, chest, hands and arms, as well as internal injuries. He was in such awful shape that he required opium to cope with the excruciating pain. After six weeks of recuperation, remarkably, a doctor decided that he was fit to return to work, but probably with permanent scars from the ordeal.

While children worked prior to the Industrial Revolution, the rapid growth of factors created such a demand that poor youth and orphans were plucked from Londons poorhouses and housed in mill dormitories, while they worked long hours and were deprived of education. Compelled to do dangerous adult jobs, children often suffered horrifying fates.

John Browns expose A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy, published in 1832, describes a 10-year-old girl named Mary Richards whose apron became caught in the machinery in a textile mill. In an instant, the poor girl was drawn by an irresistible force and dashed on the floor, Brown wrote. She uttered the most heart-rending shrieks.

University of Alberta history professor Beverly Lemire sees the exploitation of child labor in a systematic and sustained way, the use of which catalyzed industrial production, as the worst negative effect of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution helped establish patterns of gender inequality in the workplace that lasted in the eras that followed. Laura L. Frader, a retired professor of history at Northeastern University and author ofThe Industrial Revolution: A History in Documents, notes that factory owners often paid women only half of what men got for the same work, based on the false assumption that women didnt need to support families, and were only working for pin money that a husband might give them to pay for non-essential personal items.

Discrimination against and stereotyping of women workers continued into the second Industrial Revolution. The myth that women had nimble fingers and that they could withstand repetitive, mindless work better than men led to the displacement of men in white collar jobs such as office work, and the assignment of such jobs to women after the 1870s when the typewriter was introduced, Frader says.

While office work was less dangerous and better paid, it locked women into yet another category of womens work, from which it was hard to escape, Frader explains.

Pollution from copper factories in Cornwall, England, as depicted in an 1887 engraving.

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The Industrial Revolution was powered by burning coal, and big industrial cities began pumping vast quantities of pollution into the atmosphere. Londons concentration of suspended particulate matter rose dramatically between 1760 and 1830, as this chart from Our World In Data illustrates. Pollution in Manchester was so awful that writer Hugh Miller noted the lurid gloom of the atmosphere that overhangs it, and described the innumerable chimneys [that] come in view, tall and dim in the dun haze, each bearing atop its own pennon of darkness.

Air pollution continued to rise in the 1800s, causing respiratory illness and higher death rates in areas that burned more coal. Worse yet, the burning of fossil fuel pumped carbon into the atmosphere. A study published in 2016 in Nature suggests that climate change driven by human activity began as early as the 1830s.

Despite all these ills, the Industrial Revolution had positive effects, such as creating economic growth and making goods more available. It also helped lead to the rise of a prosperous middle class that grabbed some of the economic power once held by aristocrats, and led to the rise of specialized jobs in industry.

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7 Negative Effects of the Industrial Revolution - History

For 30 years, Northern Ireland was scarred by a period of deadly sectarian violence known as the Troubles. This explosive era was fraught with car bombings, riots and revenge killings that ran from the late 1960s through the late 1990s. The Troubles were seeded by centuries of conflict between predominantly Catholic Ireland and predominantly Protestant England. Tensions flared into violence in the late 1960s,leaving some3,600 people dead and more than 30,000injured.

Northern Ireland police, including members of the Ulster Special Constabulary, guarding a road near the Fermanagh/Cavan border (circa 1920s).

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The origins of the Troubles date back to centuries of warfare in which the predominantly Catholic people of Ireland attempted to break free of British (overwhelmingly Protestant) rule. In 1921, the Irish successfully fought for independence and Ireland was partitioned into two countries: the Irish Free State, which was almost entirely Catholic, and the smaller Republic of Northern Ireland, which was mostly Protestant with a Catholic minority.

While Ireland was fully independent, Northern Ireland remained under British rule, and the Catholic communities in cities like Belfast and Derry (legally called Londonderry)complained of discrimination and unfair treatment by the Protestant-controlled government and police forces. In time, two opposing forces coalesced in Northern Ireland largely along sectarian lines: the Catholic nationalists versus the Protestant loyalists.

READ MORE: How Northern Ireland Became Part of the United Kingdom

In the 1960s, a new generation of politically and socially conscious young Catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland started looking to the civil rights movement in America as a model for ending what they saw as brazen anti-Catholic discrimination in their home country.

There was systematic discrimination in housing and jobs, says James Smyth, an emeritus history professor at the University of Notre Dame who grew up in Belfast. The biggest employer in Belfast was the shipyard, but it had a 95 percent Protestant workforce. In the city of Derry, which had a two-thirds Catholic majority, the voting districts had been gerrymandered so badly that it was controlled politically by [Protestant] loyalists for 50 years.

Young nationalist leaders like John Hume, Austin Currie and Bernadette Devlin refused to accept the status quo. They saw what was happening in the United States and how peaceful mass protests had drawn attention to the plight of Black Americans living under segregation and Jim Crow.

They modeled themselves on the American civil rights movement to the extent that one of the songs sung in Northern Ireland was We Shall Overcome, says Smyth, who edited a 2017 book titled Remembering the Troubles: Contesting the Recent Past in Northern Ireland.

A petrol bomb which was thrown at a police van (left) is pictured burning out in Rossville Street, Derry, Northern Ireland, October 1968.

Cain,Patterson and Thomas/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

On October 5, 1968, a protest march was planned along Duke Street in Derry. The nationalist activists wanted to draw attention to discriminatory housing policies that resulted in de facto segregation along sectarian and religious lines.

The march was banned by the Northern Ireland government, but protestors defied the order and gathered on October 5 with signs reading One man, one vote! and Smash sectarianism!

The crowd started to move, but was barricaded by a line of police from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) brandishing batons. The police charged the protestors and simultaneously cut off their retreat. TV cameras captured disturbing footage of RUC officers beating marchers with batons and chaos in the streets.

October 5, 1968 was when the Troubles began, argues Smyth, and those TV images are etched in the peoples memory.

The police crackdown on October 5, 1968 ratcheted up tensions between Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists and set the stage for more violent clashes.

On New Year's Day, 1969, nationalist activists took a page from Martin Luther King Jr.s historic March on Selma and organized a march from Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, to Derry, the capital of injustice, as Bernadette Devlin called it. The route took them through known loyalist strongholds, where the threat of violence was palpable.

The RUC provided a police escort for the nationalist protestors throughout the multi-day march until they reached Burntollet Bridge outside of Derry. At that point, protestors recall, the police put on their helmets and shields as if expecting trouble. Thats when a loyalist mob started raining rocks down on the protestors.

The attackers, estimated at 300 loyalists, swarmed the bridge wielding clubs and iron bars. Some of them wore the white armbands of the B-Specials, an auxiliary police unit of the RUC. While bloodied protestors fled into the freezing river for protection, the RUC officers stood aside and did nothing to protect them, says Smyth.

The ambush at Burntollet Bridge was eerily similar to the events of March 7, 1965, when peaceful Selma marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were violently beaten back by a line of white-helmeted Alabama state troopers armed with tear gas, night sticks and whips.

READ MORE: Irish Republican Army: The Troubles, Attacks, Hunger Strike

Rioters throwing rocks and stones as trouble flared following the Apprentice Boys parade through the streets on Derry, Northern Ireland, August 13, 1969.

Gary Weaser/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Some historians peg the real beginning of the Troubles to the events of August 1969, when a loyalist parade in Derry sparked three days of rioting and violent reprisals.

Across Northern Ireland, says Smyth, loyalists groups regularly organized parades to commemorate Protestant military victories dating back to the 17th century. In Derry, the local chapter was known as the Apprentice Boys and they planned a patriotic loyalist parade on August 12 that ran directly past a predominantly Catholic part of town called the Bogside.

The Bogsiders saw the Apprentice Boys parade as a direct provocation and prepared for a violent confrontation, barricading streets and readying Molotov cocktails. As expected, nationalist Bogsiders clashed with the parading Apprentice Boys and RUC officers rushed in to quell the rioting. They were met with violent resistance by the Bogsiders, who hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails.

The Battle of the Bogside, as its known, raged for three days, but some of the worst damage was inflicted in Belfast, where loyalist mobs aided by the B-Specials swarmed Catholic neighborhoods and burned 1,500 homes to the ground.

On August 14, the overwhelmed prime minister of Northern Ireland called on the British government to send in troops to restore order. It was the beginning of a decades-long deployment in Northern Ireland by the British military.

Basically the entire Northern Ireland state collapsed over a period of three or four days, says Smyth. They couldnt maintain order, so the British had to come in.

Demonstrators run after tear gas explosions on "Bloody Sunday," January 30, 1972 in Northern Ireland.

PL Gould/Getty Images

The British troops were initially welcomed by the Catholic nationalists as potential protectors, but the military soon instituted a controversial policy of internment without trial, after which hundreds of suspected IRA members were rounded up and imprisoned without due process.

On January 30, 1972, Catholic nationalists in Derry organized a march to protest the British internment policy, but the military was called in to shut it down. When protestors didnt disperse, the troops opened fire with rubber bullets and then live rounds. Thirteen protestors were killed and 17 wounded in a tragedy known as Bloody Sunday.

Its amazing that more people werent killed, says Smyth, who was among the protestors that day in Derry.

During the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Northern Ireland suffered dozens of car bombings and sectarian attacks perpetrated by paramilitary groups on both sides like the Provisional IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force. Hundreds of civilians were among the dead.

The Troubles came to an end, at least officially, with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which created a framework for political power-sharing and an end to decades of violence.

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How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland - History