At school for some reason I had no teaching at all with regards to the Northern Ireland conflict which until last week left me pretty much clueless to who/what the basic people were and what they stood for! OK, I know who's who and what they want but I didn't know *why* or, for instance, that the Potato Famine was a key point in the history.

I spent a morning reading up and found some good sites with good "potted" histories:

http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/irehist.html
http://members.tripod.com/~JerryDesmond/index-2.html

Gareth