JANUARY 4: On this day in 1961 Barry Fitzgerald, the Irish actor, died. He was born William Joseph Shields in 1888 in Dublin and became a civil servant in the Board of Works. In his spare time he acted in amateur drama productions, and this led to his joining the Abbey Theatre on a part-time basis. So that his Board of Works colleagues would not know of his Abbey activities, he took the name Barry Fitzpatrick as his stage identity. A printing error in a programme gave his name as Barry Fitzgerald, and he kept this new name.

In 1929 he went fulltime to the Abbey and became such a renowned character actor that he was invited to Hollywood. There this diminutive man achieved star status, making a big impression in such films as 'The Dawn Patrol', 'How Green Was My Valley', 'None But The Lonely Heart' and 'Union Station.'

He won an Academy Award for best supporting actor in 'Going My Way.' Irish people affectionately remember him for his roguish role in 'The Quiet Man.' In 1960 he came home to Ireland. Here he sailed in Dublin Bay and played golf in Delgany Golf Club. It was his intention to return to films, but death intervened.

JANUARY 4: On this day in 1643, Isaac Newton was born. Three years later, his widowed mother remarried, leaving him to be reared by her mother.

After he had secured his master's degree at Cambridge in 1668, he went on to establish the principles of the system of natural science that has since dominated Western thought. His book 'Principia' has sometimes been called the greatest single contribution ever made by any man. Newton is popularly associated with the law of gravitation. According to the story, he walked one day in an orchard wondering what is the power that keeps the moon forever swinging in its orbit round the earth, like a ball at the end of a string that a youngster keeps whirling about. When he saw an apple fall from a tree, it led him to establish his law of gravitation.

In his later years he became a Member of Parliament. He seems not to have made much of a mark in the House of Commons. Only once is he recorded as having spoken in the House...and then only to ask to have a window opened.

Newton was not too impressed with all that he had achieved. On his deathbed in 1727 he said, 'I've been like a boy playing on the seashore, finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than the ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me'.

JANUARY 28: On this day in 1986 just 73 seconds after take-off the space shuttle Challenger had soared to a height of nine miles and a speed of 2,900 feet per second when it exploded into a massive orange fireball. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.

Millions stared in horror at their television screens. Thousands watched from the viewing platforms at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and they included several students who had come to cheer on their teacher, Christa McAuliffe. She was to have been the first civilian in space.

JANUARY 28: on this day in 1760 Matthew Carey was born in Dublin. He became a printer but had to flee Ireland because he criticised the conditions under which ordinary people had to live.

He went to France and there met the French statesman Marquis de Lafayette and the American Benjamin Franklin, two men who were later to be of immense help to him. Carey stayed in France for about a year before feeling that it was safe to return to his native land. For some years he ran a successful printing business, Then it happened again. He criticised the authorities, and the authorities did not like it. So he had to go into hiding.

Realising that he would never again be allowed to operate a printing business in Ireland, Carey decided to emigrate. The ports were however being watched. So in hiding he remained until a ship called 'America' arrived in Dublin. Friends smuggled the 24-year-old Carey on board disguised as a woman. Throughout the long voyage, he had to behave like a woman. It was for him a nervewracking trip because, if he was caught, he was almost certain to be sent home on the next ship to face a lengthy imprisonment. Eventually he arrived in Philadelphia. There he established a printing and publishing firm with help from Franklin and from Lafayette who had come to America on a visit. It became the leading firm in America in that field, and it was said that 'no other firm published so many works of native production.'

He never forgot his homeland. Ceaselessly he toiled in the interests of the Irish who emigrated to America, and he was mainly responsible for ensuring that the Irish were properly treated in the construction of the huge US railways. By the time of his death in 1839, the man who had crossed the Atlantic in the guise of a woman was one of the wealthiest and most respected Catholic businessmen in America.