History
Long Kesh was a target in Operation Green (Ireland), a second front to Operation Sea Lion which was the planned Nazi invasion of the UK. Long Kesh was to be destroyed by German paratroopers while Aldergrove, Nutts Corner and Langford Lodge were to be captured.
From 1971 the then disused base became the Long Kesh Detention Centre. It was here that republicans were interned after August 9, 1971, when security forces launched dawn raids to arrest 452 known or suspected members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). From 1976 these makeshift structures were abandoned in favour of the newly built H-Blocks in what became HM Prison Maze.
Read more about this topic: RAF Long Kesh
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)