Fri | Nov 22, 2024

Heritage

Great Jamaican Stories

For the month of October, Heritage Month, The Gleaner will be telling stories, some that are already out there, others that are not well known. Some of these are mentioned in our everyday sayings, but we have never stopped to think about the origin ... the backstory. 

Haile Selassie I cries as pandemonium erupts at Palisadoes Airport

Published:Wednesday | October 30, 2024 | 12:08 AMPaul H. Williams/Gleaner Writer

ON WEDNESDAY, April 20, 1966, people started to gather at the Palisadoes Airport, near Port Royal. They were anticipating the arrival of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, the following day. They were mainly Rastafarians...

Church trip ends in doom, destruction, and death

Published:Tuesday | October 29, 2024 | 12:06 AMPaul H. Williams/Gleaner Writer

ON SEPTEMBER 1, 1957, hundreds of members of the Holy Name Society of St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church boarded a train at the Kingston Railway Station for an all-day excursion to Montego Bay in the company of their leader, the Reverend Father...

Lewis Galdy cheated death twice

Published:Friday | October 25, 2024 | 12:08 AMPaul H. Williams/Gleaner Writer

WHEN GENERAL Robert Venables and Admiral William Penn failed to capture Hispaniola from the Spaniards for the British Crown, they decided to take Jamaica instead as a consolation prize to appease Oliver Cromwell, the then de facto ruler of Great...

Three-Fingered Jack rises from notoriety to fame

Published:Thursday | October 24, 2024 | 12:08 AMPaul H. Williams/Gleaner Writer

SOME PEOPLE’S bad reputation is so rich that it propels them to fame. Jack Mansong was one of such people. Years after he died, he was still the ‘talk of the town’, a folk hero whose story has become the inspiration for many creative endeavours. It...

Captured Africans heading to Jamaica thrown overboard

Published:Wednesday | October 23, 2024 | 12:07 AMPaul H. Williams/Gleaner Writer

IT IS a story from our slavery past that many Jamaicans have never heard about, yet a plaque was mounted at Black River, St Elizabeth, on Friday, December 28, 2007 by the Institute of Jamaica, in collaboration with the Jamaica National Bicentenary...

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