February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Patrick Markey
Billy’s payoff
Billy Fogarty got it right. And now he’s £30,000 better off.
The self-employed County Kildare plasterer, Fogarty entered a newspaper competition last May to predict the results of the recent hurling and football championships.
He’d forgotten all about the competition until eight days before the recent All Ireland football championship between Meath and Cork, reports the Leinster Leader. Meath won, and Fogarty scored his cash prize. In fact, every time Meath scored Fogarty pocketed another £2,500.
"I’d done it before but never had any luck," he said. "I know it’s easy to say it today but I was confident."
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As yet the Naas man has no plans on how he will spend his winnings.
"I’ve no plans, but I’m sure I’ll have no problems," he said.
A real sucker
It’s the sort of rescue story you would expect from Africa, Asia or South America.
But not Tyrone.
A Strabane man was told he was "lucky to get out alive" after firefighters pulled him from a quicksand-type mud hole just as his head was sucked under, according to the Belfast Telegraph.
The man, who was being treated for shock and exposure, completely submerged into the swampy morass, leaving rescuers scrabbling to bring him back up in the Canal Link area.
Firefighters were already in the vicinity dealing with a fire on waste ground.
As he was climbing over a 10-foot fence to get to the fire, one of the firefighters heard the man’s calls for help.
By the time they got to the scene, the man’s girlfriend was trying in vain to help him from an embankment above. Rescuers hauled out the unlucky victim with ropes.
A police spokesman said: "The man was extremely fortunate to get out alive as his head was submerged at one stage in deep mud. It is understood the couple had earlier been keeping warm at the fire and left it when the fire service arrived."
DUBLIN – A call for urgent action to protect the remains of the newly discovered wreck of the huge ship Carpathia off the south coast has been made by Fine Gael’s heritage spokesman.
The Cunard liner is famous for rescuing 705 survivors, many of them Irish, from the doomed Titanic.
The Carpathia was sunk after being torpedoed twice by a German U-boat
100 miles southwest of Baltimore, Co Cork, while traveling from Liverpool to America in July 1918 — six years after it raced to the rescue of the sinking Titanic.
Five people died, but 215 people escaped as the 13,000-ton Carpathia went to its watery grave after the submarine attack. The wreck was found lying upright in 600 feet of water this summer by a treasure hunting company.
Mayo TD Enda Kenny wants an order made declaring the wreck a national
monument as it is within the Irish area of the continental shelf. "The Carpathia is of historical importance to Ireland and should be preserved," he said. "There is growing interest in these wrecks and people are going to have a lot more time and capacity to get down and look at them in the future."
— Andrew Bushe