Around 2030 the gate bell rang, and the Military Police officer on guard opened the gate a little for a civilian who said he had a parcel to deliver to the officer-in-charge. The unidentified man told the MP to open the gate fully and put his hands up. At this point the IRA team appeared from both inside and outside the fort, confiscating the weapons of the sentry and MP.
The two hostages were then forced to act as human shields for the two intruders to the guardroom where the remaining soldiers were caught by surprise and gave up without a fight. The captives heard 'many' heavy lorries coming and going from the depot. At 2210 hrs the IRA locked the prisoners in the so-called 'C' Magazine area which the raiders had completely emptied.
It was 2250 by the time a party of soldiers was sent from Portobello Barracks to find out what was happening at the fort. They managed to catch two of the raiders.
A total of 1,084,000 rounds of ammunition had been taken and removed in thirteen lorries with no casualties.
Over the next three to four days a large, nationwide hunt was organised to find the stolen items.
On 1 January 1940 it was reported that almost three-quarters of the ammunition had been found, a total of 850,000 rounds;
In addition, some IRA volunteers who were caught storing the ammunition were arrested.
The raid was not good for the IRA. The massive hunt to find what was stolen turned up all and more. It caused IRA Volunteers to be arrested.
The day after the raid the Irish Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland, at an emergency meeting of the Dáil ("government") introduced the Emergency Powers bill to allow internment ("taking prisoner"), Military Tribunal, and executions for IRA members. It became the Emergency Powers Act.
Vestigial organ
Vestigial organs are organs of the body which are smaller and simpler than those in related species. They have lost, or almost lost their original feature.
Vestigiality is evidence for evolution, since they only make sense if evolution has occurred. They were one of the puzzles of pre-Darwinian natural history. The puzzle vanished once biologists realised they once were working adaptations, in the ancestors of present-day animals.
They occur in animals (and plants) which have changed their style of life from their ancestors. Thus snakes lost their legs as their system of movement changed. But one type of snake – the boas – have vestigial rear legs and pelvis. The human vermiform appendix is another example. That was much larger, and stored microbes which produced cellulase to break down plant cell walls. Leaves are the main diet of apes, but they are not a main part of man's diet. Cellulose cannot be digested by our species.
An unused organ usually degenerates, and becomes smaller or vanishes altogether. Thus amphibia living in dark caves lose their sight and their body colour. Mutations pile up. All structures need energy for their development, maintenance, and weight. This, and the risk of disease in the part (e.g., infection, cancer), provide some selection for the removal of parts which no longer help an organism's fitness.
The human appendix had selection against it because of deaths from appendicitis. Appendicitis was untreatable until modern times. The selection pressure was probably weak, because most cases occur after the age of peak fertility.
Observations on the cave-dwelling amphipod "Gammarus minus" showed active selection against their vestigial eyes. When mating, the males remain on their females for a week or so after fertilisation, guarding them against other males. The eye sizes of paired males were compared with those of unpaired males. The eye sizes of paired males were smaller than the unpaired ones. Obviously, on average, the paired males would have higher fertility than the unpaired males. The selection gradient was estimated as –0.30, which means the selection for small eyes was quite strong. The researchers supposed that the loss of sight freed more of the nervous system to process other sensory inputs.
Occasionally, selection turns vestigial organs to a new function. Thus the mammalian ear ossicles were once bones in the jaw of early proto-mammals, the Therapsida. The halteres of flies is a perfect example. The word exaptation was coined for this phenomenon.
All functions and structures develop and change because they affect the biological fitness of the organism. They make it more or less likely that individuals reproduce and contribute genes to the next generation. So, for example, an ability of a frog to survive the bite of its local venomous snake increases its fitness. But if it lives in an area where the snake does not, then it reduces its fitness. This is because it bears the "cost" of a complicated mechanism without getting any advantage in survival and reproduction. It works the other way round, too. Snakes which eat toxic prey have to use ways to survive the prey's toxins. The snake's digestion and metabolism is slower, and they move around more slowly. See rough-skinned newt and garter snake.
Everything has a cost: either it uses up energy or its structure occupies space that might be used differently.
Boscastle
Boscastle is a village and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, United Kingdom, and 14 miles (23 km) south of Bude and 5 miles (8 km) north-east of Tintagel.
The name of the village derives from Bottreaux Castle, a 12th-century fortress, of which little survives. There is no church in Boscastle but there are churches at Forrabury and Minster. Boscastle harbour is a natural inlet protected by two stone harbour walls built in 1584 by Sir Richard Grenville. The oldest part of Boscastle surrounds the harbour; more modern residential building extends up the valleys of the Rivers Valency and Jordan.
A flash flood on 16 August 2004, caused extensive damage to the village. Residents were trapped in houses and elsewhere as the roads turned into rivers. In the largest peacetime rescue operation ever launched in the UK, 91 people were rescued and there were no deaths.
Richard Grenville
Sir Richard Grenville (1542 – 1591) was an English sailor, sea captain and explorer. He took part in the early English attempts to settle the New World. He was in the fight against the Spanish Armada. He died in 1591 at the Battle of Flores, fighting against overwhelming odds, and refusing to surrender his ship, the "Revenge", to the far more numerous Spanish.
Sir Richard Grenville was a British naval commander.
He was born of an old Cornish family in about 1541.
His grandfather, Sir Richard, was a marshal of Calais during the time of Henry VIII.
Richard Grenville's father commanded and lost his life in the "Mary Rose" in 1545.
At an early age Richard Grenville served in Hungary under the emperor Maximilian against the Turks.
Tintagel
Tintagel, formerly Trevena, is a civil parish and village on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is about 5 miles from Boscastle and 6 miles from Camelford. The population of the parish is 1,820 people. The village and nearby Tintagel Castle are associated with the legends surrounding King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. The village has, in recent times, become attractive to tourists from many parts of the world and is one of the most-visited places in Britain. The modern-day village of Tintagel was known as Trevena until the Post Office decided to call it 'Tintagel' in the mid 19th century (until then Tintagel had always been the name of the headland and of the parish).
In the village is the 'Old Post Office', which dates from the 14th century. It became a post office during the 19th century, and is now owned by the National Trust. There are three churches in Tintagel, the Anglican church of St Materiana on the cliffs, and Methodist and Roman Catholic churches in the village.
Scholars have found it hard to explain the origin of 'Tintagel' as a name: the most likely one to be correct is from Norman French, rather than from Cornish.