Albert Einstein & The History Of Ireland’s First Nuclear Weapon
IRELAND has a proud history of neutrality and it is perhaps for this reason much of the details of Albert Einstein’s 1941 visit to Ireland has been erased from the history books.
What was to be but a short two day visit lasted three months and resulted in the construction of Ireland’s first and only nuclear bomb. WWN can now bring you the true story of Einstein’s visit to these shores and the weapon of mass destruction he built for us.
Famed for his passion for pacifism, Einstein was compelled to visit Ireland and see its neutrality first hand while en route to a series of lectures he was to give at Oxford University in England.
The Taoiseach of the day Eamon de Valera learned of Einstein’s passage to Ireland and invited him to an evening of conversation and conviviality in Dublin.
De Valera laid on a most impressive feast for his guest considering the lack of quality produce available in Ireland during wartime which Einstein greatly appreciated. They toured Dublin’s great whorehouses, not to partake in such practices, but having become wearied by the carrying around loose change all evening they decided to divest themselves of it while helping the local economy.
The Taoiseach made several requests of Einstein that evening, asking the great physicist to look into creating the most aerodynamically perfect hurley, which he would then send only to the Clare senior hurling team but Einstein declined.
After a detour into a noted and infamous opium emporium Einstein claimed to have witnessed visions of great cataclysmic horrors brought forth by war, de Valera too saw troubling sites in his hallucinations; a capital city obsessed with decent lattes and pulled pork.
Truly frightened of what he thought would be a Nazi reign of hipster culture de Valera struck Einstein in the head with an aerodynamically inferior hurley, knocking him out cold.
Einstein would wake in chains in a room de Valera had nicknamed An Dearg Seomra. It was here DeValera made demands of Einstein to create the basis of a foolproof defence against the Nazis: the atomic bomb.
The world famous physicist was forced to work around the clock for days on end until he completed a bomb of terrifying capabilities surviving only on a diet of chomp bars and Guinness.
Upon completion of the device Einstein was liberated and carried on his travels to Oxford, leaving de Valera in charge of the bomb along with its security code. In an act of defiance Einstein instituted a code that would irk de Valera: “Michael Collins is da best”.
The bomb as you may know remained unused as Hitler and his regime were ultimately defeated, but curiously de Valera had stated he would only use the bomb in the event of the Nazis occupying England as it ‘would have hit two birds with one stone’.
Subsequent political generations have kept these events as secretive as possible, but when some newspapers began sniffing around the story in the late 90s the Government of the day decided it was best to hide the bomb from public view.
The exact location of the warhead is not known, but it is probably not a coincidence that after quelling the story in the papers they would announce the construction of the Spire the following day.