Women invade Dublin's male-only swimming spot

The Forty Foot is a famous sea swimming spot in Ireland’s capital city of Dublin. For hundreds of years, only men had the privilege of bathing in its deep, icy waters – naked if they chose.That was until one day in the summer of 1974, when a group of women decided to plot an invasion.At a time when Irish women couldn’t even access contraception, why did this group of hardy feminists decide to fight this particular battle for equality?Rosie Blunt speaks to poet, writer, women’s rights activist, and swimmer Mary Dorcey.(Photo: Woman diving at the Forty Foot in 2019. Credit: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

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Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest, the disastrous D-Day rehearsal, and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.