© 2025 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).

Printed from https://www.damninteresting.com/there-once-was-a-man-called-curley/

Editor's Note: Twenty years ago today, we published our very first Damn Interesting writing .

In the village of Bellewstown, about 15 miles north of Dublin, Ireland, they still talk about what Barney Curley did back in 1975. It all happened during a horse race on the Hill of Crockafotha. It was just an amateur jockey race on a lazy summer day in a sleepy, remote town; it wasn’t meant to be anything special. The last thing anyone expected was to witness the making of history.

The race in question occurred on 26 June 1975. Barney Curley⁠—our protagonist, if you could call him that⁠—owned one of the horses running later that day. But at the racecourse, as preparations were being made, Curley was nowhere to be seen.…