On June 16, 1904, James Joyce and his future bride, Nora Barnacle, took a stroll in Dublin. In Joyce’s novel Ulysses, Leopold Bloom walks the same streets on the same date. 50 years later, a literary holiday was born:
“The day was 16 June, 1954, and though it was only mid-morning, Brian O’Nolan [Flann O’Brien] was already drunk. This day was the fiftieth anniversary of Mr. Leopold Bloom’s wanderings through Dublin, which James Joyce had immortalised in Ulysses.
