It was a day like no other for the island of Ireland and all of her people. It was a day like no other in the political memory of our generation when the hope held out in the Belfast Agreement, announced on that Good Friday years ago, all of its stops and starts in between, all of its dead and political victims, finally made history rhyme.
It was a sunny day, a golden day, when the First Minister-designate of Northern Ireland, the Rev Ian Paisley, shook hands and clapped the back of our first minister, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, and they treated one another and their traditions with mutual respect.
The first meeting between Mr Ahern and Dr Paisley was electric, engaging - and in a way that was unexpected. Journalists who have followed every dot and comma of the peace process for most of their careers didn't know whether to cry or applaud. They are producing the first, maybe the second, draft of history today. So many of them dared not believe that it would ever happen in their lifetimes. They, like the rest of us, must move on from the Northern story being The Troubles.
Can this be for real? And in our lifetime?
Apparently, it is. What is forgotten in the analysis of how we came to be where we are today is that the Democratic Unionist Party has far more in common with Fianna Fáil than most would imagine. The party is bigger than the individual and that principle will help Dr Paisley with his dissidents in the way that it has helped Fianna Fáil over the years. And the mandate guarantees the respect of the voters.
The Taoiseach said yesterday at Farmleigh that he fervently hoped that we would move on from here in a new spirit of friendship. The future for this island has never been brighter. At this important time in our history, he stated, we must do our best to put behind us the terrible wounds of our past and work together to build a new relationship between our two traditions.
Dr Paisley promised that "old suspicions and discords may be buried under the prospect of mutual and respectful co-operation". He would put the Ulsterman before the Irishman in his identity. His father's birth certificate, he told us, was lodged in Dublin after he was born. "I am proud to be an Ulsterman but I am also proud of my Irish roots".
Whatever the future may hold, we have a lot in common with Dr Paisley's Ulstermen - presumably he doesn't mean to exclude Ulsterwomen. Business opportunities are flourishing, as he said, and genuine respect for the understanding of each others' differences and, for that matter, similarities is now developing.
But that's all on the official side. There were reporters there, privileged observers to mark this historic moment. Some from Northern Ireland couldn't begin to come to terms with this engagement. They, like the politicians and the Anglo-Irish diplomats, dared not dream about this moment. Miriam Lord captures this historic day on the front page of today's newspaper.