John Devoy was an Irish nationalist leader and exile. He was the owner and editor of the Gaelic American, a New York weekly newspaper, 1903-1928. He dedicated over 60 years of his life to the cause of Irish independence. He is one of the few people to have played a role in the rebellion […]
One of the interesting and worrying trends in the USA at the moment is its political polarisation. This is of course not unique to that country, but there is some evidence that the political divide is becoming increasingly reflected in an economic and geographic one. That is, people are becoming less likely to be living […]
In 1066 the course of British history changed forever when William, the Duke of Normandy, landed on the southern coast of England and seized the country from its Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson. The French had a long history of claims in England, and in 1002 the English king Aethelred the Unready married the sister […]
ON THIS DAY: 25 SEPTEMBER 1917: Thomas Ashe died from force feeding during a hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison Thomas Patrick Ashe, Tomás Pádraig Ághas was a member of the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers which he joined in November 1913. […]
Mayo agent, Captain Charles Boycott, was sent to a ‘moral Coventry.’ He described his plight in a letter to The Times: “…people collect in crowds upon my farm and order off all my workmen. The shopkeepers have been warned to stop all supplies to my house. My farm is public property, I can get no […]
The definition of mercy killing is very elastic, as two recent cases in England demonstrate. In the first, 53-year-old Robert Knight was given a two-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of his mother, 79-year-old June. June had Alzheimer’s disease and was being given end-of-life care in a nursing home. Robert found his mother’s suffering […]
On September 21st 1601 the Spanish landed in Kinsale Co Cork with some 4,000 men, took the town and awaited the arrival of the Gaelic chiefs from Ulster. With a fleet of twenty-eight, they occupied the port at Kinsale under the maestro de campo general, Don Juan del Águila. The ships were to be brought […]
Last month it was reported that US President Trump had “with varying degrees of seriousness” spoken about the idea of the US buying Greenland [i] – an idea which did not fare well, but which briefly placed the island centre stage. There followed a very large increase in searches for flights to Greenland, and such […]
Senator Ivana Bacik has recently argued in a piece she called “The Catholic Church hasn’t gone away, you know” that what she calls a “secularist” approach to separation of Church and State would help to remedy a situation in which the Catholic Church in Ireland “influence(s) public policy” through its religious teachings, runs a “shadow […]
Robert Emmett was an Irish Republican and patriot, orator and rebel leader. After leading an abortive rebellion in Dublin against British rule in 1803 he was captured then tried and executed for high treason against the British king George III of Great Britain. When asked if he had any thing to say in response to […]
Anne Devlin was born in County Wicklow around the end of the 1770s and in 1800 met Robert Emmet and assisted him in his plans for an uprising in Dublin. On the evening of the 23rd July 1803 the rising went ahead in Dublin, but despite taking the British authorities by surprise, the rebellion collapsed. […]
Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is the first to report the existence of bacteria A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as “the Father of Microbiology”, and one of the first microscopists and microbiologists. Van Leeuwenhoek is best known for his pioneering work in microscopy and for his contributions toward the establishment […]