Born in 1550, Aodh Mór Ó Néill (Hugh O’Neill) came from a line of the and the successors to the Chief’s of the O’Neills. He was the second son of Feardorcha Ó Néill and grandson of Conn O’Neill, the first Earl of Tyrne. At the age of nine he became a ward of Giles Hovenden, […]
Peter O’Neill was born in Coona, Cork, a descendant of the O’Neil clan of Co. Tyrone. He attended a hedge school in Inch, studied classics at Kilworth, and then began ecclesiastical studies at the Irish College in Paris, eventually teaching Celtic language and literature there. An exceedingly popular curate, he was appointed Parish Priest of […]
A cartoon was circulated 1887 by John Fergus O’Hea, a highly regard political cartoonist, to mark the occasion of Queen Victoria’s jubilee celebrating the 50th anniversary of her reign. After eighty seven years since the Act of Union, Ireland was said to be “distracted, disloyal and impoverished.” It was published in the Weekly Freeman, July […]
This day 103 years ago – 8 June 1917 – an explosion in a copper mine in Butte, Montana, resulted in the death of 168 miners. 38 of them were from Ireland, by far the largest group of foreign-born workers. The fire in the Speculator Granite Mountain Mine shocked America and is still the worst […]
Ó Néill (1585 – 6 November 1649) was a Gaelic Irish soldier and one of the most famous of the O’Neill dynasty of Ulster in Ireland. O’Neill left Ireland at a young age and began the formal continental military career serving in the Spanish army. He was a brilliant military strategist and tactician. With the […]
The Céide fields in Ballycastle, Co Mayo, date back 5,500 years, making them the world’s oldest field systems, with a complex of walls, houses and tombs, protected beneath a bog and is the largest Stone Age site on the planet. It is the most extensive Neolithic site in Ireland. Discovered in the 1930s by schoolteacher […]
ON THIS DAY: 16th May 1920, Joan Of Arc was cannonised a saint “You Englishmen, who have no right in this Kingdom of France, the King of Heaven sends you word and warning, by me Jehanne the Maid, to abandon your forts and depart into your own country, or I will raise such a war-cry against […]
Easter Rising leaders: Pádraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh were executed by a firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol. #gript
“My dear Mother, You will I know have been longing to hear from me. I do not know how much you have heard since the last note I sent you from the G.P.O. On Friday evening the Post Office was set on fire and we had to abandon it. We dashed into Moore Street and […]
ON THIS DAY: Good Friday: Poem written by Joseph Mary Plunkett referencing Good Friday Joseph Mary Plunkett (Irish: Seosamh Máire Pluincéid, 21 November 1887 – 4 May 1916) was an Irish nationalist, republican, poet, journalist, revolutionary and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. He was married to his childhood sweetheart Grace Gifford in 1916, 7 hours before […]
ON THIS DAY: 30TH MARCH 1849, Doolough Tragedy where a large crowd of starving people died on the journey to receive food they had been promised. 170 years ago on Friday night, March 30th, 1849, during the starvation, 600 people, including women and children, were living in the town of Louisborough. The starving people were […]
The infamous and notorious Black and Tans will not be forgotten in Irish history. 100 years ago, the first tranche of them arrived from Britain, mainly recruited from the unemployed veterans of World War 1. They had 3 months training and their pay was ten shillings a day. Their ‘uniforms’ were mixed, some with Khaki […]