An Irish visitor to Northern California’s grandiose  Filoli Mansion, nestled at the edge of the towering oak and redwood-forests in the coastal foothills just 30 miles south of San Francisco, might be gob smacked by the amazing similarities the stately residence has to Killarney’s famed Muckross House, and he or she would not be wide of the mark. The…

The life and accomplishments of John Quinn are so improbable that if they were fiction no one would believe them. The son of a baker from a small town in Ohio, Quinn by the time of his untimely death in 1924 at the age of fifty-four had not only amassed the greatest collection of contemporary European art in the world, but he had also…

December 22nd, 2020, marked the 121st birthday of heroic women’s rights fighter Lucy Burns. Today, few remember Burns and take a woman’s right to vote for granted, forgetting that a century ago women were denied this basic American freedom. They also forget that women like Burns were imprisoned…

Ever wonder who started the tradition of welcoming in the new year in Times Square? Well, it was a Famine Irish immigrant, Galway man Patrick Gilmore who was the most well-known Irish immigrant of his day and a famous person, but today sadly, Gilmore and his contributions to American music are…