Justin McCarthy, Lord Mountcashel

LUAIN -- On April 18, 1690, five regiments of Irishmen set sail from Ireland for France. These soldiers, about 5,400 in all, would form the nucleus of…

Pathways a virtual art exhibition

This…

Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour was fired on by Confederate forces in the early hours of April 12, 1861, the bombardment continuing well into the following day. Fortunately for Major Robert Anderson and his garrison, there were…

LUAIN -- On April 12, 1816, Charles Gavan Duffy (right) was born in County Monaghan. Self-educated as a journalist, Duffy would found the Nation, a nationalist weekly journal, along with …

Siblings Agnes (29), Alice (26), and Bernard McCoy (24) huddled together on the deck of the Titanic shivering in the cold. It was about 1:15 am on April 15, 1912. They were on the port side of the doomed ship, which now was decidedly tilted toward the bow, causing everyone to lean toward the…

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…

I wrote this and read it at several annual W.B. Yeats Society of New York poetry awards ceremonies, at which the winners of cash prizes are introduced and present their winning entry and a few of their other poems.

Anglo-Irish William…

LUAIN - On April 5, 1818, Bernardo O'Higgins (right) defeated the Spanish at the battle of Maipo River, Chile.…

In school, if you ever looked at images of the surface of the Sun you would have seen what appeared to be dark areas dotted across the surface. These anomalies are known as sunspots and appear dark because they are cooler than other parts of the Sun’s surface. Occasionally you would also have seen…

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 54, had not only amassed the greatest collection of…

DOMHNAIGH -- On March 28, 1820, William Howard Russell , (right) among…

I've been down in the green valley, the holy place.

DOMHNAIGH -- On March 21, 1763, William MacNeven, United Irishman, was born in Aughrim, County Galway.

(left: The emblem of the United Irishmen. It reads "Equality" above and "It is new strung and shall be heard" below.)

Educated in the…

The March equinox (this year Saturday, March 20, at 5:37 a.m. EDT) marks the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator, the imaginary line in the sky above the Earth's equator, from south to north. In simpler terms, it marks the official start of the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere, a…

Two miles east of Strokestown on Spy Wednesday at the dawn

These Gallant men assembled 'neath the crest of ol' Sliabh Bawn

T'was called the Scramogue Ambush where Captain Peek was shot

But Ashbrook was the venue, right well I know that spot

They conquered their oppressors and filled their hearts with…

MÁIRT -- On March 16, 1828, Patrick Cleburne, one of the finest generals produced by either side during America's long, bloody civil war was born at Bride Park Cottage in Ovens Township, Co. Cork, just outside Cork City. Robert E. Lee would one day say of…

DOMHNAIGH -- On March 7, 1921, Limerick Mayor George Clancy was shot and killed in his home. Clancy came from a family with a strong republican tradition. In college, he joined the Gaelic League, forming a branch at University College Dublin and recruiting…

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…

Like many women deserving of greater recognition, Kathleen Daly Clarke is often overshadowed by her famous husband, Thomas, one of the men who proclaimed the Irish Republic and was shot by the British for their role in the Dublin Rising of 1916; however, without his wife, Thomas Clarke would never have…