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…

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

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…

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…

Driving out of frenzied Manhattan heading out over the 59th Street Bridge and through the congested highway traffic east into Queens, the dense urban landscape is suddenly broken up by a jarring sight- an immense sea of green. Coming closer, the driver, who sees a vast number of gravestones and…

I have lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for decades, yet somehow I was oblivious to the fact that McCarren Park has a Nulty Square. Knowing that Nulty was an Irish name, I became curious about the person’s identity and uncovered a long-forgotten story of a family of Irish-American heroes and their grieving…

(Above: Celtic Park where Sheridan and other Irish American athletes trained.)

It is easy to think that we are in new territory with the pandemic, but a century ago, New York City was also gripped by a pandemic, the dreaded Spanish Influenza that killed 20 to 50 million people worldwide. Here in the U.S we lost by some…