On Dec. 3, 1154, the day after the death of Pope Anastasius IV, the freshly gathered conclave of cardinals unanimously elected the Bishop of Albano as Anastasius' successor. The bishop of this Italian see, 25 miles southwest of Rome, was not Italian, though. His name was Nicholas Breakspear. The new…

On a cold, stark night in August 1588, as a fierce gale subsided and the clouds slowly parted, light from a full autumn moon revealed a horrific scene strewn along the shoreline of Streedagh Strand in County Sligo, Ireland. The drowned corpses of 800 doomed sailors, washed up by the raging Atlantic Ocean waves, lay…

The very subtlest eloquence

That injured men can show,

Is the pathos of a pike-head,

And the logic of a blow.

Hopes built upon fine talking

Are like castles built on sand

But the pleading of cold iron

Not a tyrant can withstand.

In antebellum America, many former…

Robert Erskine Childers {Erskine} 25^th June 1870 – 24 Nov1922 -  was born in Mayfair London the second son in a family of five children – to Robert Caesar Childers and Anna Mary Henrietta Barton.…

To our readers and fellow members of TheWildGeese.irish community:

We are as a community startled, enraged and greatly saddened by the death May 25 of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a Minnesota police officer. As we reexamine race…

By Christine Kinealy   

Being on the twelfth day of July, eighteen and forty-nine,

The pagans of this country did together combine, 

To…

There's a stone covered grave on the wild mountainside.

There's a plain wooden cross on which this is inscribed:

Kneel down, dear stranger, say an Ave for me

I was sentenced to death being a wild rapparee

--…

MORE ON THE FIGHTING AT BENBURB

• Part 2: 'Let Your Manhood Be Seen By The Push of Your Pike'…

On a hot September day in 1877 on the Pine Ridge reservation in the Dakota Territory (now South Dakota), a large group of angry Sioux were crowded around the guard house. Writhing in pain on the ground before them, bleeding profusely from his abdomen, lay one of the greatest leaders of the Native American resistance to the U.S.…

Cathal Brugha [Charles William St John Burgess] Is another man who is less known for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising. He was born and raised in Fairview, Dublin, July 1874, one of 14 children of Thomas and Maryanne Burgress [née] Flynn.  His mother was a Roman Catholic and his…

Seán Culhane stood across the street from the Cork & County Club Hotel, an Anglo-Irish social club in Cork City. Culhane, the Intelligence Officer, Cork 1 Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, was watching the door, waiting for a sign from his informer, waiter Ned “Bally” Fitzgerald. It was a…

By Kevin O'Beirne, Kevin P. Gorman, and Joseph E. Gannon

(Left: Historical Art Prints - The 69 PA withstands Pickett's onslaught in "Rock of Erin" by Don…

March is traditionally known as Irish Heritage month and this is highlighted on March 17th. with large parades in many towns and cities around the world. The parades are held in honor of a unique individual named Patricius, a Roman Briton, taken with his two sisters as hostages to Ireland by one…

When it came to the grand plan of how the Irish, with their meager resources, could defeat the forces of the greatest empire on earth in the Irish War of Independence, Michael Collins was the great architect who drew up the “flying column” blue print. But no matter how great the architect, other men have to take that…

(Above: F. Otto Becker's colorful 1896 lithograph of "Custer's Last Fight.")

Part 1: The 'Greening' of the 7th Cavalry

By Robert Doyle…

The hot summer sun beat down on 72-year-old John (Don Juan) O’Brien as he slowly mounted the wooden platform in the Plaza de Armas in Lima, Peru. The Cathedral of Lima (below-left) loomed above the plaza that 28^th of July, 1858, just as it had on the same day in 1821. On that day,…

In January 2015, Fordham University Press released "The Sons of Molly Maguire." Mark Bulik’s upcoming work is the latest in a line that characterizes Pennsylvania’s alleged “Molly Maguires” as Roman Catholic…