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…

CÉADAOIN -- On December 24, 1601, Hugh O'Neill and his Spanish and Irish allies were defeated by the English at the Battle of Kinsale, one of the most important battles in Irish history. With the able assistance of his main ally, …

Grá - one of the most cherished words in the Irish language - means “love,” yet its warmth reaches far beyond a simple translation. It’s threaded through everyday Irish life: people speak of having a “huge grá for the GAA,” and parents like me, the ebook’s author, often send their children…

By Joseph Gannon

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false…

(Above: The Irish Brigade who fought alongside the Boers against the British army in the Anglo-Boer War. Col. John Blake is sitting in the front row 2nd to the left of the concertina player.

In far-off Africa to-day the English fly dismayed…

Marie Winifred Carney was born into a large family of seven children to Alfred / Sarah Cassidy Carney ; in Bangor, County Down – her parents were estranged for many years. Leo [missing child – a record of birth but no record of…

Fourteen-year-old Marcus Daly sat staring into the hearth of his family’s stone cottage in Derrylea, just outside the town of Ballyjamesduff in County Cavan. Closing his eyes he could still imagine his grandfather, who seemed to be 100 years old when Marcus was a boy, sitting across from…

Brigadier General Richard Montgomery – died during the

campaign for Quebec - County Donegal.

He was the 2nd of eight Brigadier Generals appointed by the Continental Congress

An Excerpt from James Francis Smith’s Irish in the American Revolution

Brigadier General Richard Montgomery

As he gazed at Fortress Quebec,…

Where dear Sandusky’s waters glide

From storied falls, through meadows wide,

By verdant hills on either side

To seek Lake Eiries’s famous tide:

On proud Fort Stephenson

 --- From the poem “Fort Stephenson,”

by Captain Andrew…

Born on November 12, 1819, in Dublin, Mary Sophia Hill was the daughter of a physician, who, along with her twin brother, Samuel, spent part of their early lives living in England.

By late 1850, both Mary and her brother were living in New Orleans where…

We’re marking the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. And yes, an Irish national --- Julia Canny a.k.a. Sister Mary of Saint Isaac Jogues --- was present and survived. My story together with the accompanying photographs (reproduced below) appeared in the 11 August 1999 editions of two Irish newspapers:…

National Library of Ireland James Napper Tandy

DOMHNAIGH -- On November 9, 1791, James Napper Tandy convened the first meeting of the…

It was a sunny, hot September afternoon in 1887 at the South End Grounds baseball stadium in Boston. Mike “King” Kelly, the player-manager of the Boston Beaneaters, sitting on the bench, wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve as he watched his pitcher,…

As the brilliant rays of the morning sun began to flash off the whitewashed adobe wall in Santiago, Cuba, 30-year-old William Albert Charles Ryan reflected that it would be yet another beautiful day on the tropical island he had come to love. He could hear the sweet songs of a few…

One armed man cannot resist a multitude, nor one army conquer countless legions; but not all the armies of all the empires of earth can crush the spirit of one true man. And that one man will prevail. -- Terence MacSwiney

Probably no man outside of Michael Collins was as responsible for getting England to agree to peace talks in 1921 as Terence…

New York -- We at TheWildGeese.irish are sorry to learn of the passing of journalist Ed Moloney, who provided our readers a front-row seat to one of the most consequential free-speech debates of the Irish Troubles. Moloney died Friday at his home in the city after a brief…

We conducted this interview in September 2011 for our Newsletter readers but because of the importance of the issues represented to the practice of oral history in this country, we have chosen to share this interview here in its entirety. To sign up for exclusive content through our newsletters,…

The port of Brest in the mid-1790s by Jean-François Hue (1751-1823)

As he watched the small French fleet carrying his friend Theobald Wolfe Tone and about 3,000 French troops sail out of Brest, France on September 20,…

It was 24 years ago that the United States and the world held their breath as the worst terrorist attack in history took the lives of nearly 3,000 people. The attack was in the U.S. but many of the victims were from other countries around the world.

(Left:…