LUAIN -- On January 20, 1771, Don Hugo O'Conor was named Commandant Inspector of New Spain (Mexico). O'Conor was born into a Jacobite family in Dublin in December 1734. The…

DOMHNAIGH -- On January 12, 1729, Edmund Burke, one of the greatest political writers and orators in history, was born in Arran Quay, Dublin. Burke was the son of a mixed marriage -- his mother was Catholic and his father Protestant. Burke himself would later marry an Irish Catholic…

DOMHNAIGH -- On Jan. 5, 1871, the British in a general amnesty released 30 Fenian prisoners. Most of these prisoners were men who had either been swept up the…

MÁIRT -- On December 31, 1602, Dónall O'Sullivan Beare and his clan began their epic march to Ulster. O'Sullivan had supported…

MÁIRT -- 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,…

LUAIN -- On Dec. 16, 1971, soldier and politician General Richard Mulcahy (left) died in Dublin. Mulcahy was born in Waterford. After being educated in the Christian Brothers schools, Richard went to work for the postal service, like his father before him. He was a member of the Gaelic League and…

DOMHNAIGH -- On December 1, 1901, Fenian Thomas Clarke Luby died in New York. Luby was born in Dublin in 1821. He was the son of a Church of Ireland minister…

Dungarvan’s George Gerard Lennon (1900-1991), of O’Connell Street, Western Terrace (circa 1915) and Mitchell Terrace (1936), had a noteworthy revolutionary career.

Lennon's tenure encompassed some 17 engagements against enemy forces in Waterford, Limerick and Cork: a 14 year old “adjutant” in the…

DOMHNAIGH -- On November 24, 1922, during the Irish Civil War, Irish republican Erskine Childers was executed by the Free State government. Childers, whose mother was from County Clare, was…

DOMHNAIGH -- On Nov. 17, 1814, Joseph Finegan, a Confederate general in the American Civil War, was born in…

DOMHNAIGH -- On Nov. 3, 1815, John Mitchel ,…

CÉADAOIN -- On Oct. 30, 1892, Eoin O'Duffy, revolutionary and organizer of the infamous Blueshirts, was born in Castleblayney, County Monaghan.

(Right: O'Duffy's Blueshirts rally in a Dublin cemetery, 1934)

O'Duffy was…

DOMHNAIGH -- On October 20, 1881, the Irish National Land League was outlawed by the government. From the start (see below) the League had been a thorn in the side of government of British Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone. The passage of the second Land Act in 1818 failed to mollify many of the…

LUAIN -- On Oct. 14, 1814, Thomas Osborne Davis, the poet laureate of the Young Ireland party and one of its founders, was born in Mallow, Co. Cork. Like many other revolutionary Irish leaders, Davis was of an Anglo-Irish family; his father was a British army surgeon. He graduated from…

DOMHNAIGH -- On Sept. 29, 1972, Kathleen Clarke, wife of Easter Rising martyr Tom Clarke, died in Liverpool, England. Kathleen's uncle was Fenian John Daley, who…

MÁIRT -- On Sept. 17, 1860, units of the Irish Battalion of St. Patrick of the Papal army fought a Piedmontese army allied with Garibaldi at Spoleto. Spoleto was a walled city south of Florence with the fortress of Rocca on the side…

DOMHNAIGH -- On September 8, 1798, Lord Charles Cornwallis and General Gerard Lake cornered French…

DOMHNAIGH -- On September 1, 1864, Irish patriot Roger Casement was born at Sandycove, County Dublin. Casement joined the British colonial service and was knighted in 1911 for his work on behalf of African and South American native workers who were being exploited by…

National Gallery of Ireland Irish martyr Robert Emmet, from a miniature by John Comerford.

DOMHNAIGH -- On August 25, 1803, the British captured one of the most…

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

In 1897, Mark Twain was reported to have made this famous statement upon being…