DOMHNAIGH -- On January 26, 1799, Thomas Charles Wright, an officer in Simón Bolívar's…

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…

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 8, 1831, James Hoban, the architect of the White House, died in Washington, D.C. Hoban, a native of County Kilkenny, was educated as an artist by Thomas Ivory in Dublin. He worked as one of the architects on a number of buildings in Ireland, including…

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…

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 November 10, 1896, Lady Mary Heath (born Sophie Catherine Pierce), pioneer aviator and athlete, was born in Newcastlewest, County Limerick. Sophie was brought up in Newcastlewest and Dublin, where she attended a boarding school. At the outbreak of World War I,…

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 October 6, 1649 Owen Roe O'Neill (left), nephew of Hugh O'Neill and an officer in the Spanish army, died at Cloughoughter Castle on an island in Lough Oughter in County Cavan. Owen is thought to have been born in 1585, probably near Loughgall in County Armagh. He left Ireland…

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…