Free State
executions during Irish Civil War
that
(77) anti-Treaty Irish Republican
Army prisoners were summarily executed by the pro-Treaty regime
during the Civil War. Kevin Higgins, the regime's Minister for
Justice signed off on the executions
including that of the best man at his
wedding Rory O'Connor.
Higgins was regarded as a lightweight
even amongst his Free State cohorts including General Richard
Mulcahy who described him "as a person who did not understand what
was going on".
On July 10,1927,
O’Higgins was assassinated in revenge for his role in the
executions. No one was ever charged with his killing, perhaps an
acknowledgment of the low esteem in which he was held.
As a point of comparison --
after the American Civil War which lasted four years
with the loss of
620,000 lives, the victors executed only
one individual,
the psychopath responsible for the deaths of tens
of thousands of Union prisoners at the infamous
Andersonville Prison Camp in
Georgia.
Irish-born defenders who died at The Alamo
that
twelve (12) of
the 189 men who died at The Alamo in March, 1836, fighting for the freedom and
liberty of Texas, 12 were born in Ireland. Twenty (20) others
including Davy Crockett, William Travis and Jim Bowie
were of Irish descent.
The Alamo was a
pivotal point in the Texas Revolution. Following a thirteen-day
siege, Mexican troops under the President of Mexico, General Antonio
López de Santa Anna launched an assault, on what was then, the Alamo
Mission in San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas). All
but two of the defenders were killed.
Irish born defenders who died were:
Samuel Burns, Stephen Denison, Andrew Duvalt, Robert Evans, Joseph Mark Hawkins,
William Daniel Jackson, James McGee, Robert McKinney, James Nowlin, Jackson J. Rusk, Burke Trammel and William B. Ward.
Irish-born Medal of
Honor Recipients
that
of the 3,459
Medals of Honor recipients, 258 listed Ireland as their place of
birth, by far the highest number of any of the other 33 countries
listed as the birthplaces of the recipients. Of the 258
listing counties as the place of birth, Cork has 19,
Dublin and Tipperary with having 11, Limerick 10 , Kerry 8,
Galway 7, Antrim and Tyrone 6 each, Kilkenny and Sligo each having
5.
Of the 19
individuals who received a
second Medal of Honor, 5 were born in Ireland. They are: Henry
Hogan from Clare, John Laverty from Tyrone, Dublin’s John Cooper,
whose name at birth was John Laver Mather, John King and Patrick
Mullen.
Three double
recipients were Irish-Americans: U.S. Marines Daniel Daly and John
Joseph Kelly, and the U.S. Navy’s John McCloy.
Margaret
Thatcher opposed German Reunification
that
Margaret Thatcher vehemently opposed the reunification of Germany.
Kremlin documents that have
recently come to light disclose that two months
before the fall of the Berlin Wall, British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher told Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev that Britain opposed the reunification
of Germany and asked him to do what he could
to prevent it from happening.
Another example of moral
leadership and democratic values!
Irish children living in poverty
that
the number of
children living in poverty in Ireland remains
alarmingly high. The latest EU-SILC statistics
from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show
that 1 in 16 children in Ireland were living in
consistent poverty in Ireland in 2008. That
means over 65,000 children went without basic
necessities – a warm meal, a winter coat,
heating at home – because their families were
too poor to provide these basics for them.
Another
185,000 children, or just over one in 5 of all
children, were at risk of poverty in 2008.
These children lived in households where the
family income was less than 60% of the national
median income per adult of €400 per week.
The
Forgotten Ten
that The
Forgotten Ten is
the term applied to ten members of the Irish Republican Army
executed by the British in Mountjoy Prison during the Irish
War of Independence. They were buried in unmarked graves
within the prison grounds.
The
names of the ten martyrs are Kevin Barry, Patrick Moran, Frank
Flood, Thomas Whelan, Thomas Traynor, Patrick Doyle, Thomas Bryan,
Bernard Ryan, Edmond Foley and Patrick Maher.
The
executions were carried out by the infamous English hangman Thomas
Pierepoint and his assistant John Ellis.
In 1944, de Valera
hired Pierrpoint's nephew, Albert, to hang Charlie Kerins, the IRA
Chief of Staff
Irish
immigrants who fought in the American Civil War
that 150,000
Irish-American immigrants served in the Union Army, most of them
from Boston, New York and Chicago.
Between 40,000 and 50,000 fought in the
Confederate Army.
Of all the Irish-American units involved in
the conflict, the best known was the Irish Brigade of the Union Army
of the Potomac, which distinguished itself at both Antietam and
Fredericksburg,
On the Confederate side one of the best
known regiments, with a large number of Irish,
was the 24th Georgia who faced the Union’s Irish
Brigade at Fredericksburg in 1863, where Union forces was soundly
defeated. The Union Irish may not have known they were
fighting other Irishmen, but the Confederate Irish knew and
mourned their countrymen’s deaths.
Grosse Isle - isle of
sorrow
that
a
large Celtic cross
monument of grey
Stanstead granite stands
high above the water on
the rocky promontory at
the western end of
Grosse Isle, an island
in the St. Lawrence
River east of Quebec.
The monument is
dedicated to the
countless thousands of
Irish emigrants who fled
Ireland to escape the
so-called "famine"
only to die from typhoid
after enduring inhumane
conditions aboard coffin
ships during their
passage across the
Atlantic.
The monument bears the
following inscription :
Children of the Gael
died in their thousands
on this island having
fled from the laws of
the foreign tyrants and
an artificial famine in
the years 1847-48. God's
loyal blessing upon
them. Let this monument
be a token to their name
and honour from the
Gaels of America. God
save Ireland".
