Conor is a Chicago based Motivational Humorous Business Speaker, Author and History buff.
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1871: The Cuba Five
British authorities release over thirty Fenian prisoners including John Devoy and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. The conditional amnesty of 1871 required those released not to return to Ireland for the term of their respective sentences for treason. Devoy, O’Donovan Rossa and three others: Charles Underwood O’Connell, Henry Mulleda, and John McClure boarded the S.S. Cuba bound for New York where the “Cuba Five” were greeted as heroes by their Irish brethern.
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The Cuba Five: Devoy, O’Connell, Mulleda, Rossa, McClure
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1976: IRA Execute TEN Protestant Civilians in Kingsmill Massacre.
10 Protestent men are shot dead returning home in a mini-bus from a textile factory in Bessbrook. The attack took place near the village of Kingsmill, carried out by a group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force, almost certainly consisting of Provisional IRA members. The men were targeted purely because of their religion and in retaliation for the murders of six Catholics by the UVF the previous day.
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Documentary about Kingsmill Massacre
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Kingsmill massacre van
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1994: Tip O’Neill
Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, former speaker of the house dies. Along with Ted Kennedy, he was one of the last truly liberal politicians in Washington and like Kennedy, a great fried of Ireland. On his death, Senator Bob Dole, often an arch critic of O’Neill said of the gregarious Massachusetts representative certainly will go down in history as one of the great political leaders of our time.”
Born to Catholic parents of Irish descent (Mallow, Co. Cork) in a working class area of Cambridge, he first became active in politics when working for the failed presidential election campaign of Al Smith, (the first Catholic to seek that office) in 1928. “All I knew was that Al Smith was an Irish Catholic and we had been suppressed all our lives,” he said. O’Neill succeeded John Fitzgerald Kennedy to what was then the 11th Congressional District, when Kennedy became Senator in 1953.
O’Neill regularly butted heads with fellow Irish-American pol Ronald Reagan. “I never forgot from where I came. He kind of forgot,” O’Neill wrote, but they were also amiable acquaintances. “Until six o’clock, I was the enemy and he never let me forget it,” wrote Reagan in An American Life. A strong supporter of John Hume he worked with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ted Kennedy and Governor Hugh Carey to reduce US funding for IRA activities in Northern Ireland and helped build a bipartisan peace process.
Friends & Enemies: Reagan and Tip O’Neill
O’Neill’s autobiography written with William Novak Man of the House is a fine read on American politics and its characters.
This history is written by Irish author, business keynote speaker and award winning humorist IrishmanSpeaks – Conor Cunneen. If you spot any inaccuracies or wish to make a comment, please don’t hesitate to contact us via the comment button.
Visit Conor’s YouTube channel IrishmanSpeaksto Laugh and Learn.
Tags: Best Irish Gift, Creative Irish Gift, Unique Irish Gifts, Irish Books, Irish Authors, Today in Irish History TODAY IN IRISH HISTORY (published by IrishmanSpeaks)
Conor is a Chicago based Motivational Humorous Business Speaker, Author and History buff.
*********************** WATCH: A Short History of Ireland
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1862: Thomas Francis Meagher on The Battle of Fredericksburg
In the report penned on this date, Brigadier General Thomas Frances Meagher wrote about the day after the terrible battle.
“Two hundred and eighty men only appeared under arms to represent the Irish Brigade. This little band, unswerved and undeterred, still full of heart, inspired by a bright sense of duty, sorrowful for their comrades, but prouder and still more emboldened that such men had fallen bravely as they did, awaited the word that was once again to precipitate them against the batteries and defenses of the enemy.”
Over twelve hundred men of the Irish Brigade started that battle.
Fifteen year old Annie Moore departs Queenstown (now Cobh) with her two brothers. On January 1, she would be the first immigrant to be processed through Ellis Island.
Passions continue to rise during a debate that will tear the country asunder. In general despite the emotions involved, the quality of the debate was substantially better than anything we see today in Dail Eireann.
MR. SEAN ETCHINGHAM (anti-Treaty): …. “Yes, they might hold up their heads, but they are holding up their hands, for this is a Treaty of surrender of the principles they are here to uphold. I have heard gentlemen speak of the dead—let the dead rest. I can well understand that, for the boy Kevin Barry marched to the gallows with his head up, but his hands were pinioned to his side, and other men faced the firing parties, and other men faced the hangman with their heads up but their hands pinioned to their sides…… Let us go in with our heads up, but this I say to you finally, if you do vote for this thing, that posterity—the Assistant Minister of Local Government says he does not mind posterity—will denounce you, for if you do it it will be a renunciation of your principles, of your allegiance to the Irish Republic. Nay, it is more, it is the burial service over the grave of the Irish Nation, and there is to be no firing party.”
FINIAN LYNCH (pro-Treaty): Deputy Etchingham is trying to tell this House and trying to tell the people of Ireland that Lloyd George, shaking a paper in front of the face of Michael Collins was able to put the wind up Michael Collins. Let the people of Ireland judge whether it is so easy to put the wind up Michael Collins. That kind of eyewash is not going to go down with me or with any man who has soldiered with Collins, or with any person in Ireland who knows what he has done……………..
Now I stand for this Treaty on four grounds, and the one I mention last is the one that will mean the most to me. I stand for it because it gives us an army, because it gives us evacuation, because it gives us control over the finances of the country, and lastly, and greatest of all to me, because it gives us control over our education.
Finian Lynch, second from right during Civil War
MRS. KATHLEEN O’CALLAGHAN (anti-Treaty): For myself, since girlhood I have been a Separatist. I wanted, and I want, an independent Ireland, an Ireland independent of the British Empire, and I can assure you that my life in Limerick during 1920, culminating in the murder of my husband last March—my life and that event have not converted me to Dominion status within the British Empire. I would like to say here that it hurts me to have to vote against the Minister for Foreign Affairs. He was a friend of my husband. Every night in my home, as in most Irish homes, prayers went up for him, and for the President, and for all who were standing by the country. I have the greatest admiration for him, but this is not a matter of devotion to a leader, or devotion to a party, it is a matter of principle, and you may sneer at principle, some of you. It is a matter of principle, a matter of conscience, a matter of right and wrong.
Kathleen O”Callaghan
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MR. SEAN T. O’CEALLAIGH (anti-Treaty): I cannot bear to live to see such a man as Arthur Griffith, who has been an inspiration to us all, or even younger men who have won fame the wide world over for a heroism that is peculiar to Ireland, men such as Michael Collins, Dick Mulcahy, Seán MacKeon, and many, many of their associates—I cannot bear to see these men acting as Ministers and Generals in the name of his Majesty King George V. in Ireland supported by time-servers, surrounded by shoneens, West Britons, and all the shallow toadies and place-hunters that Ireland produces in as much abundance as any other country. For it is not making much of a prophecy to say that the loyal, true-hearted, genuine Irishman will not rally round them. The Irish Ireland in which they grew up, for which they fought so valiantly will soon know them no more. We should all throw back at England this instrument of our subversion
“Da Mare” of Chicago. Daley twenty one years in office (a period only surpassed by his son Richard M. Daley). Daley was a controversial figure who regularly mangled the English Language. In For the Love of Being Irish, author Conor Cunneen references one of Daley’s more memorable quotes. “They have vilified me, they have crucified me; yes, they have even criticized me.”
Daley is often credited for stealing the election for John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960 by ensuring the democratic candidate won Illinois. While there may be some truth that a number of Kennedy supporters voted early and often, Illinois was not critical. Even had the vote gone the other way and the states 27 Electoral College votes had gone to Nixon, Kennedy would still have had sufficient electoral college votes as he won 303 to Nixon’s 219. After all, Lyndon Johnson ensured Texas voted Democratic and there was a man who was never associated with electoral rigging in his life!!
Richard J. Daley Telephone Conversation with JFK
Daley’s ability to make things happen are evidenced in a telephone conversation he had with JFK on October 28th, 1963 in relation to civil rights legislation the President was pushing.
JFK: (IL. Democratic Congressman) Roland Libonati is sticking it right up us.
Daley: Is, he is?
JFK: Yeah, because he’s standing with the extreme liberals who are gonna end up with no bill at all. Then when we put together, uh, he’ll, gonna vote for the extreme bill. Then I asked him, “If you’ll vote for this package which we got together with the Republicans which gives us about everything we wanted,” and he says, “No.”
Daley: Daley: He’ll vote for it. He’ll vote for any goddamned thing you want….. That’s better. But he’ll do it. The last time I, I told him, “Now look it, I don’t give a goddamned what it is, you vote for, for anything the President wants and this is the way it will be and this is the way we want it and that’s the way it’s gonna be.”
This history is written by Irish author, business keynote speaker and award winning humorist IrishmanSpeaks – Conor Cunneen. If you spot any inaccuracies or wish to make a comment, please don’t hesitate to contact us via the comment button.
Visit Conor’s YouTube channel IrishmanSpeaksto Laugh and Learn.
Tags: Best Irish Gift, Creative Irish Gift, Unique Irish Gifts, Irish Books, Irish Authors, Today in Irish History TODAY IN IRISH HISTORY (published by IrishmanSpeaks)
Today In Irish History 