History Archive
The British Broadcast Ban, The Media and the Conflict in Northern Ireland
On October 19, 1988 the British Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, imposed unprecedented peace time restrictions…
Looking Back at the Hunger Strike
He has chosen death: Refusing to eat or drink, that he may bring Disgrace upon…
Deadly Tales from County Tyrone
In 1970, at the age of 22, Bernadette ‘Devlin’ McAliskey was elected to represent the…
More Articles
The Original Irish Tenor: John McCormack
The year was 1906. The setting was a stage in Savona, Italy, a northwestern port town south of Milan. The opera to be performed that particular evening was L’Amico Fritz by […]
The Battle Over Ulysses
The court case that changed the way Americans read. During a first-season episode of the excellent AMC TV series Mad Men, set in the New York advertising world of the […]
The Legacy of the San Patricios
To the Mexicans they were heroes. To the Americans they were traitors. They were recent Irish immigrants fleeing poverty and famine in Ireland who, motivated by discrimination in their own […]
The Tragedy of the Hannah
In April 1849, a ship carrying Irish immigrants hit an iceberg in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. John Kernaghan writes on the incident, and of plans for a documentary as […]
Chicago and the Irish
Before he was president, Barack Obama was an ambitious young politician who learned a valuable lesson thanks to the Chicago Irish. The year was 1999. Obama, a state senator, announced […]
The Irish in California
in 2005, when it became clear that the Ronald Reagan Pub in Ballyporeen, Tipperary was no longer a viable novelty to locals or tourists, Irish-American businessman and Republican booster Frederick […]