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Please share your favorite positive historical figures of Irish descent or events in Irish history in America or throughout the world.
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his death in 1963. The proudest moment for many people of Irish Catholic descent was in 1961 when the first Irish American Catholic President, John F. Kennedy.
After military service as commander of the Motor Torpedo Boats PT-109 and PT-59 during World War II in the South Pacific, Kennedy represented Massachusetts' 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat. Thereafter, he served in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. At 43 years of age, he is the youngest to have been elected to the office, the second-youngest President (after Theodore Roosevelt), and the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president. A Catholic, Kennedy is the only non-Protestant president, and is the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize. Events during his presidency included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the African-American Civil Rights Movement, and early stages of the Vietnam War.
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the crime, but he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later, before a trial could take place. The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin. However, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that those investigations were flawed and that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. Kennedy ranks highly in public opinion ratings of U.S. presidents.
Last edited by Ibginnie; 03-04-2013 at 04:03 PM..
Reason: hotlinking
Saint Patrick (c. 390 – 17 March c. 460) was a Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of the island, along with Saints Brigid and Columba.
Two authentic letters from him survive, from which come the only generally-accepted details of his life. When he was about 16, he was captured from his home by pagan raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After becoming a cleric, he returned to northern and western Ireland as an ordained bishop, but little is known about the places where he worked. By the seventh century, he had already come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland.
Most available details of his life are from subsequent hagiographies, and these are now not accepted without detailed criticism. The Annals of Ulster state that he arrived in Ireland in 432, ministered in Ulster around 443, and died in 457 or 461. The text, however, distinguishes between "Old Patrick" and "Patrick, archapostle of the Scots," who died in 492. The actual dates of Patrick's life cannot be fixed with certainty but, on a widespread interpretation, he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the 5th century. He is generally credited with being the first bishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland.
Saint Patrick's Day is observed on March 17, the date of his death. It is celebrated both inside and outside Ireland, as both a liturgical and non-liturgical holiday. In the dioceses of Ireland, it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation; outside Ireland, it can be a celebration of Ireland itself
Last edited by Ibginnie; 03-04-2013 at 04:03 PM..
Reason: hotlinking
Saint Columbanus or Columbán, (543 AD – 21 November 615 AD)
Columbanus was born into a noble family in West Leinster, Ireland, circa 543. He was an Irish missionary notable for founding a number of monasteries on the European continent from around 590 in the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms, most notably Luxeuil Abbey in present-day France and Bobbio Abbey in present-day Italy. He is remembered as an exemplar of Irish missionary activity in early medieval Europe.
Columbanus taught a Celtic monastic rule and Celtic penitential practices for those repenting of sins, which emphasized private confession to a priest, followed by penances levied by the priest in reparation for the sins. Columbanus is one of the earliest identifiable Hiberno-Latin writers.
Francis Xavier Whyte (Dublin, 1730 - Charenton, 179?)
The claim to fame of Chevalier James F.X. Whyte (Dublin, 1730 - Charenton, 179…), also known as Comte Whyte de Malleville, rests on his presence in the Bastille on the day the prison was stormed on July 14, 1789. In fact, he was only one of seven (or six, it depends on who you read) prisoners that the Revolutionaries 'liberated' from the Bastille that day, and one of two certified lunatics. When released, he is said to have declared himself “majeur de l’immensité”. But Whyte’s perilous mental state did not stop his liberators from parading him through the streets and proclaiming him a hero of the Revolution.
According to Richard Hayes’ Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France, “an eyewitness of the day’s events describes him as ‘a little feeble old man who exhibited an appearance of childishness and fatuity, tottering as he walked and his countenance exhibiting little more than the smile of an idiot.’” Another witnesses described Whyte as having “a beard almost a yard long”. A sympathetic citizen who gave Whyte shelter for the night had his house pillaged by the Irishman in return. The day after this release, the hero of the Revolution was locked up again—this time in the lunatic asylum in Charenton, where he was to spend the rest of his days. Ironically, before the Revolution Whyte’s family had tried to avoid having him placed in Charenton because of the harshness of the regime there. So much for ‘liberté, fraternité’ etc…But at least in Charenton, he could have hooked up with one of his old acquaintances from the Bastille, the Marquis Sade, who had been shipped to Charenton on July 4, 1789.
Whyte had followed a military career in France after leaving Ireland and had risen to the grade of captain in Lally’s regiment in the Irish Brigade. He had suffered a mental breakdown in 1781 and had been confined in a hospital in Vincennes but had been moved to the Bastille three years later (along with the Marquis de Sade) when the institution in Vincennes was closed. In March 1789, he had been deprived of his civil rights and his property had been transferred to his daughters.
Other Irishmen played a role in the events of July 1789 in Paris. One of the two titular chaplains at the Bastille was a certain Thomas MacMahon from Eyrecourt, Co. Galway. Fr. MacMahon, who was 70 years old in 1789, resided close to the Bastille in the rue Saint Antoine (4th arrondissement) and is believed to have said one of the last masses in the prison chapel. Ironically enough, the revolutionaries later granted Fr. MacMahon a pension of 500 livres.
A boot-maker of Clare descent based in Lille, Joseph Kavanagh, was one of 60 district representatives who met at the Hôtel de Ville on July 13, 1789, and one of only six sent forward to demand that municipal representatives establish a National Guard. He is also said to have planned and led the assault on the Bastille the following day, managing to gather a mob by spreading a rumour that Royalist troops were advancing on the city. Kavanagh’s role was celebrated in a pamphlet printed shortly entitled Les exploits glorieux du célèbre Cavanagh, Cause première de la liberté française. The nation "should not leave forgotten this brave patriot who so influenced the course of events on July 14 and surely determined in large part the fate of the Bastille, the taking of which was becoming very difficult, to say the least," reads the pamphlet.Kavanagh became an influential police official during the Terror and may have been involved in the massacre carried out at La Force prison (no longer extant, situated in present-day 4th arrondissement) in September 1792.
A complice of Kavanagh’s in the storming of the Bastille was one James Bartholomew Blackwell (Ennis, Co. Clare, 1763 (or 1765) - Paris, 1820 (or 1825)), who had studied at the Irish College before joining one of the Irish regiments of the French army. Blackwell was a friend of a number of leading revolutionaries, most notably Camille Desmoulins and Georges Jacques Danton. On July 14, 1789, Blackwell was among revolutionary forces in the Faubourg Saint Antoine section of the city and possibly participated in one of the decisive assaults on the Bastille. In 1800, after a time spent in British imprisonment, Blackwell was back in Paris, staying for a time at the Hôtel de York at 56, rue Jacob (6th arrondissement), where, 17 years earlier, the British had signed a peace treaty ending the American War of Independence and recognising the American republic. In 1804, Blackwell was appointed colonel in Napoleon's ephemeral Irish Legion. During the Restoration, Blackwell was appointed lieutenant du roi at La Petite Pierre, a fortified castle near Saverne in Alsace. He died in Paris (one of his addresses was 25, rue Babylone in the 7th arrondissement) and he was buried in Père Lachaise. All trace of his sepulchre disappeared in 1992 when the authorities decided to recoup his burial plot, which had been left in a state of abandon.
Saint Patrick (c. 390 – 17 March c. 460) was a Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of the island, along with Saints Brigid and Columba.
Two authentic letters from him survive, from which come the only generally-accepted details of his life. When he was about 16, he was captured from his home by pagan raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After becoming a cleric, he returned to northern and western Ireland as an ordained bishop, but little is known about the places where he worked. By the seventh century, he had already come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland.
Most available details of his life are from subsequent hagiographies, and these are now not accepted without detailed criticism. The Annals of Ulster state that he arrived in Ireland in 432, ministered in Ulster around 443, and died in 457 or 461. The text, however, distinguishes between "Old Patrick" and "Patrick, archapostle of the Scots," who died in 492. The actual dates of Patrick's life cannot be fixed with certainty but, on a widespread interpretation, he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the 5th century. He is generally credited with being the first bishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland.
Saint Patrick's Day is observed on March 17, the date of his death. It is celebrated both inside and outside Ireland, as both a liturgical and non-liturgical holiday. In the dioceses of Ireland, it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation; outside Ireland, it can be a celebration of Ireland itself
Great reading to complement the above:
"How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill.
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