The release of classified files from 1962 reveal that in a letter to President John F Kennedy former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan chillingly predicted that the world was heading toward a nuclear crisis.

Sixty-seven-year-old Macmillan, who formed an unlikely friendship with the charismatic, young President, fretted about the possibility that “formidable nuisances” would develop nuclear weapons.

“If the test program of the Great Power goes on there is no hope of dealing with what you call the Nth country problem,” he wrote to President Kennedy.

“Some countries will develop powerful systems, probably the Chinese and eventually the Germans – and, of course, the French.

“Nothing can stop them if the Great Powers go on. Others will develop nuisance systems – but they will be very formidable nuisances.

“And if all this capacity for destruction is spread about the world in the hands of all kinds of different characters – dictators, reactionaries, revolutionaries, madmen – then sooner or later, and certainly I think by the end of this century, either by error or folly or insanity, the great crime will be committed.”

The letter was put into the public domain as the White House continues to clash with North Korea over the latter’s nuclear tests.

Totaling nine pages, Macmillan's letter tells the President he felt “morally bound” for Britain to conduct further nuclear tests in light of the ever-growing threat from the Soviet Union.

In 1961 the USSR had performed 57 nuclear tests of its own and Kennedy was anxious the west would not fall behind.

Macmillan worried that Britain, “might one day find ourselves at their [the Soviet’s] mercy.”

He also conceded that were Moscow of a mind to strike against Britain with a nuclear weapon, nothing would stop the destruction of the United Kingdom.

“Our scientific advisors,” he laments, “you will remember, said that, if it were not a matter on which national survival itself was at stake, they would say that [an anti-missile system] was impossible.”

Kennedy and Macmillan struck up an unusual friendship during their time in office. The pair were vaguely related to each other – Macmillan’s wife, Lady Dorothy, was the aunt of the Marquess of Hartington who married Kennedy's younger sister Kathleen despite the Kennedy family’s concerns about his Protestant faith.

JFK confided in “Supermac” his infidelities, telling the elder statesman, “I wonder how it is with you, Harold. If I don’t have a woman for three days, I get a terrible headache.”

On affairs of the heart however, President Kennedy had more in common with Mrs Macmillan who had taken one her husband’s colleagues as a lover in the 1920’s and never given him up. Macmillan considered his wife’s infidelity “a chronic illness.”

The pair met at least a dozen times during JFK’s short presidency and exchanged not only notes on public policy but Christmas and birthday cards as well as affectionate personal musings.

“After all, we were all friends; and the whole atmosphere was that of a country house party, to which had been added a garden party and a dance,” Macmillan wrote after one occasion hosting Jack and Jackie.

After JFK’s assassination Jackie wrote to Macmillan, “Sometimes I become so bitter – only alone – I don’t tell anyone... I used to think there was just nothing – or some great vague peace – but now I want to think as I did as a child – that when I die I will go to heaven and find Jack – and that he can see me now, and see all of us and how lost we are without him.”

Macmillan responded, “You have shown the most wonderful courage to the outer world. The hard thing is really to feel it, inside.”

The pair would exchange letters up until his death in 1986. 

Here's some amazing Pathe newsreel footage of JFK's visit to the UK in 1963:

H/T: Daily Mail/ Daily Star

The first edition of The Kerryman newspaper hit the stands on the 27th of August 1904, and it was staunchly Republican from the get-go.

In the years that followed its local journalists would write passionately about the efforts of the sons and daughters of the Kingdom in the Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War.

With politics like theirs though, it was inevitable the paper would come into conflict with the crown forces, which prevented it from going to press on several occasions but could never extinguish its flame.

In Rebel Kerry historians Ryle Dwyer and Helene O’Keefe, Donal Nolan and editor Simon Brouder write of banner moments in the struggle for Irish independence as seen from (and frequently happening in) Kerry.

Roger Casement’s ill-fated landing on Banna Strand on the eve of the Rising is recalled in vivid detail.  Although he only spent a short time in the county (and most of that as a prisoner), his presence in Banna has given the place a charismatic historical importance that has endured to this day.

The sad fate of poor Thomas Ashe, one of the most ardent of the local Irish Volunteers, is recalled in the pages of the paper and reproduced here. Ashe was court-martialed and sentenced to death alongside Eamon de Valera after the Rising, but the sentence was later commuted to penal servitude for life.

After the U.S. entry into World War I in 1917, the British government faced growing pressure from Washington to address the growing Irish “problem.” Shocking accounts of prisoner mistreatment alongside widespread protests in Ireland added further to the pressure, as did the hunger strikes by the prisoners themselves.

Ashe was freed in June 1917 as part of a general amnesty, but he was soon arrested again for sedition, and after another hunger strike he was force fed so brutally by the prison wardens in Mountjoy that he died.  Later 30,000 mourners filed by his wake to pay their respects.

Read more: 50,000 military records of Easter Rising and War of Independence released

The atrocities that occurred throughout the struggle for independence from the crown (and later between Republicans and Free Staters) are all too quickly forgotten. But in Rebel Kerry the real cost of the conflict can be discerned again, and the lesson is unforgettable.

Young men and women who fraternized with crown forces, or worse had actually contemplated joining them, could find their hair clipped off or tarred and feathered as warning to others, and The Kerryman had the report each time.

During the lead up to the planned execution of the teenager Kevin Barry in Dublin on November 1, 1920, the IRA decided to respond to the provocation by shooting as many British police and soldiers as they could.

In the weeks before Barry’s planned death by hanging, Rebel Kerry reminds us that the IRA shot two Black and Tans in Killorglin, wounded two more in Dingle, and a further two policemen were taken prisoner and shot (their bodies were never found). The body count only grew throughout the county as the date of execution drew closer.

British journalists reporting the battles on scene could find themselves threatened by their own countrymen for accurately portraying what they saw, Rebel Kerry reminds us.

Hugh Martin of the Daily News had reported on previous Black and Tan attacks in the county and had been critical of their movements and had come to their attention for it.

“Is there a Hugh Martin among you?” one of them asked a crew of reporters who had arrived in Tralee to cover the latest developments. “If there is, we mean to do for him,” the Tans warned. “It’s him we want and it’s him we’re going to get.”

Martin had the sense to give a false name.  He added that he had come with the other reporters to learn about the burning of the county hall. One of the Tans directed him to a poster affixed to a nearby wall.

It read: “Take notice! Warning! Unless the two policemen in Sinn Fein custody are returned before 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, reprisal of a nature not yet heard of in Ireland will take place in Tralee and surroundings.”

The local inhabitants, expecting a massacre, fled. The next day Martin’s story was a global sensation. News of what was happening in Kerry made the front page of The New York Times and The Sydney Evening News. The siege of Tralee had begun.

Historians have often overlooked what happened in Kerry over the next 10 days, but in Rebel Kerry the authors remind us it was one of the county’s where the business end of the crown forces violence was most often seen. Read it and it will help you to grasp the real scale and violence of the struggle for Irish independence.

Read more: Walk through Michael Collins’ Dublin

Dufour, $25.

On Aug 4, 1914, when Great Britain declared war on Germany, thousands of Irishmen were already in service with the British Army. Before the end of the first year of fighting another 80,000 Irishmen volunteered.

They came from all over Ireland and for many different reasons, some thought that by fighting with the British army their political goals would be achieved, others felt a sense of duty to fight for King and country and others thought this would be the biggest adventure of their lives.

In 2015 Findmypast added an additional 9,000 records to their Irish National Roll of Honour 1914-1921. In the collection, you can have discover remarkable stories of courage, adventure, and valor. Below are two such stories. Both men died in service and received the Victoria Cross for their bravery, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry and exceptional bravery in the presence of the enemy.

Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock – World War One Ace

Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock was the Royal Flying Corps’ most successful pilot during the First World War. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, 2 bars and the Military Cross. Mannock was born in Ballincollig, County Cork. His father was a member of the Royal Scots, so he spent much of his childhood traveling. In August 1914, Mannock was working for a telephone company in Turkey. He knew that is was not safe for him there, but before he could leave he was interned in a concentration camp by the Turks for a year. While there he was beaten and kept in solitary confinement. When he was released in 1915, he moved to England and joined the British Army.

He was known to many as ‘Mick’ because of his Irish birth. In the space of twelve months, Major Mannock is credited with 73 kills in air battles, many over France and Flanders. He ‘was an outstanding example of fearless courage, remarkable skill, devotion to duty and self-sacrifice, which has never been surpassed.’ Mannock wrestled with his emotions and the kills he achieved in battle in his private diary. In September 1917 he was awarded the Military Cross for fighting off several German aircraft and downing three German balloons.

Mannock’s service record shows that he was missing in July 1918 and believed to be dead. On 26 July, Mannock had set out with novice pilot Lieutenant D.C. Inglis in hopes to help Inglis achieve his first kill. On their way back to base they flew over the trenches and were hit with heavy ground fire. Mannock’s plane was shot down behind German lines. His body was later recovered 250 yards from the wreck. Major Mannock’s ‘15 Rules’ for pilots was widely used during World War Two despite changes in airplane design.

Claude Nunney

This second story is about an English born Canadian soldier, who claimed to be Irish. Claude was born Stephen Sargent Claude Nunney in Hastings in 1892. His birth record is available in Findmypast’s England & Wales Births 1837-2006. You’ll also find him in Passenger Lists leaving UK, 1890-1960.

The record includes Stephen Nunney as a passenger from Liverpool to Montreal at the age of 13. He is listed along with numerous other young boys. It is believed they were sent to Canada as part of the Home Children scheme.

After the passing of the Barnado’s Act in 1891, private organizations had the authority facilitated the transfer of ‘abandoned’ British youths to overseas British colonies where they were placed with employers usually in rural areas. However, not all the children who migrated out of Britain were abandoned or orphaned, many came from destitute families who could no longer provide for the children and it was thought that through migration they could achieve a better standard of life. The main destinations were Canada, New Zealand, Southern Rhodesia and Australia. For many children, the process was traumatic and they were met with harsh working conditions in their new home country. For others, it was a positive experience and created new opportunities for the youths.

In Canada, Claude Nunney was a ward of St. George’s Home in Ottawa and then placed in a rural home near Lancaster. There is little account of his personal experience there. In March 1915 he enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 38th Battalion. His official attestation records state that Nunney was born in Dublin and was working as a painter at the time of his enlistment. Because of this false statement of Irish birth Nunney has now been included in the Ireland National Roll of Honour.

During his time in service, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions during the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917 and then the Military Medal for his actions at Avion in the same year. Claude Nunney was awarded the Victoria Cross, along with six other members of the Canadian Forces, for his bravery in September 1918 at Arras, France. The seven Canadian Victoria Cross winners have since been nicknamed ‘The Magnificent Seven.’ The Canadian soldiers advanced on a heavily defended area. Under intense bombardment of artillery, Nunney lead and encouraged his comrades.

During the first day of fighting, he was wounded but refused to leave the field. On the second day of battle, Nunney inflicted heavy casualties on the German forces, killing 25 gunners, but he was wounded again and had to be taken from the field on a stretcher. Claude Nunney died 16 days later. He can be found again in Findmypast’s History of Stormont, Dudndas and Glengarry.

Explore the latest Irish records on Findmypast today and discover if your ancestor was among the thousands of Irishmen who went to fight during the First World War.

* This article was published during a partnership between Findmypast and IrishCentral in 2015.

Five years ago, Alice Collins Plebuch, living in Vancouver in the state of Washington, a retired University of California data information specialist, decided to do a DNA test from Ancestry.com to establish just how Irish she was.

At age 69 she felt it was time to finally add more information to the family tree and the Irish heritage she cherished.

What she discovered shocked her and changed her life.

Now the Washington Post columnist Libby Copeland has retold the story of what happened to this woman who grew up as one of six children born to Jim Collins, son of an Irish immigrant, and Alice Nisbet, a derivation of the Irish name Nesbitt, also of Irish ancestry. She was expecting a 100 percent Irish family tree.

She thought she was Irish:https://t.co/BzjILP1S7U

— JLTV (@JewishLifeTV) July 28, 2017

Instead the DNA test came back showing her as half Ashkenazi Jewish. She was so confused she tested again but with the same result.

Her first thought was “Did her mother have an affair?”

Each year, according to Ancestry’s calculations, approximately 7,000 people find out they are someone else's biological child, not their father’s.

Alice could not dismiss the possibility given her father was always away on army duty.

“My father, he was in the Army and he was all over the world, and it was just one of those fears that you have when you don’t know.”

However, it seemed far more likely the Jewish ancestry was on her father’s side as his past was far murkier. He was born in the Bronx and his mother died when he was an infant. His longshoreman, Irish immigrant father could not cope and placed his three children in an orphanage.

His Irish heritage was very important to him. “He was raised in an orphanage. His Irish identity was all he had,” Alice told the Post.

At his funeral, it was like an Irish wake with “Danny Boy” being sung.

By a process of elimination and taking DNA samples from relatives on both her mother and father's side she discovered the Jewish roots were on the father’s side.

But how? Her grandfather, who came from Ireland, was not Jewish and it was deemed highly unlikely given the minuscule Jewish population in Ireland that there was a Jewish connection from the Emerald Isle. Alice said the mystery deeply impacted her family. They’d been so certain of their family roots, and “now we know nothing,” she wrote.

“It is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning,” her sister Gerry Collins Wiggins stated at the time, “and the last thing I think about as I drift off to sleep.”

The shocks kept coming. It turned out her father’s sister's kids had no trace of Jewish heritage which meant his sister was not his sister and not the same biological match.

Read more: I took the Ancestry.com DNA test and was shocked at what I discovered

As the Washington Post reported, “Plebuch and Wiggins came to the stunned conclusion that their dad was somehow not related to his own parents. John and Katie Collins were Irish Catholics, and their son was Jewish.”

“I really lost all my identity,” Plebuch says.

“I felt adrift. I didn’t know who I was – you know, who I really was.” She had some suspicions, especially after she visited Ireland in 1990 and none of the numerous relatives looked anything like her 5-foot-4 inches father.

“There was nobody that looked like our father.”

Given there was no possibility of solving it through her father’s family as to why he was of Jewish extraction not Irish, the Collins women decided to trace back to his actual birth records at Fordham Hospital, in The Bronx, where he was born.

They could find nothing.

Then on January 18, 2015, lightning struck. She was speaking to a cousin, Pete Nolan, and discovered he had recently had someone new who showed up as a close relative. Her name was Jessica Benson, a North Carolina resident who took the test to find out her Jewish roots. Instead she turned up Irish, which baffled her. She had discovered “that I am actually Irish, which I had not expected at all.”

Plebuch could hardly restrain herself, for some time she had suspected her father was given to the wrong family after birth. The key question was, 'Did Jessica Benson have a relative born in September 23, 1913 at Fordham Hospital in The Bronx?

Jessica answered. Her grandfather, Phillip Benson was born around that date, she wrote.

Plebuch cried. At last the mystery was unraveling.

The New York City Birth Index had a “Philip Bamson,” born Sept. 23 – this surely was Philip Benson. The hospital had screwed up back in 1913.

As the Washington Post stated, “Somehow, a Jewish child had gone home with an Irish family, and an Irish child had gone home with a Jewish family and the child who was supposed to be Philip Benson had instead become Jim Collins.”

Suddenly everything made sense. Back in 1913 protocols to ensure that babies were tagged correctly were not in existence. The families exchanged photographs. Pam Benson saw Plebuch’s short, dark-haired dad Jim Collins, who looked far more like Benson’s 5-foot-4 grandfather and 4-foot-9 grandmother than did her father.

In January, the families, who had become friends, took a cruise together and unraveled the family histories as best they could. They both agree it was good their fathers never knew they were swapped at birth. It would have meant a terrible loss of identity late in their lives. But their families can now come together safe in the knowledge that the truth has finally come out.

Read more: Why DNA tests show different levels of Irish ancestry among family members

It was awarded an ocean away, lost on the other side of a river, found and returned to a Bronx family that includes in its long line a hero of the Second World War.

Bernard J. McNamara was that hero and among the medals he received for his service in Italy was the Purple Heart.

Bernard came home from the war along with his medals.

His Purple Heart, however, was to end up missing in action.

But not for ever lost.

Several years ago a Purple Heart was found in Central Nyack, Rockland County. The engraving said “For Military Merit" & "B.J. McNamara Dec. 9, 1943.”

It turned out that roughly a thousand McNamaras fought in U.S. uniform in World War II and dozens of them had the initials “B.J.”

The discovery of the Purple Heart was highlighted in press reports, and in particular by the Journal News newspaper.

Enter the office of New York Senator Charles Schumer which had the resources, connections, and the interest in solving the mystery.

After a considerable sleuthing effort, Schumer’s office found that the once lost Purple Heart had been awarded to a Bernard J. McNamara from the Bronx.

Unfortunately, he had passed away in 1975 but Schumer’s office successfully tracked down his next-of-kin.

Read more: Family accepts Purple Heart medal for Irish-born American soldier in WWI

Last weekend, Senator Schumer presented the medal to Bernard J. McNamara’s son, Brian, his daughter Catherine, grandson Matthew, and granddaughter Christine.

Schumer was joined by Colonel Peter Sicoli, Commander, U.S. Army Garrison Fort Hamilton as well as Anthony DelRegno, of Blauvelt American Legion Post 310 in Nyack, which had first taken custody of the lost-and-found medal.

It seemed that some of the children in the family had been playing with the medal and dropped it on the ground.

The man who had won it was born September 24, 1909. In April 1942, Bernard enlisted in the army.  Shortly after enlisting he married Ellen McNamara.

On December 9, 1943, he was wounded as a result of German artillery fire during a defensive stand at Monte Sammurco in Italy and was subsequently awarded a Purple Heart.

On January 22, 1944, Bernard McNamara was reported to the International Committee of the Red Cross as being held in Stalag 3B near Fuerstenberg, Prussia, where over 4,000 other American POWs were held. He spent at least 472 days as a prisoner.

When he returned to America, Bernard and Ellen lived in New York where they had two children.

Bernard was a dedicated employee of Con Edison, working there for over 45 years. After retiring, he and Ellen moved to Vermont. According to his death certificate, Bernard passed away on April 6, 1975, in Chittenden County, Vermont.

At last weekend’s gathering, Senator Schumer also presented the family with two additional awards that have been reissued to McNamara: the Bronze Star Medal and the Infantryman Badge.

Schumer, according to a release from his office, said that, unfortunately, these two awards had also gone missing and his office had requested that they are reissued for the family.

“It is a privilege and an honor to return this Purple Heart to the family of decorated World War II veteran, Bernard J. McNamara,” said Senator Schumer.

“McNamara was a true American hero and put his life on the line to serve this country. It’s unfortunate that the medal has gone missing for so long, but I am humbled to have the opportunity to present it to the McNamara family.

“This was a true case of Nancy Drew detective work by my office and I am grateful that my office successfully tracked down the family of its rightful owner so that Bernard’s legacy and a story of heroism can live on.”

The Purple Heart is awarded to service members wounded or killed at the hands of the enemy. It was established in 1932 on the 200th anniversary of George Washington’s birth. Since that time, approximately 1.8 million Purple Hearts have been awarded.

The Bronze Star is awarded to any person with the armed forces of the United States who, after December 6, 1941, secures distinction by heroic or meritorious achievement.

The Infantryman Badge is a military award given to personnel in the grade of colonel or below with an infantry or special forces military occupational specialty who have satisfactorily performed duty while assigned as a member of an infantry/special forces unit, brigade or small size, during any period after December 6, 1941 when the unit was engaged in active ground combat.

---

This article originally featured in the Irish Echo. You can read more from them here. 

A thoughtful word or two for our loved ones is always something to be encouraged, especially in times of loss and grief. Blessings and prayers are just some of the ways that the Irish heal from the death of a loved one at a funeral. When somebody we care about passes, one of the few things we have control over during the difficult time is the words we choose to broadcast in their honor.

"Until we meet again,

may God hold you

in the palm of his hand."

"May joy and peace surround you,

Contentment latch your door,

And happiness be with you now,

And bless you evermore."

Irish Prayer

"May those who love us, love us;

and those who don't love us,

may God turn their hearts;

and if He doesn't turn their hearts,

may he turn their ankles,

so we'll know them by their limping."

"May the Irish hills caress you.

May her lakes and rivers bless you.

May the luck of the Irish enfold you.

May the blessings of

Saint Patrick behold you."

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; Love leaves a memory no one can steal."

Irish prayer for the departed

“Death is nothing at all

I have only slipped away to the next room.

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other, That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.

Speak to me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed

at the little jokes, we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without effect.

Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same that it ever was.

There is absolute unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.

For an interval.

Somewhere. Very near.

Just around the corner.

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before only better, infinitely happier and forever we will all be one together with Christ.

Are there any special blessings or prayers that have helped you? Let us know in the comments.

History writer Marc Wortman has made the sensational and dubious claim that British spies killed two New York policemen in order to change public opinion and bring the United States into the Second World War on the Allied side.

Wortman believes that Winston Churchill sent spy Canadian-born Sir William Stephenson to stoke up trouble; the man that Ian Fleming of the James Bond modelled 007 on was no ordinary man and Flemming once described him as “very tough, very rich, single-minded, patriotic, and a man of few words.”

He was a decorated pilot during the Great War and highly regarded by the British Government.

Officially he was tasked with heading up the new British Security Coordination and his offices were sequestered away in Britain’s Passport Control in the Rockefeller Center

As thousands of Americans enjoyed Independence Day in the USA’s most iconic city two cops and five passersby were killed when an explosion ripped through New York World’s Fair.

The World Fair was an attempt to showcase culture from all the countries of the world - notably Nazi Germany declined to take part - but what should have been a happy family day out for many was turned into a day of terror.

No one was ever convicted of the crime but at the time many suspected Nazi Germany was behind it - even though it was more than a year before the United States declared war on the country.

Others blamed Irish republicans and some suspected French nationalist had targeted the British exhibit in anger at its treatment of their Navy after French capitulation to the Nazis.

“It’s a cold case, but still an open case,” New York City Police Lieutenant Bernard Whalen told Wortman.

“There was a massive investigation at the time. The FBI was involved.”

A reward for $1,000 for information leading to the conviction of the culprit was offered by the police union and a further $25,000 was added by New York City. In today’s money such a sum would equal $450,000 but no one has ever been able to claim it.

“New York City turned virtually the full force of its police power…on the search for the bomber,” the New York Times reported the next day.

Whalen pins the blame on the staff working at the nearby British Pavilion - “You could draw the conclusion that it was an inside job,” he said without further elaborating.

Of all the cops to work on the case, he’s the only one to have reached such a head scratching conclusion.

H/T: Daily Beast

A recent issue of New York magazine decided that summer is no time to focus solely on happy, peppy news stories.

In “The Uninhabitable Earth,” author David Wallace-Wells produced an impressive, frightening spread about “famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak -- sooner than you think.”

In one sub-section, entitled “The End of Food,” he added, “Remember, we do not live in a world without hunger as it is…Most estimates put the number of undernourished at 800 million globally. In case you haven’t heard, this spring has already brought an unprecedented quadruple famine to Africa and the Middle East; the UN has warned that separate starvation events in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Yemen could kill 20 million this year alone.”

Some people weep at such misery.  But not everyone.  While Wallace-Wells does his best to pull at our heartstrings, not to mention scare the pants off of us, others view him as a bleeding-heart fear-monger.  

In the U.S., we still can’t get folks to agree that climate change is real.  We can’t get folks to agree that we should work to minimize starvation around the globe.

And so, in the spirit of good, old American self-interest, let’s ask: What’s in it for us?

Just to focus on hunger -- which should have special resonance for anyone with Irish roots -- a world in which nearly a billion people can’t feed themselves is going to be radically unstable.  

We can build all the walls we want. Even if they keep the so-called undesirables out, the consequences of a starving world of rising temperatures and sea levels will be dire for the U.S.

Again, this is not to say America should drop everything and embark upon a mission to deliver free food and water to every dusty outpost on the planet.  It does mean that perhaps we should participate in the most moderate of global efforts which might -- might -- ameliorate the worst consequences of famine, or halt global warming.

Just last week, former South Carolina governor David Beasley -- a Republican, no less -- testified before Congress that the U.S. should do more for looming famine threats.

Yes, yes, I hear the angry voices, those who are sick and tired of helping the wretches of the world who still end up hating us anyway.

But as Beasley, who now runs the World Food Programme, told Time magazine, “It’s in the United States’ national security interest to fund the World Food Programme.”

It is also in our interest, whether the issue is hunger or climate, to think about not just narrow issues (like coal jobs and low food costs) but broader issues.  Again, Ireland’s famine serves as a warning.

In his recent book Never Out of Season, biologist and professor Rob Dunn takes a fresh look at the Irish Famine.   He notes that commercial interests often pressured scientists to avoid the evidence right in front of their noses.  Sound familiar? 

“Societal pressure” even led experts to blame any blighted Irish potato crop on “weather or bad seeds,” rather than the fungus that actually caused it.  People could have gotten “down to the business of treating [potato] plants and preventing them from being infected in the first place.”

Didn’t happen.  Misery and upheaval ensued.

Dunn also adds, “Perhaps the hardest thing to conceive of is that the demon that stalked the Irish fields could afflict us today.”  But he notes, “Like that of the 19th century Irish, our diets have become ever simpler and more dependent on a smaller number of species…We need ever more food from each acre and so are bound to those crops that produce the most.  Just as it was for the Irish, each time a child is born our reliance on our most productive crops increases.  Corn in North America.  Wheat in Europe.  Cassava in Africa.  Rice in Asia.”

On a wide range of frightening topics, the Great Hunger still speaks to us.  Will we choose to listen?

Yeats once famously asked an old Irish woman if she believed in the fairies. “Of course I don’t believe in fairies,” she scoffed, adding, “But they’re there.”

That dual ability, to believe and not to believe in something simultaneously, is as Irish as the Blarney Stone. It’s probably a colonial consequence. The ability to hold two opposing beliefs without flinching is a survival mechanism of a long subjugated people.

When Brian Friel created his most famous character Gar O’Donnell in his masterpiece Philadelphia, Here I Come! he had the insight to divide the character in two.

One actor plays Gar’s public face and the other plays his private one. They can talk to but never look directly at each other, because the id cannot see itself.

Read more: Facts about leprechauns and where the legends really came from

That tense division, between the public man and his private self, is how powerless people respond to oppression. The public face makes a great show of obsequiousness and subjugation but the private face is secretly mocking all he purports to admire. Sound familiar?

In The Truth About Leprechauns, historian and folklorist Bob Curran invites us to consider the ubiquitous leprechaun. A close relation to the fairies, he is actually a coarser proposition.

Some say that the “wee folk” were once gods, and tall as any man. But as Christianity began to take hold in Ireland their presence began to shrink and shrink until they were diminished in size and influence, explaining their small size, Curran writes.

There are as many types of fairies as there are town lands in Ireland, but somehow the trickster leprechaun has caught the world’s attention and along the way become a kind of exemplar of the Irish themselves.

It’s a bit of a doubled edged compliment, I’m afraid. In the Irish tradition leprechauns are not noted for their friendliness. In fact, they are considered smooth talking rogues who will go out of their way to do you a disservice or worse.

Worse again, they are known to be misers. Always fretting over their little pots of gold and the ever-present threat of its theft, they are extremely selfish and suspicious of all comers. Sound familiar?

If you have ever stepped into an Irish pub somewhere overseas and flinched at the sudden sight of a painting or drawing of a little green hatted leprechaun with his black buckles and pot of gold, perhaps that's why. You sense the insult. That image means us at some level.

Curran does well to contextualize all the possible interpretations of what a leprechaun is or can be.  Where they come from, what they do, why they have taken the shape they have in the popular imagination are all in themselves fascinating questions.

Read more: St. Patrick’s Day goals? Help your kids trap a leprechaun

When you live in a country where giving a direct answer to a question could, for centuries, result in the sudden end of your life, it’s no wonder that Irish people developed a reputation for evasiveness, for making contrarian utterances, for their wink and nod culture, for saying one thing but meaning quite another.

Curran also knows that Irish piety is the reflex of Irish playfulness. Christianity may have taken deep root, but it has never been able to entirely banish the traditions of pagan Ireland.

So holy wells are repurposed from their pagan roots, festivals are given a Christian patina, goddesses become saints, but one never quite has the power to completely subjugate the other.

Curran also reminds us that leprechauns are always male. The power of the female is entirely missing from their story, or at least at first.

By being not human men, leprechauns are in their own way suspect and suspicious, a condition that makes them other, which in turn associates them with the female.

But perhaps most poignantly of all, Curran considers the fate of the Sheela-na-Gig, an impossibly old, venal and venerable depiction of female supernatural power.

Most commonly found in stone carvings of ancient Irish churches, she is an image and echo of the half lost traditions of the pagan Irish world, an image and echo that has persisted through all the ages of the new faith.

Just as England never succeeded in subjugating the Irish, neither did Rome. In this book you’ll see the Irish imagination pushing back against the strictures that others set for us, and you’ll be reminded why we did so.

Read more: US leprechauns versus Irish fairies - a St. Patrick’s Day death match

Dufour, $18

It was a moment that would last only a few brief seconds, but the handshake between an impressionable teenage Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy would go on to inspire a lifetime of public service.

In the photo a clearly enraptured Clinton leans forward to shake the hand of the President who looks back at him with the quiet confidence and ease of politician who has shaken a million such hands over a lengthy career.

It was, a “beautiful bright summer day” in Washington, Richard Stratton, who was president of Boys Nation in 1963, recalled years later.

The then Boys Nation President had organized the trip to the White House and said the gang of teenage boys, “sat there, riveted to attention” as the dashing young 35th President of the United States marched out.

Years later, when he himself was President, Clinton remembered, “I was about the third or fourth person in, and he [President Kennedy] started here and I sort of muscled my way up.”

“He was quite generous, he went down the line and shook hands with a pretty good number of us who were there.

“It has a very profound effect on me… it’s something that I carry with me always.

“And I was fortunate that someone took a picture of it and gave it to me so I was always able to remember it.”

Read more: Interesting facts about John F. Kennedy

That picture is frequently republished but a more revealing picture shows Kennedy shaking hand with the boy next to Clinton and the face of the future of President shows he was clearly overwhelmed by what just happened to him.

One man who was there with his characterized the look on his face as he gazed down at the hand that just shook the President’s as one “like I’ll never wash this again.”

Afterward, an enthused Clinton told everyone there he was going to be President, to much mocking.

Years laters, when Clinton achieved his dream, the group met up once again and took a picture at the exact same spot but this time the Commander in Chief was in the frame too.

Read more: What JFK meant for Ireland during his history visit

This young Irish woman was hired as the housekeeper for Jefferson Davis in Richmond, VA during the American Civil War.

A photograph was found in 2014 of the Irish woman who was hired as the housekeeper for Jefferson Davis at the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA during the Civil War.

Mary O’Melia, who left Ireland for America as a young widow with three children, has always been a mystery. But at long last, in 2014, a woman with an "Irish lilt to her voice" called the American Civil War Museum and said O’Melia was related to her late husband, and that she had a necklace Confederate First Lady Varina Davis had given the housekeeper, the Washington Post reported.

“What really took my breath away is she said she had a photograph of Mary,” said Cathy Wright, curator at the Civil War Museum, formerly the Museum of the Confederacy, located next door to the White House.

“Considering that it’s been almost 150 years since she left the White House that anyone has been able to look at her face is just remarkable,” Wright said.

“One of the more elusive figures was Mary O’Melia.”

Mary Larkin was born on April 7, 1822, in Galway and educated in a convent.  She wed Matthias O’Melia, a ship captain, but was widowed at age 25 when he was lost at sea.

Although details are unknown, she settled in Baltimore with her children around 1850. In 1861, she left her children with relatives while she went to visit friends in Richmond. She was stranded in Virginia when the state left the Union.

Friends told her that the First Lady could help her return home and she appealed to the Roman Catholic bishop to help her.

Varina Davis persuaded O’Melia to take the position of housekeeper at the White House, where she was among a staff of 20 and served as a confidante to the first lady.

O’Melia remained behind to oversee the mansion when the South's first family left Richmond in April 1865 and may have been in the White House when President Abraham visited that same month.

“Mrs. Omelia behaved just as you described her, but seemed anxious to serve and promised to take care of everything which may mean some things,” President Jefferson Davis wrote to his wife from Danville days after his departure.

O’Melia, whose name has been spelled a variety of ways throughout the years—O’Melia, O’Malley, and O’Malla, left little by way of a written account of her years in Richmond.

O’Melia eventually returned to Baltimore, where she operated boarding houses. In 1889, O’Melia attended a memorial ceremony in the city for Jefferson Davis after his passing. A reporter said she “attracted considerable attention” and described her as “a well-preserved old lady.”

She died in 1907.

* Originally published in July 2014. 

Family can be especially important to the Irish, so it makes sense that we’re always looking for ways to wish our family members well and let them know we care. Irish traditional blessings are a treasured way to spread light and comfort. If you are seeking some blessings for your family we have five great ones to get you started.

“May your troubles be less

And your blessings be more

And nothing but happiness come through your door.”

“May love and laughter light your days, and warm your heart and home.

May good and faithful friends be yours, wherever you may roam.

May peace and plenty bless your world with joy that long ensures.

May all life’s passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!”

“May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind always be at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

and rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

“May these walls be filled with laughter, may it reach from floor to roof. May the roof keep out the rain, may sunshine warm each windowpane. And may the door be open wide to let the good lord’s love inside.”

“May love connect us, faith direct us and God protect us.”

Have we left out any of your favorite family blessings? Let us know in the comments.

While we honor and praise the great work of Irish Americans in so many fields, there is also a seamy dark side to everything and Irish America is no different.

Here for your interest and curiosity are the five most evil Irish Americans we have identified:

Timothy McVeigh

The Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh, killed hundreds including women and children and babies and showed no remorse

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a white power advocate and fierce critic of the federal government drove the truck to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City just as its offices opened for the day. Before arriving, he stopped to light a two-minute fuse. At 09:02, a large explosion destroyed the north half of the building. It killed 168 people, including nineteen children in the day care center on the second floor, and injured 684 others.

Whitey Bulger

Whitey Bulger, suspected in scores of murders, FBI informant who ratted out dozens of close friends. Serving life in jail. He was boss of the Winter Hill gang an Irish American mafia outfit, Federal prosecutors indicted Bulger for nineteen murders based on grand jury testimony from former associates. Some experts believe the number is much higher.

Amy Archer Gilligan

Amy Archer Gilligan, Born Amy Duggan, killed at least 12 in her nursing homes in Windsor, Connecticut between 1908 and 1916 where she specialized in taking in wealthy and single old men. She may have killed as many as sixty. Sentenced to die but sentence was commuted. Subject of a famous Broadway play “Arsenic and Old Lace”

Lizzie Halliday

Irish-born Lizzy McNally emigrated to America and succeed in killing all five of her husbands in the 1890s.  She earned the title “The Worst Woman on Earth” when she died by The New York Times, while her death total is only five experts believe it was many more. While in an insane asylum she stabbed a nurse to death.

She was so notorious she was linked to the Jack the Ripper murders at one point which was absurd but which showed the fascination the public had with her.

Jane Toppan

Jane Toppan (real name Norah Kelley) This “Angel of Mercy” and daughter of Irish immigrants is believed to have been one of America's most prolific poisoners having killed over 100 patients.

Read more: Tale of deadly Irish American serial killer nurse Jolly Jane

Born in Massachusetts in 1857, Toppan, who became known as “Jolly Jane,” attended Cambridge Nursing school and established herself as a private nurse in Boston working for some of city’s wealthiest families. It wasn’t until an entire family in her care died, within weeks of each other, that her crimes surfaced.

The first-generation Irish nurse was known for her cheerful, funny demeanor, hence her nickname, but it has been said that she was the most notorious female poisoner in modern times. It’s believed that she gave injections of morphine and atropine to 31 hospital patients and a suspected 70 others, killing them all, over her two-decade career.

Lughnasa 2017 (otherwise spelled Lughnasadh) is one of the four great fire festivals of the Celtic year, celebrated with plenty of special Lughnasa recipes, rituals, traditions and symbols. As the exact Lughnasadh date may fall anytime between August 1 and August 12, IrishCentral has your definitive guide for all the best ways to celebrate the Lughnasadh festival. 

Lughnasadh date 

Lughnasa marks the beginning of autumn (fall). It is the beginning of the harvest season and celebrates the decline of summer into winter. The old Celtic pagan festival lasted a month, with August 1 at its midpoint, but is currently most often celebrated on the Sunday closest to that date. 

Celtic festivals and rituals typically center around the assurance of a bountiful harvest and the celebration of the harvest cycle.

There is often much confusion surrounding Lammas/Lughnasa because of the variety of names and the differing dates on which it is celebrated.

When the Gregorian system was adopted in Ireland in 1782, 11 days had to be dropped to make the calendar astronomically correct. This led to the festival being celebrated on either the 1st or the 12th of August, called respectively New Style and Old Style Lughnasa.

To further complicate matters, many Lammas/Lughnasa festivities became appropriated to Christian saints’ days or the nearest Sunday.

Lughnasadh festival traditions

Folklore survivals of Lughnasa are celebrated under a wide variety of names, such as Bilberry Sunday, Garland Sunday and Domhnach Crom Dubh (‘Crom Dubh Sunday’), depending on the locality, at various dates between mid-July and mid-August.

The name Bilberry Sunday comes from a tradition of gathering bilberries (blueberries) at this time. If the bilberries were bountiful, the crops would be also. This is also the feast of the first grain harvest. Though the exact date of the festival varies, in the old days it was held anywhere from August 1 to August 14. Often, it began at sundown of the previous evening, or July 31, since the Celts measure their days from sundown to sundown.

Garland Sunday is so called because garlands of flowers and greenery are usually placed around most of the Holy Wells. These wells are found throughout Ireland and are most often dedicated to the patron saint of the parish. This day also marked the end of the ‘hungry season’ as people were now confident there’d be plenty of new potatoes, freshly baked bread, and baskets brimming with berries.

Read more: Ireland’s original Olympics - the Lughnasa games (VIDEOS)

Lughnasadh recipes

Nothing reminds us more of summer than a freshly baked blueberry pie full of big and plump, sweet and juicy berries. The important thing to remember when making any fruit pie is to start with good quality fruit. If using cultivated blueberries make sure they are firm, plump, fragrant, and dark blue with a dusty white bloom. The white bloom is the blueberry’s natural protection against the sun and is a sign of freshness. 

Blueberry pie

Ingredients:

5 cups fresh blueberries
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 (15 ounce) package refrigerated pie crusts
1 cup sugar
½ cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon sugar

Method:

Sprinkle berries with lemon juice; set aside.

Fit half of pastry in a 9-inch pie plate according to package directions.

Combine 1 cup sugar and next 3 ingredients; add to berries, stirring well.

Pour into pastry shell, and dot with butter.

Unfold remaining pastry on a lightly floured surface; roll gently with rolling pin to remove creases in pastry.

Place pastry over filling; seal and crimp edges.

Cut slits in top of crust to allow steam to escape.

Brush top of pastry with beaten egg, and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon sugar

Bake at 400° for 35 minutes or until golden.

Cover edges with aluminum foil to prevent over browning, if necessary.

Serve with vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Today marks, August 6, marks the anniversary of the United States dropping nuclear weapons on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, during World War II, in 1995. This was the final stages of WWII. The USA dropped two bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6th and 9th, killing at least 129,000 but not one very lucky Irish nun called Sister Julie Canny.

Before World War II broke out in 1939, Julie Canny, an Irish nun, was sent to a convent in Hiroshima. There she would become a witness to one of the most significant events of the 20th century 72 years ago.

She was born in Clonbur, County Galway in 1892. A late vocation, she joined the Society of the Helpers of the Holy Souls in New York. After she was sent to the convent in Japan, she was briefly interned by the Japanese who mistook her for an American citizen. When they realized she was Irish, she was released.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing between 70,000 and 80,000 Japanese civilians. Sr Julie, whose convent was located just two kilometers away from the epicenter of the blast, was in the garden of the convent saying her morning prayers when the bomb detonated.

Two years before she died at the age of 93 in Toyko in 1987, Canny gave an interview to Adrian Miller of the Andersonstown News recounting her memories of that day.

“Suddenly there was a huge bang in the sky, just above the city,” she recalled. “We were all thrown from our seats onto the ground. Realizing that it was a bomb, we quickly picked ourselves up and made a run for cover in the direction of the convent.

“We had only just taken shelter inside the convent when the entire building began to shake and give way. We turned and rushed outside again, the convent collapsing at our heels. The convent wall collapsed before our very eyes and beyond where the wall had stood until a few seconds before lay the remains of our neighborhood.

“There was hardly a building left standing. Everywhere people lay either dying or dead, burned — I was to learn later — from the flash of radiation.”

The nuns found shelter in a house owned by the Jesuits. A month later, Japan surrendered and Sr Julie, because she spoke English, was able to negotiate with the occupying American forces on behalf of those left injured or homeless after the bomb. 

Dr. Aidan MacCarthy, an Irish doctor from Castletownbere, Co. Cork, was an eyewitness to the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki on August 9th. A doctor in the RAF, he was a prisoner-of-war in Nagasaki when the second atomic bomb was dropped.

In his memoir "A Doctor’s War", he recalled how the blast from the bomb flattened a nearby Mitsubishi factory and instantly killed 500 female workers.

“Where the building had been hit,” he wrote, “they had been catapulted out, spread as a human carpet up to a distance of nearly a thousand feet, giving the impression of a nightmare doll factory.

“The majority lay as if asleep, unmarked and unburnt, still in their trouser suits, and seeming as though they were waiting to be replaced on a massive shelf.”

Dr MacCarthy’s memoir of his experiences was published after he died in 1995.

* Originally published in August 2015. 

Would you believe that August 7 is recognized as Sea Serpent Day! The anniversary of a famous sea serpent sighting, when the men aboard the HMS Daedalus in August 1848 spotted a 60-foot long creature with a maned head. Scary! So now annually on National Sea Serpent Day, you can talk with your friends and discuss if this is a myth or if it is real.

But did you know that Ireland had its very own sea serpent and the mystery of County Clare was recently, once again, in the limelight after almost 150 years.

The sea serpent often referred to as Ireland’s Loch Ness monster was sighted numerous times in the late 1850s off the coast of Ireland along County Clare.

The mystery of its nature has never been solved and is up for debate again now that an illustrated newspaper sketch of the creature has been found in the archives of the Mary Evans Picture Library in London, after the library set about digitizing its Victorian illustrated newspaper collection, in 2015.

One of the earliest sightings of the monster was recorded in 1850, the Irish Times reports, when it was described as “sunning itself near the Clare coast off Kilkee.”

Then, in September 1871, the Limerick Chronicle ran an article about a “large and frightening sea monster” encountered by a group of people, all of whom “had their nerves considerably upset by the dreadful appearance of this extraordinary creature.”

The story made its way to London, and then the following month an even more elaborate account was reported by an illustrated newspaper – The Day’s Doings.

The artist’s rendering, pictured above, was paired with a dramatic account of the sighting.

The paper described the day’s events, a “group staying at Kilkee, composed of several ladies and some gentlemen – one of whom is a well-known clergyman in the north of Ireland” had been out walking, at a place known as the Diamond Rocks.

“All of a sudden, their attention was arrested by the appearance of an extraordinary monster, who rose from the surface of the water about seventy yards from the place where they were standing.

“It had an enormous head, shaped somewhat like a horse, while behind the head and on the neck was a huge mane of seaweed-looking water; the eyes were large and glaring, and, by the appearance of the water behind, a vast body seemed to be beneath the waves.”

An arresting sight indeed!

Read more: Frightening Irish demons and monsters from Celtic myth

* Originally published in August 2015.

It was August 6, 1855, an election day.

But not everybody in Louisville, Kentucky was thinking in terms of casting votes when the Bloody Monday riots occurred.

Nativist mobs spent the day storming through a number of immigrant neighborhoods, for the most part, inhabited by Irish and German Catholics.

In the riots, at least 22 people were killed and dozens injured.

Some estimates of the death toll went far higher.

Rioters, determined to stop the new immigrant voters, rolled cannons up to the doors of one church, searched the Cathedral of the Assumption and St. Patrick’s Church for arms, and burned a row of buildings known as Quinn’s Row.

The horrific events of what became known as Bloody Monday are remembered annually, most especially by local members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, whose very existence in the middle years of the 19th century was based on the defense of beleaguered Catholics.

On August 6, 1855, those defenses were overwhelmed.

The Bloody Monday riots – some would describe it as a pogrom - grew out of the bitter rivalry between the Democrats and the Nativist Know-Nothing Party, which actually went by the official name of The American Party.

And as the record shows, after all of the day’s horrors, only five people were to be indicted. But none of them were convicted and the victims were not compensated.

As the Louisville Daily Journal reported at the time, the city was"...in possession of an armed mob, the base passions of which were infuriated to the highest pitch by the incendiary appeals of the newspaper organ and the popular leaders of the Know Nothing Party.”

And the report continued: “In the afternoon a general row occurred on Shelby Street, extending from Main to Broadway. Some fourteen or fifteen men were shot, including Officer Williams, Joe Selvage and others.

“Two or three were killed, and a number of houses, chiefly German coffee houses, broken into and pillaged. About 4 o'clock, a vast crowd armed with shotguns, muskets, and rifles were proceeding to attack the new German parish of St. Martin of Tours on Shelby Street.

“Mayor Barbee, himself a Know-Nothing, dissuaded them with and the mob returned to the First Ward polls. An hour afterward the large brewery on Jefferson Street, near the junction of Green, was set on fire. Rev. Karl Boeswald was fatally injured by a hail of flying Stones while on his way to visit a dying parishioner.

“Late in the afternoon three Irishmen going down Main Street, near Eleventh, were attacked, and one knocked down. Irish in the neighborhood responded by firing repeated volleys from the windows of their houses on Main street.

“Mr. Rodes, a river-man, was shot and killed by one in the upper story, and a Mr. Graham met with a similar fate. An Irishman who discharged a pistol at the back of a man's head was shot and then hung but survived.

“After dusk, a row of frame houses on Main Street between Tenth and Eleventh, the property of Mr. Quinn, a well known Irishman, were set on fire. The flames extended across the street and twelve buildings were destroyed.

“These houses were chiefly tenanted by Irish, and upon any of the tenants venturing out to escape the flames, they were immediately shot down. Those badly wounded by gun shot could not escape from the burning buildings.”

Louisville Mayor John Barbee, a Know-Nothing himself, was the man who managed to finally quell the violence.

It was his personal intervention that saved the Cathedral of the Assumption from destruction.

But the cathedral was more fortunate than a lot of other structures. More than a hundred businesses, private homes, and tenements were destroyed.

Some estimates of the death toll exceeded a hundred souls.

In some cases, it was impossible to identify individuals and it was determined that in some of the ruined structures entire families had perished.

Back in 2005, the 150th anniversary of the riots, the Louisville Ancient Order of Hibernians Fr. Abram J Ryan Division 1, and the city’s German-American Club, raised the funds to erect a historic marker at the site of Quinn's Row.

It’s both a shrine and a reminder of the price to be paid for ignorance and hatred.

---

This article was originally featured in the Irish Echo. You can read more from them here. 

Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy Jr had a secret meeting at the Carlyle Hotel in NYC back in the summer of 1995, JFK Jr’s closest confidants have revealed.

John reportedly met with the People’s Princess because he wanted her to appear on the cover of his political magazine, George.

"We had to draw all these cover ideas up, and he took the drawings over to the Carlyle Hotel to meet her," George magazine creative director Matt Berman told People.

Diana and JFK Jr. met in Diana's suite at the Upper East Side hotel. The meeting lasted for about an hour.

"He was very careful what he said [afterward]. The one funny thing he said was, 'She’s got a great pair of legs,'" said Berman.

"I do remember him saying, 'She’s really tall!' He also said she was very shy. He was surprised how demure she was. I think they had both met Mother Theresa so they spoke about that. And he said how lovely she was," said John's former executive assistant and close friend RoseMarie Terenzio.

Diana ultimately decided not to pose for the George cover.

"He wanted to do a respectful piece, [but] she wrote John a note that said, ‘Thank you so much, but not right now,'" Terenzio said.

Both Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy Jr tragically died at a young age. In August 1997, Diana was killed at age 36 in a car accident in Paris. On July 16, 1999, JFK Jr, 38, and his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, along with Carolyn’s sister Lauren, were killed in a plane crash while flying over the Atlantic Ocean.

H/T CloserWeekly

Did you know an Irishman watched the atomic bomb as it dropped on Nagasaki? Or that the same man had already survived Dunkirk, survived all World War II, spent four years as a prisoner of war in Japan and finally returned to Ireland with a Samurai sword after his Nagasaki survival. 

Today is the anniversary of that fateful day the atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, and the anniversary of the incredible survival of Dr. Aidan MacCarthy whose life is truly one of the greatest Irish survival stories. A documentary “The Doctor’s Sword” examines the life of the Cork doctor and his brushed with death at Dunkirk, Java, and Nagasaki.

Aidan MacCarthy was a University College Cork-trained media from West Cork whose tale of one of the many stories of amazing survival from World War II. He was the first non-Japanese doctor to assist in the relief efforts after the bombing of Nagasaki and was given a Samurai sword by a Japanese officer.

The movie follows MacCarthy’s family’s search to uncover the origin of the sword, which now resides in the famous MacCarthy’s Bar in Castletownbere, Co Cork, and therefore, looking at the great man’s achievements.

Read more: The Irish nun who survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb

At 28, MacCarthy joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in London as the Second World War began. Soon after, he found himself evacuated from Dunkirk. In May 1941, he received the George’s Cross for rescuing the crew of a burning RAF plane which had crashed into a bomb dump on landing. He volunteered for service in Asia as Singapore fell to the Japanese and was captured in Java. He survived almost four years of brutal captivity enduring starvation, malnutrition, forced labor, beatings, and torture as a prisoner of war.

He volunteered for service in Asia as Singapore fell to the Japanese and was captured in Java. He survived almost four years of brutal captivity enduring starvation, malnutrition, forced labor, beatings, and torture as a prisoner of war.

MacCarthy was a prisoner of war at the camp attached to the Mitsubishi steel and iron works in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945. This was the beginning of the end of his captivity and he later returned home with a Samurai sword which was given to him as a gift by the prisoner of war camp commander at the end of the war.

The documentary tells Dr. Aidan MacCarthy’s incredible story of resilience and bravery, and his daughter Nicola’s journey to find the family of the Japanese officer who gave their ancestral sword to her father.

The film premiered at the Cork Film Festival in November 2015 to a sold-out crowd, prompting a second screening. 

* This article was originally published in 2015. 

The long-lost tombstone of an Irish immigrant was discovered in a shocking fashion this week

The tragic story of an Irish immigrant mother who died during childbirth was revealed this week when electricians working underground at a home in San Francisco came across her tombstone.

Catherine Ryan was a 27-year-old Irish immigrant to the US who died 155 years ago while giving birth to her son William Henry, who died 13 days later. Their tombstone, which they shared with Ryan’s husband, German immigrant Charles Cooper, had hidden buried under the ground for decades before the electricians made the shocking discovery this week, unearthing the tragic story.

"[It was] more of a shock than anything," electrician Frank Graziano told the San Francisco Gate.

"All the guys were shocked and amazed at the same time. Never have seen or heard anything like it."

Crew from Lowes Electric called SF coroner, who called proper authorities. Leaving stone beneath, for now. No grave, it seems. #abc7now pic.twitter.com/CfNtAOfNXQ

— Wayne Freedman (@WayneFreedman) August 9, 2017

"Those people lost their child so early," he continued.

"It tugs at my heart because I have four kids of my own. I couldn't imagine it."

When the electricians investigated the stone further, they were amazed to discover it was 155 years old, although the coffins of Ryan, Cooper, and their baby boy had long since been moved to a different cemetery.

155-year-old tombstone found under SF home https://t.co/y4ejIxVmRc pic.twitter.com/QAN78QfedI

— SFGate (@SFGate) August 11, 2017

Co. Cork immigrant Catherine Ryan was married to German immigrant Charles Cooper

While originally buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, they were relocated sometime after 1900 when San Francisco banned burials within the overcrowded city limits.

It was first believed it would be extremely difficult to trace the life story of the immigrant couple due to the massive amount of Ryans and Coopers who emigrated to the city. As it happened, there was only one Charles Cooper, however, and so their immigrant story was revealed.

According to the Gate, Charles Cooper was listed in the 1862 city directory as working the “ice cart”, meaning he brought ice round to the homes of wealthier San Francisco residents. By the next year, this had changed to “teamster” meaning he drove a team of horses or oxen.

Read more: Rhode Island woman's quest uncovers hundreds of Irish Famine graves

Mother and child died within two weeks of each other in 1862

Weird last-minute story for @WayneFreedman and I last night! https://t.co/FMF6JPoNUO

— Dean C. Smith (@DeanCSmith) August 10, 2017

Living at 324 Vallejo Street, 29-year-old Cooper, and his 27-year-old wife would have discovered they were pregnant at the beginning of 1862 but their happiness was to end abruptly in the death of both Catherine and William Henry.

Although Cooper remarried, he died at the age of 69 and was buried alongside his first wife and son.

Tombstone represents an entire family. Includes a baby that died at 13 days old, 155 years ago. #abc7now pic.twitter.com/pwqyqrIuUQ

— Wayne Freedman (@WayneFreedman) August 9, 2017

The electrician’s work resumed as usual once it discovered that no human remains were at the site and the homeowners have decided to leave the tombstone as it stands. 

H/T: San Francisco Gate