Free Republic

In December 1846, a Cork magistrate pushed open a cabin door in Skibbereen and found six people so starved he took them for corpses. That same winter, ships were leaving Irish harbours loaded with oats, calves, pork and butter. The same potato blight hit Belgium, the Netherlands and the Scottish Highlands, but only Ireland lost about a million people. So why did a million Irish people really die in the Great Famine? This documentary follows the real reasons behind Ireland's Great Famine of 1845 to 1852, An Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger. The land and tenancy system and the...

Based on a careful study of Saturn's orbit and using mathematical models, French scientists were able to whittle down the search region for Planet Nine to "possible" and "probable" zones. Source: CNRS, Cote d'Azur and Paris observatories. Created by the author Astronomy, Cassini, Planet News, Solar SystemSearch Narrows For Planet Nine 25 Feb , 2016 by Bob King An imagined view from Planet Nine looking back toward the Sun. Astronomers think the massive, distant planet is gaseous, similar to the other giant planets in our Solar System. Credit: Wikipedia Last month, planetary scientists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of...

On July 7, 1846, a contingent of Marines raised the American flag over Monterey, California, to mark a proclamation by U.S. consul Thomas Larkin that the territory was being annexed as a consequence of the war with Mexico. Much of the future state had already been taken from Mexico's nominal control by an uprising of American settlers under the Bear Flag. Victory in the Mexican War meant that the country gained Texas, California, and everything in between, comprising most of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Next to the War of Independence and the Civil...

At 9:30 a.m. this day, as the American army raised the Stars & Stripes over Chapultepec Castle during the Mexican-American War, it simultaneously carried out a mass hanging of 30 Irish deserters who had gone over to Santa Anna — the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, or the San Patricios. Irish had been migrating to the United States en masse even well before the Great Famine got rolling in 1845. And for those of that great migration wave who wound up in the service fighting the Mexican-American War, there was a hint of deja vu — an Anglo and Protestant imperial power...

The iconic Colt 1847 Walker Revolver was the game changer of the old west. Only about 1100 of the guns were ever made in total, 1,000 of which were for the military, only 100 was for the public. The Walker Colt saw use in the Mexican-American War and on the Texas frontier. Samuel Walker was carrying two of the revolvers that bore his name when he was killed in battle during the Mexican-American War in 1847. This revolver best known today as Clint Eastwood's weapon in "The Outlaw Josey Wales." Did you know that this massive cap-and-ball revolver was the...

When the nuns first hit the road in 2012, their mission was to collect stories of economic oppression in protest of the Paul Ryan budget — in defiant response to Pope Benedict XVI's startling decision to launch an investigation into the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents more than 80 percent of religious sisters in the United States. The investigation was an outright attack on women's role in the Church and was referred to as "a crackdown on American nuns." Their alleged transgression was spending too much time on social justice issues, and promoting "certain radical...