1. Michael Joseph O'Rahilly, known as The O'Rahilly, was an Irish republican and nationalist.
16 Facts About The O'Rahilly
1. 2.
The O'Rahilly was a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and served as Director of Arms.
3.
The O'Rahilly had two siblings who lived to adulthood, Nell Humphreys and Anno O'Rahilly, both of whom were active in the Irish revolutionary period.
4.
The O'Rahilly joined the Gaelic League and became a member of An Coiste Gnotha, its governing body.
5.
The O'Rahilly married Nancy Brown on 15 April 1899 in New York and the couple had six sons together.
6.
The O'Rahilly personally directed the first major arming of the Volunteers, the landing of 900 Mausers at the Howth gun-running on 26 July 1914.
7.
The O'Rahilly was not party to the plans for the Easter Rising, nor was he a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, but he was one of the main people who trained the Irish Volunteers for the coming fight.
8.
The O'Rahilly took instructions from MacNeill and spent the night driving throughout the country, informing Volunteer leaders in Cork, Kerry, Tipperary, and Limerick that they were not to mobilise their forces for planned manoeuvres on Sunday.
9.
The O'Rahilly fought with the GPO garrison during Easter Week.
10.
The O'Rahilly slumped into a doorway on Moore Street, wounded and bleeding badly but, hearing the British marking his position, made a dash across the road to find shelter in Sackville Lane.
11.
The O'Rahilly was wounded diagonally from shoulder to hip by sustained fire from the machine-gunner.
12.
The O'Rahilly bled to death slowly in a doorway in Moore Lane overnight alone.
13.
The O'Rahilly managed to scribble off a farewell note to his wife and that night was heard crying for water.
14.
Desmond Ryan's The Rising maintains that it "was 2.30pm when Miss O'Farrell reached Moore Street, and as she passed Sackville Lane again, she saw The O'Rahilly's corpse lying a few yards up the laneway, his feet against a stone stairway in front of a house, his head towards the street".
15.
The O'Rahilly wrote a message to his wife on the back of a letter he had received in the GPO from his son.
16.
O'Rahilly's calling himself "The O'Rahilly" was purely his own idea.