Where was the subject of The Flying Irishman born?
Douglas Corrigan Douglas Corrigan (January 22, 1907 – December 9, 1995) was an American aviator born in Galveston, Texas. He was nicknamed "Wrong Way" in 1938. After a transcontinental flight from Long Beach, California, to New York City, he flew from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, to Ireland, though his flight plan was filed to return to Long Beach. He claimed his unauthorized flight was due to a navigational error, caused by heavy cloud cover that obscured landmarks and low-light conditions, causing him to misread his compass. However, he was a skilled aircraft mechanic (he was one of the builders of Charles Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis") and had made several modifications to his own plane, preparing it for his transatlantic flight. He had been denied permission to make a nonstop flight from New York to Ireland, and his "navigational error" was seen as deliberate. Nevertheless, he never publicly admitted to having flown to Ireland intentionally.
Tomás Bairéad Tomás Bairéad (1893 – 1973) was an Irish author and nationalist. Born in Galway, his father was called Michael Barrett and his mother Mary McDonough. He had two sisters and one brother. He was a member of the Moycullen group of the Irish Volunteers in 1916 and soon after became an IRA volunteer. He was also a member of the IRB and Sinn Féin. He was part of a group of Volunteers who were involved in the burning of the RIC Barracks in Rosmuc in 1920. He began his journalistic career with the Galway Express, a weekly republican paper. In 1922 he would join the "Irish Independent", writing on politics, and would later become the newspaper's editor in 1945. While working for the "Independent" he was presented the Irish Academy of Letters Award (1938). Bairéad also invented his own Irish shorthand. His close friend, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, urged him to leave the IRA in order to focus on his writings.