Irish History - April 23 - 29

Here is your Irish history lesson for this week.

April 23

1014 - The Dublin Norse and the king of Leinster, with Viking allies from overseas, are defeated by Brian Boru's army at Clontarf. Brian, now an old man, is killed. This thwarts the potential domination of Ireland by the Norse, but they are well established in the coastal towns, and will continue to have a major influence. Máel Sechnaill succeeds Brian as high king
1357 - Four days after the end of his campaign against the O'Tooles, O'Byrnes and O'Nolans in Leinster, justiciar Thomas Rokeby dies on this date at Kilkea, Co. Kildare
1723 - Mervyn Archdall, antiquary, is born in Dublin
1727 - Actress George Anne Bellamy is born in Fingal, Co. Dublin. The illegitimate daughter of Lord Tyrawley, British ambassador at Lisbon, her mother marries a Captain Bellamy and the child receives the name George Anne, by mistake for Georgiana. She grows up to become an accomplished actress and plays on the stage in London and Dublin. She is a contemporary of Sheridan and Garrick, and is patronized by aristocratic society.
1792 - Thomas Romney Robinson, astronomer and physicist, is born in Dublin
1805 - James Henthorn Todd, scholar, is born in Dublin
1918 - The Military Service Act18 April threatens conscription for Ireland: there is a one-day general strike in protest (except in Ulster) on this date
1926 - Son of irish immigrants, J.P. Donleavy, author of The Ginger Man, is born in New York; he emigrates to Ireland during World War II and becomes an Irish citizen. He now lives in Westmeath
1927 - Shamrock Rovers player Bob Fulham scores Ireland’s first international goal, against Italy
1947 - Birth of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone; she is the youngest MP ever to be elected to Parliament
1961 - A census shows the population of Northern Ireland is1,425,642; an earlier census on April 9 shows the population of the Republic to be 2,818,341
1967 - A local parish priest voices his extreme opposition to the appearance of Jayne Mansfield at the Mount Brandon Hotel in Tralee, and the concert is duly cancelled. Three weeks later, she is killed in a car accident
1998 - The Government's package of measures designed to dampen down rocketing house prices — particularly in the Dublin area — draws mixed reaction
1998 - The largest dry bulk carrier ever to dock at an Irish port, the 183,000-tonne Buccleuch, arrives at the deep-water jetty of the ESB's generating station at Moneypoint, Co. Clare
1999 - It emerges that detectives from outside the Royal Ulster Constabulary are being drafted into Northern Ireland to join the murder squad hunting the killers of human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson
2002 - Just months after voting No to Nice, Irish support for EU membership hits a record high, according to the latest survey carried out among the 15 member States
2003 - Key questions to the IRA posed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair spark an angry reaction from Sinn Féin but are supported by the Government. According to Mr Blair, the deadlock in the Northern Ireland peace process is down to uncertainty over the IRA’s future intentions.

April 24
1596 - Pacificatie of Ireland drawn
1718 - Nathaniel Hone, portrait painter, is born in Dublin
1764 - Thomas Emmet, nationalist and brother of Robert Emmet, is born in Dublin
1857 - William Thompson, journalist, is born in Derry/Londonderry
1906 - Son of an Irish father, William Joyce aka 'Lord Haw-Haw'; fascist and broadcaster of Nazi propaganda in World War II is born in Brooklyn, New York
1912 - Irish novelist, historian and politician, Justin McCarthy, dies
1913 - Large supply of guns from Germany are landed at Larne for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
1916 - On Easter Monday, the Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army seize the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin and demand Irish sovereignty
1927 - Bishop Eamon Casey is born
1945 - Singer Johhny McEvoy is born
1948 - Birth of writer, Clare Boylan
1951 - Birth of Enda Kenny, leader of Fine Gael
1961 - Laura Magahy, head of development of Temple Bar, Dublin, is born
1993 - A massive IRA bomb rips through the City of London, killing one and injuring more than 40
1998 - The Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Freedom Fighters' Inner Council - the North's largest loyalist paramilitary group - backs the Stormont Agreement, saying it secures the state's place within the United Kingdom
1998 - The second-largest ever construction project in the history of the State, a £120m drainage system designed to make Cork's River Lee and Lough Mahon pollution free in four years time and create up to 500 jobs during construction, is announced
2002 - The IRA is accused of being part of a global terrorist network after a US inquiry claims the group has sent up to 15 members to Colombia to train Marxist rebels
2003 - The United States backs British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s demand that the IRA should clarify its commitment to the peace process.

April 25
1185 - Henry II sends his son John to Ireland; John lands at Waterford on this date to assert control over Hugh de Lacy, but he fails to achieve this. Henry still suspects that de Lacy wants to be king of Ireland
1681 - Count Redmond O'Hanlon (outlawed chief) is shot dead by his foster-brother
1707 - Thomas Erle, MP for Cork city, commands the centre at the Battle of Alamanza and loses his right hand on this date; David Dunbar, later MP for Blessington, is wounded and captured in the same battle, and John Upton, later MP for Co. Antrim, distinguishes himself
1819 - Vere Foster, philanthropist and educationist, is born in Copenhagen; he is the inventor of copy books used in schools throughout Ireland until the 1950s
1861 - William Ford, who crossed the Atlantic from Ireland by steerage, marries fellow country woman Mary O'Hern. Their son Henry Ford, pioneered the mass manufacturing of the automobile
1877 - Ralph Henry Byrne, architect, is born in Dublin
1918 - Irish Labour Party declares one-day strike in protest over conscription act
Anglo-Irish agreements on defence, finance and trade (25 April) end the 'Economic War': the 'Treaty' ports are ceded by Britain; the Irish Government pays £10 million to settle financial claims; both sides repeal penal duties on imports
1938 - Anglo-Irish agreements on defence, finance and trade end the 'Economic War': the 'Treaty' ports are ceded by Britain; the Irish Government pays £10 million to settle financial claims; both sides repeal penal duties on imports
1946 - Birth of Peter Sutherland; in 1981, he becomes Ireland's youngest ever Attorney-General in the Fine Gael–Labour coalition government. In 1997, he becomes chairman of BP and when BP merges with Amoco in 1998 he becomes non-executive chairman of the new company. BP Amoco has a market value of about $40 billion. Sutherland is also on the boards of ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd., Investor AB and Eriksson. He is chairman of the Overseas Development Council in Washington and the recipient of numerous honorary doctorates and awards in Europe and America.
1976 - About 10,000 people attend the Easter week commemorative rally at the GPO, convened by the Provisionist IRA, despite government prohibition
1998 - The first ever mass demonstrations against immigration laws and racism take place in Dublin, Cork and Limerick. At the same time, protests are staged by Irish people outside embassies all over Europe and the United States. Dublin edges close to a standstill as more than 1,000 protesters march from St Stephen's Green to the GPO
1999 - The RUC strongly denies fresh claims of police collusion and cover-up in the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings that claims 33 lives in the Republic 25 years ago
2003 - Sinéad O’Connor announces her retirement from the music business.

April 26
1718 - Thomas St Lawrence, 13th Baron of Howth, receives £215 14s 1 1/2d for the expense he incurs in building a quay at Howth for landing coals for the lighthouse
1745 - On this date, John Allen (3rd Viscount Allen), former MP for Carysfort, kills a dragoon in a street brawl. ‘His Lordship was at a house in Eustace Street. At twelve in the night, three dragoons making a noise in the street, he threw up the window and threatening them, adding as is not unusual with him a great deal of bad language. The dragoons returned it. He went out to them loaded with a pistol. At the first snapping of it, it did not fire. This irritated the dragoon who cut his fingers with his sword, upon which Lord Allen shot him.’ The wound occasions a fever which causes Lord Allen’s death on 25 May
1756 - John Ponsonby is unanimously elected Speaker of the Irish parliament
1784 - Death of Nano Nagle, 'God's Beggar', founder of the Order of the Presentation Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary
1808 - Benjamin Burton, son of William Burton (former MP for Gowran and Co. Carlow) fractures his skull in a fall from his horse while hunting but, having apparently recovered, goes out again with the hounds and dies from 'brain fever'
1895 - The trial of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality, then a crime, begins at the Old Bailey
1904 - Edward VII begins a visit to Ireland on this date
1916 - Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, writer, suffragist, pacifist and patriot, is apprehended while trying to stop Easter Rising looting and is later executed by the British without a trial
1932 - Aengus Finucane, priest, and charity worker deeply involved with the organization, Concern, is born in Limerick
1998 - Catriona McKiernan becomes the first Irish woman to win the London Marathon
1999 - Former Supreme Court Justice, Hugh O'Flaherty, confirms he will give a full and frank account of his role in the Philip Sheedy affair before the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights
2001 - Leading Sinn Féin members are among the 5,000 people who attend the funeral of former chief of staff of the Provisional IRA, Joe B. O'Hagan. Party president Gerry Adams gives the oration at the graveside when the leading republican figure is buried in Lurgan, Co Armagh
2002 - More than a million postcards are delivered to Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Prince of Wales as part of an Irish bid to have the Sellafield nuclear installation closed down. People throughout Ireland posted the cards after weeks of campaigning, backed by celebrities such as soccer international Roy Keane and pop stars Ronan Keating and Samantha Mumba
2003 - The Government says a deal securing the future of the North’s power-sharing executive is now close following the latest statement from Sinn Féin. Irish and British governments hail a speech by the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, as a significant advance
2003 - Police in North Belfast try to keep rival factions apart after rioting erupts in the Limestone Road area of the city

April 27
1696 - Act 'for encouraging the linen manufacture of Ireland': Irish linen gains duty-free access to the British market on this date
1739 - Lord Barry of Santry is tried by his peers in the parliament house for the murder of his former servant Laughlin Murphy in August 1738. They unanimously find him guilty, but recommend him to the royal mercy. The Lord Lieutenant endorses this plea, and Santry is pardoned under the great seal on 17 June. His estates, which had been forfeited for life, will be restored in 1741
1827 - Mary King Ward, Irish naturalist and astronomer is born
1880 - The Royal University of Ireland is founded by charter
1891 - The first ever Irish musical comedy, The Irish Girl, written by Percy French and William Collisson, is staged at the Queen’s Theatre, Dublin
1904 - Cecil Day-Lewis, poet, novelist, critic, and Ireland's poet laureate from 1968 to 1972, is born in Ballintogher, Co. Sligo
1920 - Georgina Frost wins a legal battle to allow her to be clerk of the petty sessions for Sixmilebridge and Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co. Clare; she is thus the first woman to hold public office from central government in the UK
1923 - De Valera announces end of operations against the Irish Free State, effectively ending the Irish Civil War
1937 - The Most Rev. Robert Eames, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, is born
1953 - Maud Gonne McBride dies in Roebuck, Clonskeagh, and is later buried in Dublin in the Glasnevin Cemetery
1966 - Farmers protest against low milk prices; 28 are arrested in Dublin
1998 - Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, forecasts an end to the RUC in its present form. His prediction comes following a 55-minute review with Tony Blair in Downing Street of critical issues arising from the Good Friday settlement
1999 - Legal history is made when the country's first ever convicted gangland murderer, self-confessed drugs dealer and gang boss Joseph Delaney, is jailed for life
2001 - Ireland's foremost literary town officially opens a permanent home for its famous wordsmiths and their works. A 19th century Georgian house, in the heart of Listowel, has become the Kerry Literary and Cultural Centre, where life-size models and audio-visual presentations help portray the personalities and output of various writers. The £1.5 million centre is appropriately named Seanchaí after the art of storytelling and in recognition of the folklore and traditions that inspire great literature.

April 28
1714 - Sir Wentworth Harman, MP for Lanesborough, 'coming in a dark night from Chapel-Izod, his coach overturning, tumbled down a precipice, and he dies in consequence of the wounds and bruises he received'
1794 - Rev. William Jackson, agent of French revolutionary government, is arrested in Dublin
1864 - Birth of William Ellison, clergyman and the sixth director of the Armagh Observatory. On his appointment in 1918, he donates the original late nineteenth-century telescope to the Observatory - an 18-inch Newtonian reflector, made by the famous English telescope maker George Calver; for many years it is one of the largest telescopes in Ireland. During the 1920s and 1930s, Ellison and others use the telescope for observations of the planets and for taking spectral images of the stars, using a spectroscope to split the starlight into its constituent colours 1875 - Teresa Kearney, better known as Mother Kevin, missionary and founder of Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Africa, is born in Knockenrahan, Co. Wicklow
1922 - Nicky Rackard, Wexford hurler, is born in Killane, Co. Wexford
1936 - The Daíl introduces a bill awarding pensions to the Connaught Rangers who mutinied in India in 1920
1943 - Andrews resigns as Northern Ireland Prime Minister and is succeeded by Sir Basil Brooke, later Lord Brookeborough
1969 - Terence O'Neill resigns as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. He is succeeded by Chichester Clark
1992 - Death of Dublin-born artist Francis Bacon
1998 - Some 30 years after waiting on Eamonn De Valera and literary luminaries of the day in the Great Southern Hotel in Galway, 57-year old Rita Gilligan from Bohermore is presented with an honorary MBE by UK Culture Secretary, Chris Smith,at London's Hard Rock Cafe where she has worked as a waitress for 27 years
1999 - Ireland's largest convoy packed with 200 tonnes of relief supplies for Kosovar refugees leaves Dublin for Albania
2000 - It is announced that 100 free bicycles will be placed on the streets of Dublin for the Heineken Green Energy Weekend. The free bicycles will be placed outside Trinity College, outside Dublin Castle and at the top of Grafton Street and will be available to anyone wishing to cycle around the city to take in the atmosphere of the Festival

April 29
1653 - Birth of John Whally, necromancer and charlatan
1665 - Birth of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde and an ancestor of Princess Diana. The Dublin-born Irish general becomes one of the most powerful men in the Tory administration, governing England in the early part of the 18th century - from 1710 to 1714
1680 - The first stone of the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham is laid by the Duke of Ormonde
1758 - Wide Streets Commission for Dublin is appointed by the Irish Parliament
1769 - Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, soldier and statesman, is born in Dublin
1803 - Paul Cullen, prelate, is born in Prospect, Co. Kildare
1874 - Conal O'Riordan (pseudonym 'F. Norris Connell), writer and theatre manager, is born in in Dublin
1916 - Pearse orders surrender of the Easter Rising rebels on this date. Approximately 64 rebels have been killed, 132 crown forces, and 230 civilians. 2,500 people have been wounded; the centre of Dublin has been devastated by the shelling
1938 - Birth of Ray McSharry, Fianna Fáil politician and EU Commissioner
1941 - Birth of Jonah Barrington, squash player, in Cornwall; a student at Trinity in the late 1950s / early 1960s, it's where he started to play squash; one of the greatest squash players of all time, he is considered to be the father of the modern professional game
1954 - Kevin Moran, football player for Dublin Gaelic, Manchester United, Sporting Gijon, Blackburn Rovers and Republic of Ireland, is born in Dublin
1957 - Daniel Day-Lewis, best actor Oscar winner for My Left Foot, is born
1986 - Seamus McElwaine, IRA-terrorist, is killed
1998 - Triple Olympic champion Michelle De Bruin comes out fighting in response to the most serious drugs-linked threat to her glittering swimming career
1999 - Governor General of Australia, Sir William Deane, is to be conferred with an honorary degree at Trinity, and is the guest of honour at the first state dinner held at Dublin Castle under President Mary McAleese's term
2001 - The Irish Council for Civil Liberties celebrates the 25th anniversary of its foundation
2001 - Des O'Malley pledges his co-operation to a new inquiry into the Arms Crisis of 1970 and challenges Charles Haughey to do the same. Mr O'Malley strongly defends his role as Justice Minister during the turbulent events surrounding the most controversial trial in the State's history
2001 - A monument is unveiled in Inniscarra, Co Cork, in honour of an Ulster chief who could have changed the history of Europe if he hadn't been killed in battle. Chief of Fermanagh, Aodh Mag Uidhir (Hugh Maguire) is shot dead during an ambush in 1600 at Carrigrohane before the Battle of Kinsale the following year, which sees the last struggle for an independent Gaelic Ireland fail. "Maguire was a great strategist, and some believe that had he survived, the result of the Battle of Kinsale might have been different, changing the course of European history. He was the Rommel of the 1600s," says Seán O´ Ceallacháin of the Hugh Maguire Commemoration Committee
2003 - Thornton’s Restaurant in Dublin ranks 25th in Restaurant magazine’s latest list of the top 50 restaurants in the world.

Sources: Irish Culture and Customs, The Celtic League, Irish Abroad, The Wild Geese