Irish History - July 29 - Aug 4

Here is your Irish history lesson for this week.

July 29
1693 - Patrick Sarsfield is mortally wounded at the Battle of Landen. He dies of his wounds three days later at Huy in Belgium, where he is buried in the grounds of St. Martin's Church
1805 - Brian Merriman, Irish language poet famous for his epic poem Cúirt an Mheeadhon - The Midnight Court, dies
1848 - Young Ireland rising centres on the 'Battle of the Widow MacCormack's cabbage garden' near Ballingarry, Co. Tipperary. William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Terence Bellew McManus and Patrick O'Donohue are arrested, convicted of high treason and sentenced to death in September-October. Sentences are commuted to transportation in June, 1949
1883 - James Carey, member of the Invincibles, turns Queen's evidence; five of his associates are hanged for the murders of Burke and Cavendish. Carey is followed to South Africa by Patrick O'Donnell, and shot dead on the Melrose, en route from Cape Town to Natal. O'Donnell is hanged in London on 17 December
1969 - The Irish Finance Act exempts people considered by the Revenue Commissioners to have written works of cultural or artistic merit from income tax on money earned by the works
1975 - Death of 40-year-old Tom Dunphy of the Royal Showband in a car crash near Carrick-on-Shannon
1998 - The threat to Irish rail services on August Bank Holiday Monday is lifted following the intervention by the chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission, Kieran Mulvey
1999 - Quinze coasts to an easy victory in the Guinness Galway Hurdle Handicap
1999 - Brian Meehan is jailed for life after he is convicted of the murder of journalist, Veronica Guerin
2001 - Thousands of people climb Mayo's holy mountain, Croagh Patrick, for the annual national pilgrimage
2001 - Michael Flatley announces his retirement in Dallas at the last show of his Feet of Flames World Tour
2002 - The first public-private partnership deal to fast-track the building of 170 million euro hospital scheme is launched.

July 30
1650 - Edward Parry, Church of Ireland Bishop of Killaloe, dies in Dublin from the plague
1715 - Birth of Nahum Tate the first Irish-born poet laureate of England. Playwright and hymn writer, his best known work is While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night
1761 - Birth of Henry FitzGerald, diplomat, soldier and brother of Lord Edward FitzGerald
1761 - Richard Nugent, MP for Fore and still a teenager, fights a duel with a Mr. Reilly and dies of his wounds a week later
1862 - Death of Eugene O’Curry, influential music collector
1863 - Birth of Henry Ford, son of William and Mary Ford who crossed the Atlantic from Ireland by steerage. Ford changed the entire world through his revolutionary assembly-line manufacture of motor cars
1927 - Novelist and critic John Broderick is born in Athlone, Co. Westmeath
1942 - Birth of artist Charles Harper on Valentia Island in Co. Kerry
1947 - The Soviet Union blocks Ireland’s application for entry into the UN on the grounds that Ireland, being neutral, had not helped to set up the organisation. However there are strong suspicions that the Soviet Union’s real objections are because Ireland is a Catholic country and would therefore always vote against the communist bloc countries
1971 - Red Hurley and Nevada reach no. 1 in the Irish charts with ‘Sometimes’
1998 - Orange Order leaders file notice of four planned marches along the nationalist Garvaghy Road during August
2000 - Michael Flatley's Lord of The Dance extravaganza is staged at Belfast's historic Stormont Castle
2000 - It is announced that Dublin is to get a full-scale underground metro system as part of a multi-billion pound plan to tackle the capital's crippling traffic congestion
2002 - Soccer legend George Best enters hospital for a liver transplant.

July 31
1661 - The Act of Settlement confirms some adventurers' landowning rights but allows claims from 'innocents' and royalist supporters
1689 - Robert Lundy, Governor of Derry/Londonderry, advises surrender at the approach of James's army but is overruled and allowed to escape. The city holds out under siege for 105 days and is relieved on this date
1689 - The Enniskillen Protestants defeat Jacobite forces at Newtownbutler, Co. Fermanagh
1737 - Robert Adair, MP for Philipstown, dies on this date, having 'had one of his legs cut off above the knee for a mortification and died soon after'
1834 - Inauguration of the first Dublin — Dun Laoghaire horse-drawn "train service"
1838 - Enactment of the Irish Poor Law
1877 - Minority of Home Rulers begin obstruction tactics in Commons
1893 - Founding of the Gaelic League in order to revive the use of the Irish language and foster appreciation of Ireland's Celtic heritage
1917 - Death of poet Francis Ledwidge, from Slane, Co. Meath, who is killed by a stray shell at Ypres during World War I
1922 - Harry Boland shot by Free Staters in Skerries; he would die three days later
1981 - Kevin Lynch, political prisoner, dies on hunger strike in the Maze prison
1978 - U2 plays McGonagle's in Dublin in support of Modern Heirs and Revolver
1998 - Parades Commission rejects a fresh application by Orangemen to parade along the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown on August 2
2000 - The British Army begins dismantling the controversial Borucki observation post which has dominated the skyline in Crossmaglen for more than 20 years.

August 1st. Lughnasa
Today is Lúghnasa; in the old days this was the Feast of the god Lúgh, a thirty-day agrarian celebration with August 1 at the center. It is also the first day of Autumn in the Celtic Calendar
See our articles Celebrating the Harvest & Putting out the hare, putting on the harvest knots.
1166 - Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster and ally of Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn, is defeated in battle by Rory O'Connor and forced to flee from Ireland
1535 - John Travers, Chancellor of St Patrick's Cathedral, is executed for high treason at Oxmantown Green for conspiring with Lord Offaly
1649 - Jones defeats Ormond at Rathmines, ending royalist hopes of taking Dublin
1714 - Following the death of Queen Anne, George I accedes to the throne. The second Irish parliament of Anne's reign is thereby dissolved
1800 - The Act of Union dissolves the Irish parliament and transfers legislative powers to Westminster
1822 - Irish Constabulary Act sets up county police forces and salaried magistracy
1851 - The Ecclesiastical Titles Act forbids Catholic bishops to assume ecclesiastical titles taken from any place in the United Kingdom
1872 - Gladstone's first Land Act, decreeing that tenants who were evicted be compensated for improvements and that tenant who were evicted for any reason other than nonpayment of rent should also be compensated
1915 - Nationalist Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa is buried in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin
1931 - Seán Ó Riada, musician and composer, is born in Cork
1981 - After 71 days on hunger strike, Kevin Lynch dies at the Maze Prison in Belfast
2001 - One of Ireland's best loved actors, Joe Lynch, dies after being taken ill at his holiday home in Spain.

August 2
1800 - The last session of the Irish parliament ends
1820 - John Tyndall, physicist, and first to discover why the sky is blue, is born in Leighlin Bridge, Co. Carlow
1932 - Actor Peter O'Toole is born in Co. Galway
1981 - Death of Kieran Doherty, TD for Monaghan-Cavan, on the 73rd day of his hunger strike
1988 - The first Aer Lingus flight with an all-female crew departs Dublin for Shannon. The Shorts 360 commuter aircraft is piloted by Capt. Grainne Cronin and co-piloted by Elaine Egan
1998 - Renegade republicans tighten the screw on Northern Ireland's fragile peace process with a fresh wave of incendiary attacks
1999 - Ireland's longest-serving rain observer, John Joe ‘Goggles’ Doyle retires; he has taken daily rainfall readings in his native Tulla since 1943 for Met Eireann and earned his nickname because of the goggles he wears when he takes his daily readings
2000 - Co. Kerry, the country’s top tourism area, claims that business is down by about 20% because of the rail strike
2001 - Torrential rain causes flash floods in Cork, Dublin, Tipperary and other areas of the country

August 3
1823 - Thomas Francis Meagher, nationalist and transportee; journalist and lecturer; brigadier-general on Union side in US civil war, and Governor of Montana, is born in Waterford
1857 - George F. FitzGerald, physicist who postulated the FitzGerald-Lorenze contraction, is born in Dublin
1916 - Roger Casement, Irish patriot, is hanged by the English in Pentonville Prison, London. He was the last to be executed as a result of the Easter Rebellion
1998 - In a landmark deal, the Apprentice Boys of Londonderry and Catholic residents of the city's Bogside reach agreement on a contentious parade after a weekend of tense negotiations
1998 - Between 20,000 and 25,000 people throng Youghal over the four days of the Murphy's-sponsored International Busking Festival
1999 - Continental Airlines announces increased availability of what it says are the cheapest direct flights between Ireland and the US
2001 - Met Eireann reports that up to 22 millimetres of rain has fallen in the south. Insurance companies believe the cost of flash-flooding in Cork and Tipperary could hit £2 million
2001 - A potentially fatal bacterium forces St. James Hospital in Dublin to close its general intensive care unit to new admissions.

August 4
1654 - Birth in Midleton, Co. Cork of Thomas Brodrick, politician in Irish and British Houses of Commons who led the inquiry into the 'South Sea Bubble'
1805 - Birth in Dublin of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, mathematician and astronomer
1846 - The Great Southern & Western Railway line between Dublin and Carlow opens
1878 - Birth of Margaret Pearse, teacher, politician and sister of Padraic Pearse, in Dublin
1998 - Gerry Adams is under growing pressure to declare the republican war over after loyalists warn that the North's peace agreement is in real danger of collapsing
1999 - The Government abandons all plans to transform the Great Blasket Island into a State Park and the 1,132 acre island is to remain in private ownership
2000 - The stand-off in the seven-week old train strike intensifies as Transport and Public Enterprise Minister Mary O’Rourke refuses to intervene
2000 - Loyalists protest after Northern Ireland health minister Bairbre de Brun, a member of Sinn Féin, refuses to fly the Union flag outside her Belfast offices to mark the 100th birthday of Britain’s Queen Mother
2000 - Residents of Belfast’s Lower Ormeau Road vote overwhelmingly against allowing Orange parades through the flashpoint district
2002 - Less than two months after turning professional, rookie Graeme McDowell from Portrush, Co Antrim, wins the Scandinavian Masters.

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