1878 – General John O’Neill, Fenian leader, dies.

1899 – Elizabeth Bowen, novelist and short story writer, is born.

1921 – A British Army patrol was ambushed by a combined Waterford force at Pickardstown following a feint attack on the Tramore RIC Barracks. Present were W. Waterford O/C Pax Whelan, E. Waterford O/C Paddy Paul and Flying Column O/C George Lennon. Two IRA volunteers (Thomas O’Brien and Michael McGrath) were reportedly taken away and shot by members of the Devon Regiment.

1921 – The RIC raided a cottage near Ballinalee, Co Longford, looking for Sean MacEoin. MacEoin opened fire from the cottage, killed District Inspector Thomas McGrath, wounded a constable, and escaped.

1922 – Dáil Éireann votes 64 to 57 to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, setting the scene for the Irish Civil War.

2000 – Experts underline the important heritage value of a 19th Century relic that stands on the site of a disused copper mine. A conservation appeal is to be launched to safeguard a unique engine house at a mountain mine in the Beara peninsula. A rare surviving symbol of Cornish type mining technology, the structure is the primary surviving embodiment of a once thriving coppermining industry in Allihies, Co Cork.

2001 – Irish soil is sprinkled over the casket of Sister Theresa Egan as more than 2,000 mourners attend her funeral in St Lucia. The nun was brutally murdered while attending Mass last week.

2003 – Gardaí adopt a zero tolerance-type approach to speeding after it emerges almost half of motorists in Dublin are still breaking the law in built-up areas.

2005 – Death of Eileen Desmond. She was a senior Irish Labour Party politician. She served in the Dáil and the Seanad and the European Parliament, and was Minister for Health & Social Welfare from 1981 to 1982.

Photo: Angel of the Sun, yet another of the hundreds of thousands of grave monuments situated at Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin, Noel Dunn Photography

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