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.

1903 – Death of impressionist landscape and portrait painter, Walter Frederick Osborne. Born in Rathmines, Dublin, most of his paintings featured women, children, and the elderly as well as rural scenes.

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.

1914 – 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. Pádraig Pearse read out the Proclamation of Independence after his men had seized the GPO.

1916 – The first victim of the Easter Rising, Margaret Keogh, is shot and killed by British soldiers while rushing to attend to patients and the wounded at the South Dublin Union (now the site of St James’s Hospital).

1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for the ice-trapped ship Endurance.

1920 – IRA shot and killed a Dublin Metropolitan Police sergeant in Clonakilty, Co Cork.

1922 – A general strike took place, called by the Labour Party (and supported by 75,000 workers) against the prospect of civil war.

1923 – Free State troops take a republican prisoner, Daniel Murphy, to Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry, where 5 National Army troops had been killed on 6 March and shoot him dead.

1927 – Bishop Eamon Casey is born.

1945 – Birth of Johnny McEvoy in Banagher, Co Offaly. He is a singer and entertainer of Country and Irish genre.

1948 – Birth of writer, Clare Boylan.

1951 – Birth of Enda Kenny in Co Mayo, leader of Fine Gael since 2002, who was Taoiseach from March 2011 to March 2016 and who is currently acting Taoiseach.

1961 – Laura Magahy, head of development of Temple Bar, Dublin, is born.

1993 – Bishopsgate bombing – after a telephoned warning, the PIRA exploded a large bomb at Bishopsgate, London. It killed one civilian, wounded thirty others, and caused an estimated £350 million in damage.

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.

2004 – No. 1 ranked quizzer in the world, Pat Gibson, became the fourth contestant to win the £1m jackpot on the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Born in Co Galway, he is a multiple world champion in quizzing and one of the world’s most successful quiz players.

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