1312 – John de Wogan ceases to be justiciar; Edmund le Botiller will act as justiciar for the present.

1761 – Richard Nugent, Lord Delvin, MP for Fore, and still a teenager, dies of wounds he received after fighting a duel with a Mr Reilly on 30 July.

1775 – Daniel O’Connell is born in Cahersiveen, Co Kerry; known as The Liberator, or The Emancipator. He was a political leader in the first half of the nineteenth century. He campaigned for Catholic Emancipation – the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament, denied for over 100 years – and Repeal of the Union between Ireland and Great Britain.

1850 – Death of poet, Edward Walsh. He was the son of a sergeant in the Cork militia, and was born in Doire, Cullen, Co Cork, where his father’s regiment had been sent for training. Many of his songs and poems appeared between the years 1832-39, and he contributed to the Nation. He went to reside in Dublin in 1843, and was befriended by Charles Gavan Duffy, who got him appointed sub-editor of the Monitor. His Irish Jacobite Poetry (1844) and his Irish Popular Songs (1847) gave unmistakable evidence of a genuine poet. Yet he was forced to fight against poverty, and, in 1848, he accepted the post of schoolmaster to the junior convicts of Spike Island.

1853 – Sir William Ridgeway, classical scholar, is born in Ballydermot, Co Offaly.

1894 – Birth of Iseult Lucille Germaine Gonne. She was the daughter of Maud Gonne and Lucien Millevoye, and the wife of the novelist Francis Stuart.

1920 – The Dáil orders the boycotting of Belfast unionist firms.

1922 – Anti-Treaty IRA fighters ambush a Free State provisions column at Knockeen crossroads in Kerry. One National Army officer is killed and several privates are wounded.

1927 – Poet Richard Murphy is born.

1999 – Labour analysts at the Economic and Social Research Institute announce that the country is heading for full employment for the first time in history.

2000 – In Waterford, a team of six men, five of them former international boxers, skip their way into the Guinness Book of Records by smashing the 24 hour relay skipping record.

2000 – The first annual Witness Festival comes to a close at Fairyhouse in Co Meath.

2001 – The chairman of the International Commission on Decommissioning, General John de Chastelain, reveals that his members and an IRA representative have agreed on a method for decommissioning.

Photo: Rock of Cashel, Co Tipperary

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