1318 – Death of Edward Bruce, Earl of Carrick. He was a younger brother of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, and supported his brother in the struggle for the Scottish crown, then pursued his own claims in Ireland. He was proclaimed High King of Ireland, but was eventually defeated and killed in battle by John, Earl of Louth. The Irish Annals of the period described the defeat of the Bruces by the English as one of the greatest things ever done for the Irish nation due to the fact it brought an end to the famine and pillaging wrought upon the Irish by both the Scots and the English.

1322 – Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence. It was a victory for the Scots, the most significant since Bannockburn, though on a far smaller scale.

1693 – The Earl of Tyrone dies and apparently appears promptly to Lady Nicola Hamilton, the widow of Tristram Beresford MP; he makes a number of predictions that turn out to be correct; one of them was that she would die on her 47th birthday.

1702 – Irish Brigade of France fights in the battle of Friedlingen.

1767 – George Townshend, 4th Viscount Townshend, becomes Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

1783 – Edmond Sexton Pery is unanimously re-elected as Speaker of the Irish parliament.

1791 – Society of United Irishmen founded at a meeting in Belfast attended by Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy McCracken, Thomas Russell and Samuel Neilson. One of the resolutions passed read: That no reform is just which does not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.

1814 – Birth of Irish writer, who was the chief organiser and poet of the Young Ireland movement, Thomas Osborne Davis in Mallow, Co Cork.

1843 – The British arrest the Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell for conspiracy to commit crimes.

1880 – Captain Charles Boycott, who would be responsible for giving the English language the word “boycott” writes to the Times of London about his situation in Ireland.

1880 – Nationalist and Gaelic League activist, Mary Ellen Spring-Rice is born.

1881 – The Land League is banned.

1882 – Éamon de Valera, nationalist campaigner, Fianna Fáil leader, Taoiseach and president of Ireland, is born in New York, to an Irish mother; he stated that his parents, Catherine Coll de Valera Wheelwright, an immigrant from Bruree, Co Limerick, and Juan Vivion de Valera, a Spanish-Cuban settler and sculptor, were married on 18 September 1881 at St. Patrick’s Church located within the Greenville Section of Jersey City, NJ. However, exhaustive trawls through church and state records give no birth, baptismal, or death certificate information for anyone called Juan Vivion de Valera or de Valeros, an alternative spelling. The historian Sean Murphy has listed the long-term search for facts about Mr de Valera, allowing that he may have come from New Mexico, and was perhaps returning there at the time of his death.

1920 – Tipperary IRA man, Sean Treacy, is killed in a gun battle in Talbot Street, Dublin.

1922 – An ambush in the Cornmarket area of Dublin leaves three civilians and four Free State soldiers wounded. In a separate ambush near Tralee, Co Kerry, one National Army soldier is killed and another wounded.

1932 – Between October 4 and this date, strikes, marches and protests are held in Belfast against low unemployment payments, temporarily uniting Catholic and Protestant unemployed; payments are raised.

1998 – A 15th century painting of Pietro de Francesco Degli Orioli which is part of the Murnaghan collection goes up for auction in Dublin.

1999 – More than 1,000 mourners gather in Belfast for the funeral of Patrick Campbell, a hard-line republican paramilitary who was murdered in a drugs dispute.

2000 – David Guiney, well-known Irish sporting personality and journalist, dies in Dublin. Mr Guiney won an AAA title for the Shot Putt in 1948 and went on to compete for Ireland in the Olympic Games in London that year.

2001 – The first multiple State funeral is held in honour of ten IRA Volunteers, including Kevin Barry, who were executed for their role in the War of Independence. More than 80 years after they were buried in the grounds of Mountjoy Prison, the bodies of the ten men were exhumed and reinterred in a special new plot at Glasnevin Cemetery. The ten men were Kevin Barry, Thomas Bryan, Patrick Doyle, Frank Flood, Patrick Moran, Thomas Whelan, Bernard Ryan, Thomas Traynor, Edmond Foley and Patrick Maher.

Photo: Glenveagh National Park, Co Donegal, submitted by Amy Meehan

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