1713 – Jonathan Swift becomes Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

1748 – Sir Robert King, MP for Boyle, Co Roscommon, is created Baron Kingsborough. Earl of Kingston is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1768 for Edward King, 1st Viscount Kingston. He had already succeeded his father as fifth Baronet of Boyle Abbey and been created Baron Kingston, of Rockingham in the County of Roscommon in 1764 and Viscount Kingston in 1766, also in the Peerage of Ireland.

1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: The Battle of Ballynahinch continues.

1865 – Birth of writer and nationalist, W.B. Yeats, in Dublin.

1884 – Birth of Mary Colum (née Maguire) in Collooney, Co Sligo, wife of Padraic Colum, Irish literary critic and founder of The Irish Review.

1920 – Further rioting in Derry leads to displacement of Irish nationalists from the Waterside area by unionists and an attack on the Bogside area by the UVF and Dorset Regiment. IRA reinforcements from Co Donegal under Peadar O’Donnell eventually lead to the restoration of order. Forty people had been killed since April.

1951 – Éamon de Valera returned to position of Taoiseach after losing it three years earlier.

1971 – Death of Máiréad Ni Ghráda, the first major woman playwright in the Irish language. She was also a radio broadcaster, and the author of school textbooks and children’s books in Irish.

1971 – In defiance of a government ban, members of the Orange Order attempted to march through the mainly Catholic town of Dungiven, Co Derry. There was a riot between the marchers and members of the British Army and the RUC.

1978 – In a report Amnesty International claimed that people held at Castlereagh RUC detention centre on the outskirts of Belfast had been ill-treated. Chief Constable of the RUC, Kenneth Newman, rejected the claims. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Roy Mason, promised an inquiry into the allegations.

1981 – A booby trap bomb was planted on a car being used by Lord Gardiner during a visit to Belfast. The IRA attack failed when the bomb fell off the car and failed to explode.

1988 – The Molly Malone statue in Grafton Street was unveiled by then-Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alderman Ben Briscoe during the 1988 Dublin Millennium celebrations, declaring 13 June as Molly Malone Day.

1999 – Tuam, Co Galway celebrates its first triple ordination since the early 1980s at the Cathedral of the Assumption.

2000 – The original manuscript of James Joyce’s Ulysses arrives in its ‘spiritual home’ for the first time when it goes on display at the Chester Beatty library in Dublin Castle.

2000 – The world’s first virtual university for surgeons goes on-line from the Royal College of Surgeons. Called BeST, or electronic Basic Surgical Training, it is launched by the Minister for Health and Children, Micheál Martin from the Dublin city centre college.

2006 – Following a lengthy battle with prostate cancer and a heart condition, former Taoiseach Charles Haughey dies at his home in the Kinsealy area of Dublin at the age of 80. The former Fianna Fail leader was a highly controversial figure who was rarely out of the headlines. He was first elected to the Dail in 1957, but was sacked from his ministerial position in 1970.

Photo: Kells, Co Meath

#irishhistory #ireland #irelandinspires