1602 – O’Neill’s principal vassal, Donal O’Cahan, submits to Docwra.

1662 – Ormond becomes Lord Lieutenant and arrives in Ireland on this date.

1663 – The ‘Cattle Act’ restricts Irish trade with colonies as well as exports to England.

1669 – Molly Malone is purportedly christened in Dublin. Molly Malone’s baptismal and death certificates were found in the archives of the demolished St John’s Church in Fishamble Street.

1710 – George Carpenter, former MP for Newtown, is wounded at Battle of Almenara, Spain.

1782 – Poynings’ Law is amended by Yelverton’s Act which was passed on this date: only bills passed by both houses of the Irish parliament will be forwarded to England for assent.

1782 – Second and third Catholic Relief Acts (4 May, 27 July) allow Catholics to own land outside parliamentary boroughs, to be teachers and to act as guardians.

1805 – Death of Brian Merriman, poet famous for his translation of ‘The Midnight Court’.

1846 – William Smith O’Brien leads the Young Irelanders out of the Repeal Association.

1860 – Birth of John Henry Bernard, scholar, Archbishop of Dublin and provost of Trinity College Dublin.

1866 – Completion of the first submarine cable link underneath the Atlantic, from Valentia Island, Co Kerry to Trinity Bay, Newfoundland.

1920 – An RIC man shot was dead by IRA volunteers in Clonakilty, Co Cork.

1922 – Anti-Treaty IRA under Padraig Quinn attack Dundalk and dynamite the prison wall and in fifteen minutes the well-timed operation results in the freeing of Republican prisoners, including Frank Aiken. In an ambush at nearby Castletown Cross, two Free State soldiers are wounded, one fatally.

1922 – Two Free State soldiers are killed in ambushes in Galway and two more in another ambush in Glenties in Donegal.

1922 – Oscar Traynor, commander of the Anti-Treaty IRA’s Dublin Brigade, is arrested by Free State troops in Dublin.

1922 – Three National Army soldiers were killed in fighting near Kilmallock. Republican casualties were not reported.

1938 – Death of Tom Crean, Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer, from Co Kerry. He enlisted in the British Royal Navy at the age of fifteen as a Boy 2nd class. In 1901, while on naval duty serving as an Able Seaman on HMS Ringarooma in New Zealand, he volunteered to join Robert Falcon Scott’s 1901-1904 British National Antarctic Expedition on Discovery, thus beginning a distinguished career as an explorer during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

1939 – Birth of poet, Michael Longley, CBE in Belfast. Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus. He was Professor of Poetry for Ireland from 2007 to 2010, a cross-border academic post set up in 1998, previously held by John Montague, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Paul Durcan. He was succeeded in 2010 by Harry Clifton.

1960 – Ireland sends troops to serve with UN forces in the Congo; nine are killed by Baluba tribesmen in an ambush at Niemba on 8 November; one of these, Anthony Browne, will be awarded the Military Medal for Gallantry.

1971 – Death of athlete, Charlie Tully. Born in Belfast, he was a famous footballer of Celtic Football Club. Tully signed for Celtic from Belfast Celtic on 28 June 1948. He played his debut match at Inside-left at home against Morton on 14 August in a 0-0 draw. Charlie played a total of 319 matches for Celtic, scoring 47 goals, throughout his illustrious career, which spanned 11 years.

1977 – Four people were shot dead and 18 were injured in the continuing feud between the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and members of the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA). An off-duty member of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) was shot dead by the IRA in Belfast.

1977 – Birth of actor and model, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, in Dublin. Best known for his roles in the films Velvet Goldmine, Mission Impossible III, Bend It Like Beckham, Match Point and his television roles as Elvis Presley in the biographical miniseries Elvis, which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor, and as King Henry VIII in the historical drama The Tudors. Meyers will portray Patrick Pearse, a political activist and one of the leaders of the bloody 1916 Irish Easter Rising, in the biopic film The Rising, written and produced by Kevin McCann.

1978 – Birth of hurler, Diarmaid O’Sullivan, in Cloyne, Co Cork. O’Sullivan first excelled at hurling whilst at school in Midleton CBS. He made his first impression on the inter-county scene at the age of eighteen when he joined the Cork under-21 team. He made his senior debut during the 1997 championship. O’Sullivan went on to play a key role for Cork for over a decade, and won three All-Ireland medals and five Munster medals. He was an All-Ireland runner-up on two occasions.

1980 – U2 plays its first-ever open-air show at the “Dublin Festival 1980” in front of 15,000 at Leixlip Castle in Kildare.

1987 – First expedited salvaging of Titanic wreckage begins by RMS Titanic, Inc.

1998 – A former lieutenant of drugs baron George Mitchell, is caught red-handed with £2.7m worth of cannabis in Co Meath.

1998 – Unionists claim proposals to ban RUC recruits from groups like the Orange Order may be illegal.

1998 – Bernadete Sands-McKevitt, sister of Bobby Sands and member of the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, said that the use of physical force by Republicans would not end until British rule in Ireland ended.

1999 – Garda Síochána investigating a plot to smuggle handguns from the USA arrested a man and two women in Inverin, Co Galway, and recovered eight handguns that had arrived in two parcels through the post. Earlier, in the US, the FBI detained two men and a woman in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a Belfast man in Philadelphia in a transatlantic operation involving British and Irish police. An FBI source was reported as saying that the guns were intended for the IRA.

1999 – Death of Malachi Brendan Martin Ph.d. Born in Ballylongford, Co Kerry, he was a former Jesuit priest, theologian, writer on the Roman Catholic church and professor at the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. He was also the author of sixty books which covered religious and geo-political topics. He was controversial commentator for the Vatican and other church matters. He was also the brother of the late Irish cleric, historian and activist, F. X. Martin.

1999 – A Catholic church in Moneymore, Co Derry, was attacked with a pipe-bomb. No one was injured in the incident. In a separate incident, a woman escaped injury after a bomb was left at her house in Larne, Co Antrim. The woman heard a noise around midnight and discovered the device at the front of her house. The RUC moved the residents living on the street from their homes. Both attacks were carried out by Loyalist paramilitaries.

2000 – The cream of Irish opera talent performs popular classics in aid of charity at the National Concert Hall. Headlining Pop Opera 2000 is Ireland’s foremost soprano, Cara O’Sullivan.

2000 – Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams warns that the Good Friday Agreement would be “holed below the water line,” if the British Government did not properly implement the Patten Report on the reform of policing in the north of Ireland.

2001 – According to the National Treasury Management Agency annual report for 2000, Ireland’s national debt is among lowest in Europe.

Photo: Aerial view of Virgin Rock, Nuns Strand, Ballybunion, Co Kerry, photo credit: Ballybunion Prints Beach via Octofly

#irishhistory #ireland #irelandinspires