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.

1972 – The IRA invited Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, to meet them in ‘Free Derry’. Whitelaw rejected the offer and reaffirmed in a statement the British government’s policy not to ‘let part of the United Kingdom … default from the rule of law’. The offer gave the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) the opportunity to try to arrange talks between the IRA and the British government. These moves took place over the following days.

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.

1988 – Representatives of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Féin (SF) met for further talks in Belfast.

1990 – Terence O’Neill, Lord of the Maine and a former Northern Ireland Prime Minister, died in Hampshire, England.

1997 – Martin Gavin (21), a Catholic civilian and a member of the travelling community, was viciously attacked by five Loyalists and left for dead. Gavin was approached by the men who called him a ‘Fenian bastard’ and then savagely beat him, fracturing his skull, before cutting his throat, his head and his hand. Gavin required 50 stitches in his neck and head. This sectarian attack was similar in its manner to those that had been carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) ‘Shankill Butchers’ gang during the 1970s. The attack came a few days after the killing, on Wednesday 11 June 1997, of Robert ‘Basher’ Bates who had been a leading member of the ‘Shankill Butchers’.

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

1999 – Paul ‘Bull’ Downey (37) was shot dead in Newry, Co Down. It was alleged in the media that Downey was a major drug dealer and there was also speculation that he had been killed by Republican paramilitaries. Unionists blamed the IRA for the killing.

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.

Image | Kells, Co Meath

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