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. The Irish annals state that de Brus took the hostages and lordship of the whole province of Ulster without opposition and they consented to him being proclaimed King of Ireland and all the Gaels of Ireland agreed to grant him lordship and they called him King of Ireland.

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 – Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell arrested by British on charges of criminal conspiracy.

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.

1941 – Birth of retired hurler, Eddie Keher, in Inistioge, Co Kilkenny. He played as a centre-forward for the Kilkenny senior team and first played competitive hurling whilst at school in St Kieran’s College. He arrived on the inter-county scene at the age of fifteen when he first linked up with the Kilkenny minor team. He made his senior debut in the 1959 championship. Keher went on to play a key part for Kilkenny in what has come to be known as one of the greatest teams of all-time, and won six All-Ireland medals, ten Leinster medals and three National Hurling League medals. An All-Ireland runner-up on four occasions, Keher also captained the team to All-Ireland victory in 1969.

1972 – Three people were killed in two incidents in Belfast. Loyalist paramilitaries carried out a raid on the Headquarters of the 10 Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) at Lislea Drive in Belfast and stole 14 British Army issue self-loading rifles (SLRs) and a quantity of ammunition. The camp guard claimed that they were ‘overpowered’ by the Loyalists. There was another raid on a UDR base on 23 October 1972.

1977 – Tomás Ó Fiaich was appointed as the new Catholic Primate of Ireland.

1978 – The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) organised another march in Derry to protest against the march in the city on the previous Sunday, 8 October 1978. There were clashes between Loyalists and RUC officers which resulted in 32 policemen being injured and there was also damage to property in the city.

1985 – The Irish Information Partnership published some results from its database of deaths from the conflict. The information showed that more than 50 per cent of the 2,400 dead had been killed by Republican paramilitaries. In addition the data also showed that over 25 per cent of those killed by Republicans were Catholic civilians.

1988 – Members from four Northern Ireland political parties met for talks in Duisburg, West Germany. The parties involved were; Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Little progress was reported from the meetings.

1994 – British Prime Minister, John Major, address the Conservative Party conference and told delegates that he would pursue the peace process in his own time.

1995 – There were scuffles between Sinn Féin supporters and RUC officers when Sinn Féin attempted to hold a demonstration in the centre of Lurgan, Co Armagh.

1995 – The last ‘peace train’ travelled between Dublin and Belfast.

1996 – British Labour Party spokesperson on Northern Ireland, Marjorie (Mo) Mowlam, met with Loyalist prisoners in Long Kesh Prison in an effort to “keep the talks process alive”.

1996 – The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) agreed on a draft agenda for the Stormont talks.

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 member of the INLA, who was murdered in a drug dispute. Campbell had been injured on 6 October 1999 in Dublin and died on 10 October. Patrick’s father, Robert Campbell, who had been ‘on the run’ in the Republic of Ireland, since 1981, also attended the funeral.

1999 – A joint statement was issued by anti-Agreement Unionists including the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP), the Northern Ireland Unionist Party, and some members of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). The statement set out a common strategy for opposing any political deal leading the establishment of a power-sharing Executive which included Sinn Féin (SF).

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.

2000 – A Catholic father-of-six and his two teenage sons all escaped uninjured when a bomb exploded in their car. The explosion happened shortly before 9.00pm at Blackstaff Way, off the Grosvenor Road, in west Belfast. The man said he was with his two sons, aged 17 and 18, for a driving lesson in the Kennedy Road Industrial Estate. He tried to adjust the driver’s seat, with one of his sons sitting in it, when he found a jar containing liquid and a pipe. He said it started to “fizz” and the three of them immediately fled from the vehicle just seconds before the device exploded. The attack was carried out by Loyalist paramilitaries.

2001 – Vice-President of Sinn Féin, Martin McGuinness, said that he was working “flat out” to convince the IRA to put its weapons beyond use. McGuinness made the comments on the BBC ‘Radio Ulster’ programme. There was continuing media speculation that the IRA was close to making a move on decommissioning.

2001 – Aidan Troy (Fr), then Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Holy Cross Girls’ Primary School, called on Loyalist protesters to immediately end the daily protest at the school. Troy was speaking at Sunday mass and said that a member of the congregation had made the point that the only other country where girls are prevented from receiving an education was Afghanistan.

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.

Image | Kilkenny–Waterford border | Aoife Mac Photography

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