In the Liturgical Calendar, today is the Feast Day of St Manchán mac Silláin, Manchianus in Latin sources, is the name of an early Irish saint, patron of Liath Mancháin, now Lemanaghan, in Co Offaly. He is not to be confused with the scholar Manchán or Manchéne, abbot of Min Droichit (Co Offaly). There are variant traditions concerning the saint’s pedigree, possibly owing to confusion with one of several churchmen named Manchán or Mainchín. The most reliable genealogy makes him a son of Sillán son of Conall, who is said be a descendant of Rudraige Mór of Ulster, and names his mother Mella.

1621 – Patents are granted for plantations in parts of Leitrim, King’s County, Queen’s County and Westmeath.

1841 – James Armour, Presbyterian minister and political activist is born in Ballymoney, Co Antrim.

1902 – Birth of medical student and nationalist revolutionary, Kevin Barry, in Dublin.

1902 – In the House of Commons, John Redmond criticizes the use of concentration camps by the British in South Africa.

1902 – Death of poet and critic, Aubrey Thomas de Vere, in Limerick.

1907 – Death of Agnes Mary Clerke, in London. Born in Skibbereen, Co Cork, she was an astronomer and writer, mainly in the field of astronomy.

1908 – The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art opens in temporary premises in Harcourt Street, Dublin. It is the first known public gallery of modern art in the world and is later to become the Hugh Lane Gallery named after its founder. Lane persuaded leading artists of the day to donate a representative work to form the nucleus of the collection, as well as personally financing many acquisitions including a number of major Impressionist masterpieces. He was to become one of the foremost collectors of Impressionist paintings in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

1915 – Death of Arthur Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Ardilaun, known as Sir Arthur Guinness, between 1868 and 1880, was a businessman, politician, and philanthropist, best known for giving St Stephen’s Green to the people of Dublin. He was the great-grandson of Arthur Guinness.

1920 – RIC Constable Luke Finnegan was shot dead in Thurles, Co Tipperary. Afterwards, RIC men attacked property belonging to local Sinn Féiners, and some public property. This is reported as the first instance of police reprisals.

1921 – Glenwood Ambush: IRA in Clare, under Michael Brennan, ambushed an RIC lorry at Glenwood, between Sixmilebridge and Broadford. Six RIC men were killed and two more were wounded but escaped. The IRA took their weapons and over 1000 rounds of ammunition before burning the lorry. Among the dead was RIC District Inspector William Clarke. In reprisals, the British forces burned 21 homes in the vicinity and arrested 22 people.

1923 – Eleven Republican prisoners are executed by the Free State – two in Limerick, four in Tralee and five in Athlone. In what was now becoming a brutal civil war between Pro and Anti-Treaty parties, the Pro-treaty government had instituted in October 1921 an aggressive policy of execution of Republican prisoners or ‘Irregulars’. The Government’s view was that anti-Treaty irregulars were rebels fighting against a legitimate Irish authority, elected by the people. Seventy-seven official executions occurred, thirty-four in January. Most of the people shot would have fought on the same side as their executioners in the War of Independence against Britain. The brutal reaction of the Irish government did bring a swift response with anti-treaty forces laying down their arms in April, but the bitterness of the civil war permeated Irish politics and society for much of the twentieth century.

1938 – Birth of international footballer, football manager, football chairman, pundit, and writer, Derek Dougan, in Belfast. He was also known by his nickname, ‘The Doog’. He was capped by Northern Ireland at schoolboy, youth, Amateur, and ‘B’ team level, before he won 43 caps in a 15-year career for the senior team from 1958 to 1973, scoring eight international goals and featuring in the 1958 FIFA World Cup. He also played in the Shamrock Rovers XI v Brazil exhibition match in July 1973, which he also helped to organise. Dougan died on 24 June 2007 from a heart attack at his home in Wolverhampton, at the age of 69.

1955 – Birth of Joe Doherty in Belfast. He is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1980. He was arrested in the United States in 1983, and became a cause célèbre while fighting an ultimately unsuccessful nine-year legal battle against extradition and deportation, with a street corner in New York City being named after him.

1961 – John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as 35th President of the United States of America, becoming the first Irish Catholic to be elected to that office.

1968 – Birth of retired jockey, Charlie Swan. He is now a trainer, based in Modreeny near Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary.

1971 – It was announced that an independent commissioner would decide on the boundaries of the new district council areas.

1971 – Birth of mountaineer and engineer, Gerard McDonnell, in Co Limerick. He was the first Irish person to reach the summit of K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, in August 2008. He lost his life along with 10 other mountaineers following an avalanche on the descent, in the worst single accident in the history of K2 mountaineering.

1973 – ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ by Thin Lizzy enters the UK charts.

1973 – A car bomb exploded in Sackville Place, Dublin, and killed one person and injured 17 others. The person killed was Thomas Douglas (25). The car used in the bombing had been hijacked at Agnes Street, Belfast. No organisation claimed responsibility but the bomb was believed to have been planted by one of the Loyalist paramilitary organisations.

1975 – Telegram containing a note of a meeting between Galsworth, of the British Embassy in Dublin, and Liam Cosgrave, Taoiseach. The telegram mentions the concerns of Cosgrave about the likely impact on public opinion if it became known that the British government was negotiating with the IRA.

1975 – Public Records 1975 – Released 1 January 2006: Letter from Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Joel Barnett to Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees, about the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.

1979 – A group of 11 Loyalists known as the ‘Shankill Butchers’ were sentenced to life imprisonment for 112 offences including 19 murders. The 11 men were given 42 life sentences and received 2,000 years imprisonment, in total, in the form of concurrent sentences. The Shankill Butchers had begun killing Catholics in July 1972 and were not arrested until May 1977. The Loyalist gang operated out of a number of Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) drinking dens in the Shankill Road area of Belfast. The gang was initially led by Lenny Murphy but it continued to operate following his imprisonment in 1976. The Shankill Butchers got their name because not only did they kill Catholics but they first abducted many of their victims, tortured them, mutilated them with butcher knives and axes, and then finally killed them.

1981 – Maurice Gilvarry (24), a member of the IRA, was found shot dead near Jonesborough, Co Armagh. He had been killed by other members of the IRA who alleged that he had acted as an informer.

1985 – Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Douglas Hurd, was interviewed on RTÉ during which he said that political arrangements could be created to improve Anglo-Irish relationships.

1987 – When two Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) members (Thomas Power and John O’Reilly) were shot dead by members of the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation (IPLO) in Drogheda, Co Louth, a feud began between the two organisations. The feud continued until 26 March 1987 with a final death toll of 11.

1987 – The coalition government in Ireland, led by Garret FitzGerald, ended after the Labour Party withdrew its support. Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Northern Ireland, John Taylor, left the European Democratic Group to join the European Right Group.

1987 – The case of the ‘Birmingham Six’ was referred to the Court of Appeal by Douglas Hurd, British Home Secretary.

1988 – The British government opposed the classification of Northern Ireland as one of Europe’s poorest regions thus reducing the amount of regional structural funds that it received.

1994 – The private secretary to British Prime Minister, John Major, replied to a letter from President of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, to state that there ‘can be no question of renegotiation’ of the Downing Street Declaration (DSD).

1997 – There was an attack on the Mountpottinger RUC station in Short Strand, Belfast. Two ‘coffee jar bombs’ were thrown at the station but there were no injuries. The attack was believed to have been carried out by the IRA.

1998 – President of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, accused the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) / Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) of ‘actively’ collaborating with the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) in some of the recent killings of Catholics. However, Adams said that the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP), the political representatives of the UDA / UFF, should not be expelled from the multi-party Stormont talks.

1998 – Hope remain high that the IRA ceasefire will hold despite escalating violence in the North and Sinn Féin’s implacable opposition to the Anglo-Irish blueprint.

1999 – The Loyalist Volunteer Force announces plans for a second round of arms decommissioning which could include the handover of explosives.

1999 – Patrick Harty, a farmer from Toomevara, Co Tipperary, refused to give evidence as a prosecution witness in the trial of the four men accused of the killing of Jerry McCabe, who was a Detective in the Garda Síochána. Harty said he could not give a reason for his refusal to give evidence and was jailed for 18 months.

1999 – One of the world’s biggest software piracy investigations identifies over 6,000 Internet sites in Ireland copying and promoting illegal software.

1999 – Patrick Harty, a farmer from Toomevara, Co Tipperary, refused to give evidence as a prosecution witness in the trial of the four men accused of the killing of Jerry McCabe, who was a Detective in the Garda Síochána. Harty said he could not give a reason for his refusal to give evidence and was jailed for 18 months.

2000 – According to a major international survey, Ireland is one of the least corrupt countries in the industrial world.

2002 – Rioting erupts on the streets of north Belfast as angry mobs throw petrol bombs and blast bombs at police.

2002 – Independent Television (ITV) in the United Kingdom (UK) broadcast a film entitled ‘Bloody Sunday‘ that portrayed the events in Derry on 30 January 1972. Prior to broadcast the film had been criticised by some Unionists in Northern Ireland and by some members of the Conservative party in Britain. The film was also given a limited cinema release.

2010 – Ireland’s oldest woman died at the age of 107. Bride O’Neill from Kilbarry, Co Cork trained as a nurse in England but returned home during the second world war to work in Dublin. She kept active even after her 100th birthday, and never married, smoke or drank.

2019 – A van was hijacked by masked men in Derry, a package was placed into the back and the driver was instructed to park the vehicle in the city centre. The van was later abandoned in a housing estate and homes were evacuated. In a separate incident in the city a Royal Mail van was stolen and abandoned. Authorities blamed the incidents on the New IRA.

Image | Thomas Francis Meagher Bridge, Waterford city | DigiCol Photography & Media Productions

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