#OTD in 1920 – IRA officer, Ernie O’Malley, was captured by British forces in Co Kilkenny with a notebook containing names of his IRA colleagues.

09/12/2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

‘On the base of the Pillar was a white poster. Gathered around were groups of men and women. Some looked at it with serious faces, others laughed and sniggered. I began to read it with a smile, but my smile ceased as I read, ‘Poblacht na h-Eireann, the Provisional government of the Irish Republic – […]

#OTD in Irish History – 9 December:

09/12/2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

1791 – Birth of politician and diplomat, Sir Thomas Wyse, in St John, Co Waterford. 1845 – Frederick Douglass delivers a speech in Belfast: ‘The Cambria Riot, My Slave Experience, and My Irish Mission’. 1850 – Stokes Law was published on this date. Why do clouds float through the air? It’s one of those questions […]

#OTD in 1893 – Birth of General Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff, IRA, in Limerick.

09/11/2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

Liam Lynch was born in Barnagurraha, Co Limerick to Jeremiah and Mary Kelly Lynch. At 17 he was apprenticed to O’Neill’s hardware in Mitchelstown. Shortly after his apprenticeship began he joined the Gaelic League and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He joined the Irish Volunteers after witnessing the arrests of the Kent family by British […]

#OTD in 1922 – Ernie O’Malley, Anti-Treaty IRA commander in Dublin, is captured following a shoot out with Free State soldiers on Ailesbury road in Donnybrook.

04/11/2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

#OTD in Irish History – 4 November:

04/11/2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

1802 – Birth of novelist, Lady Rosina Lytton, née Wheeler, in Co Limerick. 1884 – Birth of engineer, inventor, and pioneer of the modern tractor, Harry Ferguson, in Hillsborough, Co Down. 1908 – Six women meet at the home of women’s activists Hanna and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington to establish the Irish Women’s Franchise League. 1920 – […]

#OTD in 1923 – A mass Hunger Strike is launched by 424 Republican prisoners in Mountjoy Gaol in protest at their continued detention after the war’s end.

13/10/2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

On 13 October 1923, Michael Kilroy, O/C of the IRA prisoners in Mountjoy, announced a mass strike by 300 prisoners, and it soon spread to other jails. Within days over 7000 republicans were on hunger strike. The figures given by Sinn Féin at the time were : Mountjoy Jail: 462; Cork Jail: 70; Kilkenny Jail: […]

#OTD in 1919 – Motion passed by Dáil that an Oath of Allegiance (to the Republic) should be taken by all members and officials of Dáil Éireann, and all Irish Volunteers.

20/08/2018.Reading time 1 minute.

Ernie O’Malley says that with this oath the Irish Volunteers became the Irish Republican Army (IRA). At a meeting of Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament not recognised by Britain), Secretary of Defence, Cathal Brugha called for all TDs to swear allegiance to the new parliament. Every person and every one of those bodies undermentioned must […]

#OTD in 1922 – Anti-Treaty forces abandon The Four Courts in Dublin which was bombarded for two days under the orders of Michael Collins.

30/06/2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

Anti-Treaty commander in the Four Courts, Paddy O’Brien is wounded by shrapnel. Ernie O’Malley assumes command. In the morning there is a truce to remove the wounded. Shortly afterward, a massive explosion destroys the western wing of the Four Courts and the Irish Public Records Office along with it. Forty advancing Free State troops were […]

#OTD in 1922 – The Provisional Government of the Irish Free State bombards the Four Courts in Dublin, and the Civil War begins.

28/06/2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

On 14 April 1922 a column of 200 men led by Rory O’Connor occupied the Four Courts, hoping to provoke an armed confrontation with British forces which were in the process of evacuating from Ireland following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty the previous winter which had split the IRA into two opposing factions. The […]

#OTD in 1897 – Birth of Ernie O’Malley in Castlebar, Co Mayo.

26/05/2018.Reading time less than 1 minute.

“I had given allegiance to a certain ideal of freedom as personified by the Irish Republic. It had not been realised except in the mind. I had fought against the British Empire in defence of that Republic, against Irishmen in the RIC, Englishmen in the British Army, and Irishmen in the Free State Army. To […]

Stair na hÉireann/History of Ireland

Tag: Ernie O’Malley