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

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 […]

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#OTD in Irish History | 9 November:

1711 – The first Irish parliament of Queen Anne is dissolved. 1791 – Napper Tandy convenes the first meeting of Dublin’s United Irishmen. 1875 – Birth of Sir Hugh Percy Lane. He is best known for establishing Dublin’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (the first known public gallery of modern art in the world) and […]

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#OTD in Irish History | 11 August:

In the Liturgical Calendar it is the Feast Day of Saint Attracta (also called Araght, and Naomh Adhracht in Irish), the patron saint of the parish of Tourlestrane, Co Sligo. Her legend states that she fled from home and took her vows as a nun under St Patrick at Coolavin. She then moved to Lough […]

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#OTD in 1922 – Fall of Limerick | Free State forces capture the Ordnance Barracks and Castle Barracks in Limerick.

The Republicans burn the remaining two barracks they are holding and retreat southwards. Fighting in Limerick has cost the lives of six Free State soldiers and 12 civilians, with a further 87 wounded. The press reports about thirty Anti-Treaty IRA men killed but a recent study puts their fatalities at just five. This brief newsreel […]

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#OTD in 1923 – Frank Aiken orders the Anti-Treaty fighters to “dump their arms” and return home.

After General Liam Lynch was shot by Free State soldiers in the Knockmealdown Mountains and died later that evening in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, many historians see his death as the effective end of the Civil War, as the new IRA chief of staff Frank Aiken declared a ceasefire on 30 April and on 24 May […]

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#OTD in Irish History | 10 April:

1346 – Following the death of Ralph de Ufford, Roger Darcy is appointed justiciar. 1650 – Cromwell’s New Model Army is victorious at Macroom, Co Cork. 1662 – A charter of Charles II replaces Cromwell’s charter of Derry. 1726 – Birth of William Brownlow, parliamentarian and Volunteer. 1816 – Birth of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, […]

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#OTD in 1880 – Birth of political activist, Sean Hales, in Ballinadee, Co Cork.

During the 1921 elections, Hales was elected to the Second Dáil as a Sinn Féin member for the Cork Mid, North, South, South East and West constituency.   During the 1922 general election, he was elected to the Third Dáil as a Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the same constituency. He received 4374 […]

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#OTD in 1922 – An IRA anti-treaty army convention announced it would no longer accept the authority of Free State Minister for Defence Richard Mulcahy.

Further movement to Civil War: An IRA convention was held in the Mansion House in defiance of a Dáil Éireann 15th March 1922 decree, despite the Dáil prohibiting it. Richard Mulcahy, the new Minister of Defence having succeeded the anti-Treaty Cathal Brugha, promised that the IRA would remain loyal to the government. However, the army […]

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#OTD in 1922 – Michael Collins secretly authorised the formation of a specially paid unit of seventy IRA volunteers, known as the Belfast City Guard, to protect districts from loyalist attack.

In the north of Ireland there were continual breaches of the Truce by ‘unauthorised loyalist paramilitary forces’. The predominantly Protestant, Unionists government supported polices which discriminated against Catholics in which, along with violence against Catholics, led many to suggest the presence of an agenda by an Anglo-ascendancy to drive those of indigenous Irish descent out […]

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