iIrish On This Day in Irish History
- iIrish Admin
- November 5, 2024
- Edited 2 weeks ago
Table of Contents
By Terry Kenneally
On This Day in Irish History
Did You Know …
4 December 1971 – A bomb planted by the Ulster Volunteer Force exploded in the Tramore Bar, commonly known as McGuirk’s in Belfast. Fifteen people were killed, all Catholics.
5 December 1640 – John Atherton, Anglican bishop of Waterford and Lismore, was publicly hanged in Dublin for the crime of sodomy. He and his steward, John Childe, were accused of being lovers. Childe was hanged the following year in Cork.
6 December 1922 – The Irish Free State, independent of the United Kingdom, was formally established, a year to the day after the Anglo-Irish Treaty by, among others, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith.
7 December 1995 – Seamus Heaney accepted the Nobel Prize for literature at a ceremony in Stockholm.
10 December 1998 – John Hume and David Trimble received the Nobel Peace Prize.
19 December 1973 – The Supreme Court of Ireland ruled that a ban on importing or selling contraceptives was unconstitutional.
20 December 1909 – James Joyce established The Volta Theatre, the first regular cinema in Ireland.
22 December 1691 – The Flight of the Wild Geese took place. This was the mass exodus of the Irish Jacobite soldiers- around 12,000- to France after their defeat at the Battle of Aughrim.
27 December 1904 – The Abbey Theatre, which would become the permanent home of the Irish National Theatre Society, opened its doors in Dublin for the first time, with a double bill of Yeat’s On Baile’s Strandand Lady Gregory’s Spreading the News.
29 December 1937 – The Constitution of Ireland came into force, having been approved by 56.52 percent of voters at a plebiscite on 1 July that year.
