On This Day in Irish History
1 March 1794 – Statutes of Dublin University amended to allow Catholics to take degrees.
5 March 1981 – Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey announced the establishment of Aosdana (‘poet of the tribe’) to publicly honor distinguished achievement in the arts and to provide members with an annuity to free them from noncreative employment.
8 March 1966 – A republican bomb destroyed the top half of Nelson’s Pillar in O’Connell Street, Dublin.
9 March 1971 – Three off-duty Scottish soldiers, ages seventeen, eighteen, and twenty-three, two of whom were brothers, were abducted by the Provisional IRA from a Belfast city centre public house and shot dead on the outskirts of the city.
11 March 1921 – Crown forces ambushed an IRA flying column at Stelton Hill, Co. Leitrim, killing six, including Sean Connolly, their commander and GHQ staff officer.
12 March 2001 – The first case of foot-and-mouth disease in the Republic of Ireland in sixty years was confirmed in a flock of sheep on a farm in Jenkinstown, Co. Louth.
19 March 1921 – Tom Barry led 104 members of the flying column of the Cork No. 3 (West) Brigade against over 1,000 soldiers of the Essex and Hampshire Regiments in Crossberry, Co. Cork, killing thirty-nine and wounding forty-seven. IRA losses were three dead and four wounded in one of the biggest engagements of the War of Independence.
20 March 1971 – Major James Chichester-Clarke resigned as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. He was succeeded by Brian Faulkner.
24 March 1796 – The Insurrection Act declared that Magistrates can be empowered to seize any subject and send them to serve at sea, can place any district under martial law, impose curfews and the death penalty for oath-taking.
30 March 1931 – Garda Superintendent Sean Curtis was shot dead near his home in Tipperary by the IRA after he had taken action to prevent illegal drillings.
