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August 22

Published in On this Day listing

1920 RIC District Inspector Oswald Swanzy, cited by a Cork jury as being implicated in the murder of Lord Mayor Tomás MacCurtain earlier that year, was assassinated in Lisburn by a four-man IRA unit from Cork.
1998 The INLA announced a ceasefire, ending their 23-year campaign. During that time they killed over 140, many of whom were their own members.
1997 Brendan Smyth (70), notorious priest, died in the Curragh Prison one month into a twelve-year prison sentence for child sexual abuse.
1922 Michael Collins (31), commander-in-chief of pro-Treaty government forces, was kille2d in an ambush at Béal na mBláth, near Macroom, Co. Cork.
1914 27,000 French soldiers were killed in a German counter-offensive—the deadliest day in the history of France.
1802 George Thomas, mercenary soldier known as the ‘Rajah from Tipperary’, died at Bahrampur, having been deposed by Sikh forces assisted by the French.
1922 Michael Collins (31), commander-in-chief of the National Army, was killed in an engagement with the IRA at Béal na Bláth, near Macroom, Co. Cork.
1972 Nine people were killed—three members of the IRA, two lorry drivers and four customs officials—when a 50lb IRA bomb exploded prematurely at a custom clearing station at Newry, Co. Down.
1983 Eight people died and over 30 were injured in a head-on train crash at Cherryville junction near Kildare station.

On this Day

1922 Commandant O’Neill, 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area over the following four days.
1920 RIC Sergeant Cornelius Crean, brother of the explorer Tom Crean, was killed by the IRA in an ambush near Upton, Co. Cork.
1870 Daniel Maclise (64), history and portrait painter who worked for most of his life in London, died.
1719 The life and strange adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.
1819 Vere Foster, philanthropist and educationist, born in Copenhagen, where his Irish-born father was British minister.
1987 Lord Justice Gibson and his wife were killed by an IRA bomb as they crossed the border south of Newry, Co. Down.
1917 Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer, born in Newport News, Virginia.
1922 Commandant O’Neill of the third Cork Brigade IRA was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area between 26 and 29 April.
1915 During the First World War, Allied troops landed on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign, ending in January 1916, cost 46,000 Allied lives, including over 2,295 Irishmen.