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March 26

Published in On this Day listing

1922 An army convention held in the Mansion House, attended by 220 delegates representing 52 of the IRA’s 73 brigades, repudiated the authority of Dáil Éireann.
2000 Vladimir Putin, who had served as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for sixteen years, was elected president of Russia in succession to Boris Yeltsin.
1920 Alan Bell, a magistrate investigating funding of the republican movement, was shot dead by Michael Collins’s ‘squad’.
1932 Sir Horace Plunkett (78), pioneer of agricultural cooperation and first president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (1894), died.
1931 T.M. (Timothy) Healy, barrister, parliamentary correspondent of The Nation, Irish Party MP and governor-general of the Irish Free State (1922–8), died.
1856 William Ferguson Massey, prime minister of New Zealand (1912–25), born in Limavady, Co. Derry.
1874 Robert Frost, poet renowned for his realistic depictions of rural life and his grasp of American colloquial speech, born in San Francisco.

On this Day

1937 During the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica, a bastion of Republican resistance, was pounded by the German Condor Legion with high-explosive bombs and at least 3,000 incendiary bombs. Over 1,600 people were killed in the subsequent firestorm.
1900 Queen Victoria concluded her final, three-week visit to Ireland, the purpose of which was to encourage Irishmen to join the British Army and fight in the Second Boer War. Nationalist opposition to her visit was led by Arthur Griffith and his newspaper, The United Irishman.
1974 Nineteen Old Masters paintings were stolen from the Blessington, Co. Wicklow, home of Sir Alfred and Lady Beit by a Provisional IRA gang which included Dr Rose Dugdale.