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December 16

Published in On this Day listing

1971 General Richard Mulcahy (85), revolutionary and politician, and founder-member of Fine Gael (1933), died.
1971 General Richard Mulcahy, second-in-command to Thomas Ashe in Easter Week 1916, chief-of-staff of the IRA during the War of Independence, GOC of Provisional Government military forces during the Civil War, government minister and leader of Fine Gael (1944–59), died.
1911 The Local Authorities (Ireland) (Qualification of Women) Act allowed women to become members of county and borough councils.
1965 William Somerset Maugham (91), English novelist, died.
2005 At a press conference in Dublin, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams announced that Denis Donaldson, their party’s group administrator in Stormont, had been a spy in the pay of MI5 for over twenty years.
1983 A garda and an Irish Army soldier were killed in a gun battle during an operation near Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim, to free the businessman Don Tidey, who had been kidnapped by the IRA three weeks earlier.

On this Day

1980 Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher held a summit meeting in Dublin Castle, after which they agreed to examine ‘the totality of relationships’ between the UK and Ireland and to establish an Anglo-Irish Committee.
1939 James Galway, the ‘man with the golden flute’, born in north Belfast, the son of a shipyard worker.
1974 The Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) were formed in Dublin—breakaways from Official Sinn Féin and the Official IRA respectively.
1916 T.K. (Ken) Whitaker, economist and public servant, born in Rostrevor, Co. Down (100 today).
1864 Pope Pius IX issued the ‘Syllabus of Errors’ which cited socialism, liberalism and freemasonry as the principal evils of the modern age.
1867 In Dublin, c. 60,000 attended ‘a public funeral procession’ in honour of the Manchester Martyrs.
1860 Amanda McKittrick Ros, eccentric novelist and poet who became a cult figure amongst leading bookmen of her time, was born.
1922 Following the shooting dead of Seán Hales TD and the wounding of Deputy Speaker Pádraic Ó Máille the previous day, the government executed four prisoners, one from each province—Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Joseph McKelvey and Richard Barrett, who had been imprisoned since the fall of the Four Courts in late June.