To renew a subscription please login first

December 22

Published in On this Day listing

1969 Bernadette Devlin was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for her activities during the Battle of the Bogside
1989 Samuel (Barclay) Beckett, novelist, poet and playwright, notably of En attendant Godot (1953), and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1969), died.
1919 ‘Any attempt at [Ireland’s] secession will be fought with the same resolve as the Northern States of America put into the fight against the Southern States’—Lloyd George, speaking in the House of Commons.
1916 Around 600 untried Irish internees were released from Frongoch and Lewes jails. Convicted prisoners remained in custody. James O’Kelly, Fenian, war correspondent and MP for County Roscommon, died.

On this Day

1971 Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act (1960) was invoked to prevent RTÉ from reporting on the activities of illegal organisations.
1925 Denis Henry, first lord chief justice of Northern Ireland and the last Catholic to hold a unionist parliamentary seat, died.
1911 The Parnell monument by Dublin-born sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, featuring an 8ft statue of the nationalist leader in heroic pose and wearing two coats, as was his custom, was unveiled before a massive crowd in Sackville Street by John Redmond.
1840 Cardinal Michael Logue, archbishop of Armagh (1887–1924) and cardinal (1893), born in Carrigart, Co. Donegal.