December 23
Published in On this Day listing- 1920 The Sinn Féin president, Éamon de Valera, returned to Ireland after an eighteen-month fund-raising tour of the United States.
- 1920 The Act for the Better Government of Ireland created the states of Northern Ireland (six counties) and Southern Ireland (26 counties).
- 1996 Sophie Toscan du Plantier (39), French film producer, was murdered outside her holiday home near Toormore, Schull, Co. Cork.
- 1968 The 83 crew members of the USS Pueblo, held in captivity for eleven months after she was seized by the North Korean navy, were released when the US government agreed in writing that the vessel had been spying and offered an apology. The US then retracted the statement.
- 1920 The Act for the Better Government of Ireland, which divided the country into two home rule states—Northern Ireland (six counties) and Southern Ireland (26 counties)—came into effect.
- 1864 James O’Brien, County Longford-born Chartist leader who wrote revolutionary articles under the pen-name ‘Bronterre’, died in poverty in London.
- 1967 South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant at the Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town.
- 1964 Desmond Ryan (71), secretary to Patrick Pearse and journalist, died.
- 1958 Dorothy Macardle, republican, writer of Gothic fiction and historian, whose works notably include Tragedies of Kerry (1924), an account of Free State terror in Kerry during the Civil War, and the monumental The Irish Republic (1937, revised 1951), died.
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Personal Histories
On this Day
September 16
- 1982 The New Ireland Group was founded by Senator John Robb.
- 1977 Maria Callas (53), internationally acclaimed Greek-American soprano, whom shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis left in favour of Jacqueline Kennedy, died of a heart attack in Paris.
- 1941 Sixteen Irish soldiers were killed in an explosion whilst conducting tests with anti-tank mines in the Glen of Imaal, Co. Wicklow—the worst disaster in the history of the Irish defence forces.
- 1937 Ten male seasonal potato-gatherers, aged 13–23 years, from Achill Island perished in a fire in Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow. The group had only arrived in the village the previous evening. The females were lodged in a cottage and the ten males in a nearby bothy, which was basically a cowshed, to sleep there on inverted potato boxes covered with straw. When the fire broke out in the early hours of the morning they found that they had no means of escape, as the door was padlocked and the windows netted with wire. By the time the alarm was raised the bothy was engulfed in flames and the roof had collapsed. Their charred remains were found huddled against a wall. Only one, a lad called John McLoughlin, could be identified. Coming less than two years after nineteen ‘tatie-hokers’, as they were called, from Arranmore Island drowned on their way back from Scotland, the tragedy once again highlighted the plight of the c. 5,000 young Irish seasonal workers who led a nomadic existence in Scotland, toiling for wages that the lowest-paid Scottish labourer wouldn’t accept—and in the most wretched conditions. The fire took a terrible toll on individual Achill families. The Mangan family lost three sons. Mary, from the same family, was amongst the females in the group. Two other families lost two sons. The subsequent inquest concluded that the ten died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by overloading with coal of the stove or hot plate in the bothy as they slept. It also recommended that all accommodation for seasonal workers should be inspected and passed as safe and proper by the appropriate local authorities.
Above: Front page of the Irish Press of Friday 17 September 1937, reporting the tragedy.
- 1845 Thomas Davis, poet and Young Ireland leader, died, aged 30.
- 1810 Mexican independence from Spain was declared (National Day of Mexico).
- 1974 Martin McBirney (52), magistrate and well-known literary figure, was shot dead by the IRA at his home in East Belfast. At almost the exact same time Rory Conaghan (54), a senior judge, was shot dead by the IRA in front of his daughter at his home in South Belfast.