February 12-13

October 03

• 1981 After the deaths of ten republicans on hunger strike in the H-Blocks of the Maze Prison, and further intervention by relatives, the IRA called off the hunger strike. Sixty-one lives, including those of 30 members of the security forces, were lost during the campaign.
• 1971 Seán Ó Riada (40), musician and composer, notably of the music for George Morrison’s documentary Mise Éire (1956) with his haunting adaptation of the traditional aisling Róisín Dubh, died.
• 1821 Having spent ten days on a State visit to Ireland—the first peacetime visit by an English monarch since Richard II in the fourteenth century—George IV departed from Dunleary, renamed Kingstown in his honour.
• 1870 Richard Barter (68), physician who established Ireland’s first hydropathic/water cure establishment in Blarney, Co. Cork (1842), and helped to introduce Turkish baths into Britain, died.
• 1970 President Richard Nixon arrived on a 48-hour visit to the Republic of Ireland, during which he visited the grave of his distant Quaker ancestors in Timahoe, Co. Kildare.
• 1971 Seán Ó Riada (40), composer, notably of the music for the historical documentary Mise Éire (1959), died.
• 1932 In Belfast some 60,000 workers from across the sectarian divide, on strike for higher outdoor relief payments, marched from the Frederick Street labour exchange to a torch-lit rally at the Custom House, led by bands playing the neutral tune Yes, we have no bananas.
• 1750 James MacLaine, or McLean (26), Monaghan-born gentleman highwayman, was hanged at Tyburn. In his lodgings the authorities had found 23 purses, a quantity of clothes and ‘a famous kept mistress’.
• 1691 The Treaty of Limerick was signed by the Williamite commander General Ginkel and the Jacobite commander Patrick Sarsfield.
• 1566 Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, entrepreneur, politician and leading figure in the defence of the Protestant interest in Munster after the outbreak of the 1641 Rebellion, born in Canterbury.