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February 3

Published in On this Day listing

1922 John Butler Yeats (83), painter and father of W.B. Yeats and Jack B. Yeats, died.
1919 Éamon de Valera and two other prisoners escaped from Lincoln prison in a break arranged by Michael Collins and Harry Boland.
1963 Brinsley MacNamara (real name John Weldon), writer, notably of The valley of the squinting windows (1918), a study of a rural community and the power of gossip, died.
1919 Harry Boland and Michael Collins rescued Eamon de Valera from Lincoln jail, after smuggling keys hidden in cakes into the prison.
1911 Robert Tressell (the nom-de-plume of Dublin-born Robert Noonan), author of The ragged trousered philanthropists, first published in 1914, died in the Royal Liverpool Infirmary Workhouse.
1468 Johannes Gutenberg, German inventor of the printing press (1439), widely regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium, 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.