January 17
Published in On this Day listing- 1971 Official Sinn Féin voted to end their abstentionist policy from Dáil Éireann, Stormont and Westminster.
- 1820 Anne Brontë, novelist, the youngest of the literary sisters, author notably of Agnes Grey (1847) and The tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), born in Thornton, Yorkshire.
- 1992 Eight workers were killed when the IRA detonated a 500lb roadside bomb as a bus carrying employees of a construction company engaged in work at British army and RUC bases drove past at Teebane, between Cookstown and Omagh, Co. Tyrone.
- 1992 The IRA detonated a 500lb roadside bomb at Teebane Cross, between Cookstown and Omagh, Co. Tyrone, as a bus carrying workers from Karl Construction drove past. Eight workers were killed. The firm was engaged in work for the security forces.
- 1866 George Petrie, antiquarian, scholar and collector of traditional music, died.
- 1861 Lola Montez (stage name of Irish-born Marie Delores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert), dancer and femme de scandale, died in New York.
- 1860 Douglas Hyde, scholar, co-founder of the Gaelic League (1893) and first president of Ireland (1938–45), was born in Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, the son of Revd Arthur Hyde, rector of Tibohine, Frenchpark.
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