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January 9

Published in On this Day listing

1980 Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey gave his infamous ‘as a community, we are living beyond our means’ television address. Unknown to the public at the time, he owed the AIB £1.143m owing to persistent personal overspending.
1929 Brian Friel, Ireland’s leading playwright, was born in Omagh, Co. Tyrone.
1916
1913 The disastrous Allied Gallipoli campaign ended after eight months with joint Allied/Ottoman Empire casualties of c. 500,000, including c. 4,000 Irish.
1913 Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the United States (1969–74), who resigned in disgrace in the wake of the Watergate scandal, born in California. His ancestor, James Nixon, was born in Ireland c. 1705, probably in Timahoe, Co. Laois, and emigrated to America c. 1730. Nixon visited Timahoe in October 1970.

On this Day

1920 Units of Cork No. 2 (North) Brigade led by Liam Lynch and Ernie O’Malley captured the military barracks in Mallow, Co. Cork, the only one captured during the War of Independence, and recovered a large quantity of arms and ammunition. Mallow was sacked in reprisal.
2001 Martin O’Hagan (51), investigative journalist who specialised in exposing paramilitary drug-dealing gangs, was assassinated by loyalists near his home in Lurgan, Co. Armagh.
1966 The ‘Tricolour riots’, the worst disturbances in Belfast for over 30 years, began when the RUC, under the terms of the notorious Flags and Emblems Display Act (1954), forcibly removed a tricolour from a window at the election headquarters in Divis Street of Liam McMillan, Republican (Sinn Féin) candidate in the impending Westminster election.
The Ulster Orchestra was founded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
1920 The IRA, led by Liam Lynch and Ernie O’ Malley, captured the military barracks in Mallow, Co. Cork—the only military barracks captured by the IRA during the War of Independence. Crown forces sacked the town in reprisal.
1912 In a demonstration of their hostility to the proposed Third Home Rule Bill, over 200,000 unionists, led by Sir Edward Carson, signed the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’.