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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

1951 Mary McAleese, barrister, journalist, academic and president of Ireland (1997–2011), born in Ardoyne, Belfast, the eldest of nine children.
1970 After serious sectarian clashes in the north of the city that afternoon, which left three Protestants dead, the Provisional IRA, in action for the first time, engaged in a five-hour gun battle with loyalists in the Short Strand area. Three men, two Protestant and one Catholic, died.
1939 Kathleen Clarke (Caitlín Bean Uí Chléirigh), widow of executed Easter Rising leader Tom Clarke, was elected lord mayor of Dublin.
1970 The Provisional IRA were in action for the first time, mortally wounding four Protestants and losing one of their own members in a gun battle in the Short Strand area of Belfast.
1951 Mary McAleese, barrister, journalist, academic and current president of Ireland (since 1997), born in Ardoyne, Belfast, the eldest of nine children.
1846 Charles Stewart Parnell, nationalist leader, was born.