May 03
Published in On this Day listing- 1921 The Government of Ireland Act (1920) came into effect, creating the jurisdictions of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland.
- 1469 Machiavelli, Renaissance writer, playwright and poet, author notably of The Prince (1513), born in Florence.
- 1968 The ‘May ’68’ civil unrest in France began with a series of student protests against capitalism, consumerism, American imperialism and conservative values.
- 1916 Patrick Pearse (36), Tom Clarke (59) and Thomas MacDonagh (38) executed.
Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland since 1907, resigned. - 1916 Patrick Henry Pearse, aged 34, poet, writer, founder of Scoil Eanna (St Enda’s) in 1908 and commander-in-chief of the forces of the Irish Republic during the Easter Rising, was executed in Kilmainham Jail.
- 1814 Louis XVIII became king of France following 22 years of revolution and conquest under Napoleon Bonaparte.
- 1933 The Constitution (Removal of Oath) Act removed the oath of allegiance from the constitution of the Irish Free State.
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Personal Histories
On this Day
June 8
1876 James McKnight (75), journalist and agrarian reformer, died. McKnight came to national prominence in 1847 as spokesman for the thousands of Presbyterian tenant farmers who flocked to join the Ulster Tenant Right League, which sought to give legal protection to the Ulster Custom. Regarded at the time as the leading Presbyterian layman, it was he who was chiefly responsible for focusing the aims of the League on the extension of the Ulster Custom to the whole island—the ‘three Fs’: fair rent, free sale and fixity of tenure, meaning no eviction if rent had been paid. This programme was to guide the Irish land reform movement for the next 30 years. His lifelong passion, however, was in the cultural field, as an Irish-speaker who promoted the preservation and publication of ancient Irish manuscripts. Born near Rathfriland, Co. Down, he initially intended to become a Presbyterian minister before turning to journalism and becoming editor of the Belfast News Letter (1829–46). In the columns of that paper, he continually highlighted the common origins of the Irish and Scots Gaelic languages and, by implication, the shared culture of Irish Catholics and their Presbyterian neighbours. As a committed unionist, albeit a liberal one, he was sharply critical of the nationalist politics of Daniel O’Connell. The Repeal campaign, for instance, he described as divisive, suggesting that patriotic sentiment would be better served by reviving and promoting the Irish language. His enthusiasm for the language never waned. On his deathbed, the story goes, he asked his servant, a Catholic, to recite for him the Lord’s Prayer in Irish. She did as he requested, but at one point was interrupted by the dying McKnight, who pointed out that she had mispronounced one of the words.- 1972 Garda Inspector Sam Donegan (61) was fatally injured by a gelignite bomb reportedly left by the Provisional IRA on the Cavan–Fermanagh border.
- 1949 George Orwell’s Nineteen-eighty-four, mostly written on the Scottish island of Jura when he was seriously ill with tuberculosis, was published.
- 1859 The first edition of the Irish Times as a daily newspaper was published.
- 1917 The Butte, Montana, mine disaster: 168 died, including many Irish, when fire broke out in a mineshaft. Butte was the US’s foremost mining town at the time, with a population of 50,000, a quarter of whom were Irish, mostly from County Cork.