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March 16

Published in On this Day listing

1820 John Scanlon was executed in Limerick for the murder of Ellen Hanley (15), ‘the Colleen Bawn’, the previous summer.
1988 Loyalist gunman Michael Stone opened fire and threw grenades at mourners attending the funeral of the Gibraltar Three. Three were killed, including IRA member Kevin Brady (see 19th).
1968 US troops led by Lt. William Calley murdered c. 500 civilians, mostly women and children, in the village of My Lai, South Vietnam.
1967 Thomas MacGreevy (74), scholar, poet, critic and director of the National Gallery of Ireland (1950–64), died.
1960 The 45,270-ton P & O liner Canberra was launched at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, the last large liner launched from the yard.
1907 John O’Leary, Fenian, known as ‘Pagan’ O’Leary on account of his anti-clericalism, died.

On this Day

1922 Commandant O’Neill, 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area over the following four days.
1920 RIC Sergeant Cornelius Crean, brother of the explorer Tom Crean, was killed by the IRA in an ambush near Upton, Co. Cork.
1870 Daniel Maclise (64), history and portrait painter who worked for most of his life in London, died.
1719 The life and strange adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.
1819 Vere Foster, philanthropist and educationist, born in Copenhagen, where his Irish-born father was British minister.
1987 Lord Justice Gibson and his wife were killed by an IRA bomb as they crossed the border south of Newry, Co. Down.
1917 Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer, born in Newport News, Virginia.
1922 Commandant O’Neill of the third Cork Brigade IRA was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area between 26 and 29 April.
1915 During the First World War, Allied troops landed on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign, ending in January 1916, cost 46,000 Allied lives, including over 2,295 Irishmen.