Nick Maxwell

1811 The Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland, better known as the Kildare Place Society, was founded to promote non-denominational schools throughout Ireland.

1901 Thomas Clarke Luby, co-founder of the Fenian movement and editor of the Irish People (1863–5), died in New York. 1955 Rosa Parks, the ‘first lady of civil rights’, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for resisting bus segregation by refusing to obey a bus driver’s order that she give up her seat in the ‘coloured’ … Read more

1920 General Tom Barry’s Cork No. 3 (West Cork) Brigade wiped out an eighteen-man Auxiliary patrol at Kilmichael, on the Macroom–Dunmanway road, Co. Cork. 1979 John Hume MEP was elected leader of the SDLP in succession to Gerry Fitt. 1990 Margaret Thatcher, Conservative prime minister of the UK since May 1979, resigned. She was succeeded … Read more

1871 The Gaiety Theatre in Dublin opened with a performance of Goldsmith’s She stoops to conquer. 1869 Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, imprisoned Fenian, was returned as MP in a County Tipperary by-election but was disqualified as a convicted felon. 1812 John Dunlap, printer and publisher, who founded the first American daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet (1771), later … Read more

2009 The Murphy Report into sexual abuse in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin was published. The report concluded that the church had prioritised its own reputation over all other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims. 1791 The first convicts transported directly from Ireland to Australia, from Cork on the Queen, arrived … Read more