Nick Maxwell

1922 At a meeting of members elected to sit in the House of Commons of Southern Ireland, attended by 60 pro-Treaty TDs and four Unionist MPs (Dublin University) but boycotted by anti-Treaty MPs, resolutions were passed approving the Treaty and setting up a Provisional Government under the chairmanship of Michael Collins. 1864 Fr Nicholas Callan, … Read more

1941 James Joyce (58), writer, died in Zurich from a perforated duodenal ulcer; he was survived by his wife, Nóra, and son, Giorgio. 1843 The storms and gale-force conditions that ravaged these islands in January 1843 had devastating consequences off the Mourne coast. Early that fine winter’s morning, some sixteen skiffs set out from Newcastle … Read more

1972 Pádraic Colum (90), poet, novelist, dramatist and leading figure of the Irish Literary Revival, died in Enfield, Connecticut. 1970 Following disagreement over the issue of parliamentary abstention, Sinn Féin split into Official and Provisional Sinn Féin, mirroring the split in the IRA a month previously. 1970 During its Ard-Fheis in Dublin Sinn Féin splits … Read more

1922 Arthur Griffith was elected president of Dáil Éireann. 1920 The League of Nations held its first meeting in Geneva. It was superseded by the United Nations on the same date in 1946. 1970 An estimated 6,000 attended an anti-apartheid demonstration outside Lansdowne Road as Ireland played South Africa in rugby. 1984 Seán MacEntee (95), … Read more

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 … Read more