June 21
1798 Battle of Vinegar Hill, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford.
Nick Maxwell
June 20
1972 In response to a prolonged hunger strike by IRA prisoners in Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail, Secretary of State William Whitelaw announced ‘special category status’. 1968 Austin Currie, Nationalist MP for East Tyrone in Stormont, occupied a house in Caledon, Co. Tyrone, in protest at discrimination by unionists in allocating council houses. The house had … Read more
June 19
1870 Charles Dickens (58), regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, died. 1969 During his brief official visit to Ireland, General Charles de Gaulle hosted a reception in Áras an Uachtaráin for members of the McCartan Clan from County Down—descendants, like himself, of a McCartan who had fled to France in the wake of … Read more
June 18
1972 BEA Flight 548, en route from London Heathrow to Brussels, crashed near Staines, Middlesex, soon after take-off, killing all 118 people on board, including twelve leading Irish businessmen. 1922 An IRA convention at the Mansion House, Dublin, concluded with a split on the issue of immediate resumption of an IRA offensive against the British … Read more
June 17
1922 In reprisal for the killings of Catholics in south Armagh, the IRA attacked a number of Presbyterian farmhouses in the townlands of Altanaveigh and Lisdrumliska. Six people were killed and a number of others badly wounded. 1972 Five men were arrested during a bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate … Read more