March 19

  • 1921 Tom Barry led 104 members of the flying column of the Cork No. 3 (West) Brigade against over 1,000 soldiers of the Essex and Hampshire Regiments in Crossbarry, Co. Cork, killing 39 and wounding 47. IRA losses were three dead and four wounded in one of the biggest engagements of the War of Independence.
  • 1870 The first instalment of Charles Kickham’s immensely popular Knocknagow or The Homes of Tipperary appeared in The Shamrock magazine. It was published as a novel in 1879.
  • 1988 Two plain-clothes British soldiers were attacked by the crowd and later killed by members of the IRA during the funeral procession of IRA Volunteer Kevin Brady to Milltown Cemetery, Belfast.
  • 1921 The Crossbarry ambush in south-west Cork, one of the biggest engagements of the War of Independence, in which over 100 IRA Volunteers escaped an attempt by over 1,300 British forces to encircle them. At least ten British soldiers and three IRA Volunteers were killed.
  • 1870 The serialisation of Knocknagow; or, The homes of Tipperary by Charles J. Kickham, arguably the most significant single literary work ever written by a leading Irish revolutionary figure, began in the Shamrock.
  • 1870 The first instalment of Charles Kickham’s immensely popular Knocknagow or The Homes of Tipperary—arguably the most significant single literary work ever written by a leading Irish revolutionary figure—appeared in The Shamrock magazine.
  • 1824 William Allingham, poet and diarist, best remembered for the children’s poem The Fairies (1850), born in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, the son of a bank manager.