March 26

  • 1922 An army convention held in the Mansion House, attended by 220 delegates representing 52 of the IRA’s 73 brigades, repudiated the authority of Dáil Éireann.
  • 2000 Vladimir Putin, who had served as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for sixteen years, was elected president of Russia in succession to Boris Yeltsin.
  • 1920 Alan Bell, a magistrate investigating funding of the republican movement, was shot dead by Michael Collins’s ‘squad’.
  • 1932 Sir Horace Plunkett (78), pioneer of agricultural cooperation and first president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (1894), died.
  • 1931 T.M. (Timothy) Healy, barrister, parliamentary correspondent of The Nation, Irish Party MP and governor-general of the Irish Free State  (1922–8), died.
  • 1856 William Ferguson Massey, prime minister of New Zealand (1912–25), born in Limavady, Co. Derry.
  • 1874 Robert Frost, poet renowned for his realistic depictions of rural life and his grasp of American colloquial speech, born in San Francisco.