ON THIS DAY

BY AODHÁN CREALEY

NOVEMBER

Above: John Dunlap, from Strabane, Co. Tyrone, printed the first copy of the American Declaration of Independence.

27/1812
John Dunlap (c. 65), County Tyrone-born printer and property developer, died. Best remembered for printing the first copy of the American Declaration of Independence—written in the hand of County Derry-born Charles Thomson—Dunlap’s success was down to family connections, hard work and good luck. Emigrating to Philadelphia at the age of ten, he served his apprenticeship with his uncle, a bookseller and printer, and took over the business within a decade when the elder Dunlap departed to study theology with a view to becoming an Anglican clergyman. He then launched a weekly newspaper, The Pennsylvania Packet, which later became a daily and the first successful newspaper in America. When the American War of Independence began in April 1774, he enlisted as an officer in Philadelphia’s city cavalry and rose to the rank of major, serving as Washington’s bodyguard in his victories at Trenton (December 1776) and Princeton (January 1777). In the meantime, his printing business continued to thrive and, on the evening of 4 July 1776, as official printer to the Continental Congress, he famously printed the first copy of the Declaration of Independence and overnight several hundred other copies, known as the ‘Dunlap broadsides’, ready for dispatch to the colonies by dawn. Meanwhile, he speculated in real estate, purchasing pieces of land confiscated from colonists who refused to take Pennsylvania’s new loyalty oath. With other purchases, mainly in Kentucky, he owned some 98,000 acres when he retired at the age of 48. Retirement, however, didn’t entirely suit him and he apparently became somewhat of a drunkard in his later years. His birthplace in Strabane is marked by a plaque, and the eighteenth-century Gray’s Printing Press on Main Street is maintained as a museum.

03/1923
Tomás Ó Fiaich, scholar, archbishop of Armagh (1977–90) and cardinal from 1979, born in Anamar, Cullyhanna, Co. Armagh. Both of his parents were schoolteachers.

04/1983
Three RUC officers were killed and four others seriously injured when an IRA bomb exploded at the Ulster Polytechnic in Jordanstown during a criminology lecture.

06/1963
Daniel Mannix (99), Cork-born staunch republican and archbishop of Melbourne for 46 years, died.

09/1923
Hitler’s ‘Beer Hall Putsch’—an attempted coup d’état by the Nazi party—ended in failure when c. 2,000 Nazis were confronted by a police cordon in Munich city centre, resulting in the deaths of sixteen party members and four police officers.

11/1998
A round tower memorial in honour of the c. 200,000 Irish who served with the British Army in the First World War was inaugurated by President Mary McAleese outside the Belgian village of Mesen (Messines). Also in attendance were Queen Elizabeth of England and King Albert and Queen Paola of Belgium.

13/1983
Gerry Adams was elected president of Sinn Féin in succession to Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, a position he held for almost 35 years until succeeded by Mary Lou McDonald in February 2018.

14/1923
The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the poet and playwright W.B. Yeats.

22/1963
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (46), 35th president of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

22/1963
C.S. Lewis (64), scholar, writer and Christian apologist, author notably of The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–6), died in Oxford.

22/1963
Aldous Huxley (69), writer and philosopher, author notably of Brave New World (1932), died in Los Angeles.

23/1923
The mass hunger strike by over 7,000 republican internees in over ten prisons and camps ended after 41 days. Two internees—Denis Barry and Andrew O’Sullivan—died as a result.

26/1998
Tony Blair became the first British prime minister to address a joint sitting of the Oireachtas.

Above: Dónal Cam O’Sullivan Beare—his march, a distance of over 500km in the depths of winter, was in many ways an act of desperation.

DECEMBER

31/1602
Dónal Cam O’Sullivan Beare, lord of the Beare peninsula in south-west Munster, set out with a thousand followers—600 fighting men and 400 men, women and children—to continue his struggle against English rule from Ulster. His march, a distance of over 500km in the depths of winter, was in many ways an act of desperation. A wanted man following his participation in the Battle of Kinsale and the interception by the English of a letter in which he declared his allegiance to Philip II of Spain, he had hoped to continue the struggle from his castle at Dunboy, near Castletownbere, but it fell to Crown forces in June 1602, as did his stronghold on Dursey Island, where c. 300 occupants, including women and children, were massacred by Crown forces under the infamous George Carew. Throughout the march he was continually harassed by Crown forces and their Irish allies, which led to two pitched battles. Crossing the Shannon in a boat made of animal skins and hazel rods, which took two days to make and carried 28 at a time over the 0.5km of the river, he arrived at Brian O’Rourke’s castle in Breifne fifteen days later with a mere 35, including just one woman. All the rest had died in battle or from hunger and exposure. O’Sullivan Beare eventually made it to Spain, where he was welcomed by Philip III and his princely status recognised with a commission as an imperial general. He was murdered in 1618 as he was leaving Mass in the Plaza de Santo Domingo in Madrid. The Beara–Breifne Way long-distance walking trail follows closely the line of his historical march.

05/1923
Edward Martyn (64), playwright, musician and promoter of Irish culture who founded the Palestrina Choir (1903), co-founded Feis Ceoil, and sponsored and guided An Túr Gloine, died.

10/2013
An Irish delegation, which included President Higgins and the three Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strikers, attended South Africa’s state memorial service in honour of Nelson Mandela.

15/1993
The Downing Street Declaration, signed by Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and British Prime Minister John Major, reaffirmed Northern Ireland’s constitutional guarantee and aimed to foster agreement and reconciliation leading to a new political framework within Ireland.

16/1983
A garda and an Irish Army soldier were killed in a gun battle during an operation near Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim, to free the businessman Don Tidey, who had been kidnapped by the IRA three weeks earlier.

18/1983
Six people, including two policemen, were killed when an IRA bomb exploded outside Harrod’s department store in London at lunchtime, when the streets were crowded with Christmas shoppers.

24/1823
James Gandon (80), architect best known for his works during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including the Custom House and the surrounding Beresford Place, the Four Courts and the King’s Inns in Dublin and Emo Court in County Laois, died.

27/1973
Thomas Niedermayer (45), manager of the Grundig electronics factory in Dunmurry, was abducted from his Belfast home by the IRA. He died just days later in captivity.

31/1973
Alan Daughtery (23), married with two children and a member of the 2nd Scots Guards, was shot dead by an IRA sniper off the Falls Road, Belfast. He was the last of 59 British soldiers killed by the IRA that year, the second-highest year for army casualties during the Troubles.

31/1973
As a result of industrial action by miners which curtailed the production of electricity, the British government announced the implementation of a three-day working week.