#OnThisDay 1941 About 180 Luftwaffe planes dropped 203 tons of explosives on Belfast killing over 900 people, causing the greatest loss of life in a single night during the Blitz, outside of London. Fire engines came from Dublin & Louth to quench the fires.
#Onthisday 1921 Auxiliary Company Commander Lt. John MacKinnon, a man with “the air of ruthless military efficiency’, was shot while playing golf in Tralee. IRA Vol. James Healy (a WW1 Vet) shot him with a rifle from up a tree as MacKinnon tee’d up a shot.
#OnThisDay 1848 Thomas Francis Meagher unveiled the Irish tricolour to a crowd at the Irish Convention in Dublin. “I trust that beneath its folds the hands of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood”.
#OnThisDay 1922 Rory O’Connor & 200 IRA men took over the Four Courts in Dublin. This was in open defiance of the Provisional Gov. & intended to provoke a reaction from British soldiers still in Ireland which would restart the war & reunite all republicans.
#OnThisDay 1920 British soldiers & RIC in Miltown Malbay Clare, fired into a crowd of civilians celebrating the release of Republican hunger strikers from Mountjoy. Three men were killed & several more were wounded including a 14 year old boy & a school girl.
