#OnThisDay 1919 Two RIC constables (not in pic) were shot & killed in an IRA ambush outside of Ennistymon, Clare. Const. Murphy (19) was killed outright but Sgt. Riordan (43) returned fire & hit an IRA vol before being fatally wounded & died the next day.
#OnThisDay 1914 Britain declared war on Germany after they invaded Belgium the day previous, plunging Europe & indeed the world into war. Over the course of the First World War, around 205,000 Irishmen would fight & about 40,000 men from Ireland would die.
#OnThisDay 1916 Roger Casement was hanged for High Treason in Pentonville Prison, London. Casement was arrested for gun smuggling for the rebels for the Easter Rising. He was the last of the Rising leaders to be executed. His remains were repatriated in 1965.
#OnThisDay 1915 While serving with the Scots Guards George Boyd-Rochfort, from Westmeath, was in a trench with others when a German mortar landed beside them. Rochfort told his men to get down while he picked up the bomb & threw it away earning himself the Victoria Cross.
#OnThisDay 1945 James McGinnes, a diver from Belfast, left the midget submarine XE3 & attached a limpet mine to Japanese cruiser Takao. 30 mins later, he returned to his sub & then volunteered to remove faulty mines. For this he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
