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#OnThisDay 1906 Michael Davitt, founder of the Irish National Land League, Fenian arms-smuggler & politician died. Davitt’s drive to organise tenant farmers in Ireland during and following the Land War, ultimately ended the landlord system with tenants able to purchase their land with government loans.

#OnThisDay 1798 United Irishmen rebels ambush Meath Militia at Three Rocks in Wexford. The U.I kill or capture 90 & take two howitzers. A follow up cavalry charge is made by the Crown Forces a little later but is beaten back, one of the leaders of the charge, shot off his horse.
The United Irishmen then take Wexford Town. In an attempt to stall the rebels, the military commander of the town sent peace envoys to talk about a deal. Meanwhile the garrison in Wexford town secretly and hastily withdrew to Duncannon Fort, looting & burning and killing on their way.
The United Irishmen now hold all of County Wexford with the exception of a handful of toeholds that the Crown Forces occupy.

#OnThisDay 1917 John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. JFK attended Harvard, travelled to Europe, wrote about Britain’s ‘Policy of Appeasement’ which later became a bestseller. He then joined the Naval reserve as an officer. During WW2 his ship, the PT-109 was cut in two and Jack had to rescue his sailors, swimming with one of the straps of their lifejackets in his mouth to the shore despite being wounded himself. JFK would become the 35th President of the United States. All his grandparents were of Irish descent. He remains as one of the most popular American presidents of all time.
He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas in 1963.

#OnThisDay 1855 Lt Hugh Burgoyne, Royal Navy, from Dublin received the Victoria Cross during the Crimean War for landing in the face of superior enemy numbers, out of range of his ship’s guns & destroyed Russian food & ammo stores before returning to his ship.

Burgoyne came from a military family, his grandfather being the general who surrendered to the American Continental Army at Saratoga 1777. The phrase to do/pull a Burgoyne became popular which meant that you did something silly or foolish.

Hugh Burgoyne had a long military career and like the fate of many sailors was lost at sea when his ship the HMS Wivern capsized in a storm in 1870.

#OnThisDay 1798 Major General Sir James Duff & his Dublin Militia killed over 350 unarmed United Irishmen at Gibbeth Rath in the Curragh. The rebels had previously received amnesty from General Dundas & were waiting for him to take their surrender the next day. One of Duff’s captain’s wrote later about it;
“My troops did not leave my hero unavenged – 500 rebels bleaching on the Curragh of Kildare—that Curragh over which my sweet innocent girls walked with me last Summer, that Curragh was strewed with the vile carcasses of popish rebels and the accursed town of Kildare has been reduced to a heap of ashes by our hands.”