50 Fun Facts About Irish History

Which nickname for the RIC's 1920 recruits came from a Limerick hunt's hounds and their mixed uniforms?

The Black and Tans took their name from the Scarteen Hunt, whose Kerry Beagles wore those colours; a recruit's khaki-and-green outfit reminded a Limerick Echo writer of the pack. The joke stuck even after full RIC uniforms arrived.

Which land agent for Lord Erne in County Mayo, shunned by his neighbours in 1880, gave English a new word?

Charles Boycott's ostracism ended with fifty Orangemen harvesting Lord Erne's crops under a thousand police and a regiment of Hussars, at least £10,000 spent to save about £500 of produce. His surname was an English verb within a year.

Which pope, the only Englishman to hold the office, issued the 1155 bull Laudabiliter on Ireland?

Adrian IV, born Nicholas Breakspear, issued Laudabiliter in 1155, and English kings cited it for centuries as papal licence to rule Ireland. Whether the bull ever existed in the form later quoted is still argued over by historians.

Who, while held in Holloway Prison, became the first woman elected to the House of Commons in December 1918?

Constance Markievicz won Dublin St Patrick's with 66% of the vote but never took her seat, in line with her party's abstention from Westminster. In 1919 she became Minister for Labour, Europe's second female cabinet minister.

What official name did Ireland give the years of the Second World War, when de Valera kept the state neutral?

The Emergency was proclaimed by the Dáil on 2 September 1939 and brought sweeping powers, including press censorship, that were not formally ended until 1976. In Irish it is Ré na Práinne.

What grim name was given to the overcrowded, fever-ridden vessels carrying Famine emigrants across the Atlantic?

Coffin ships were so called because typhus and other fevers swept their packed steerage decks, yet the term was hardly used during the Famine itself. The Famine monument below Croagh Patrick shows one with skeletons for rigging.

Which monarch had the Irish parliament pass the Crown of Ireland Act in 1542, turning the lordship into a kingdom?

Henry VIII became the first monarch styled King of Ireland under an act read to the Dublin parliament in both English and Irish on 18 June 1542. Catholic Europe and the papacy at first refused to recognise the new title.

Which Irish Citizen Army commander, wounded in the 1916 Rising, was executed on 12 May while tied to a chair?

James Connolly's foot had turned gangrenous from a wound taken in the fighting, so he was carried in on a stretcher and shot sitting down. He had built the Irish Citizen Army out of the workers' militia formed during the 1913 Lockout.

In which year did Irish voters make Ireland the first state to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote?

The 22 May 2015 referendum passed with 62% in favour on a 61% turnout, the first time anywhere that marriage equality had been won at the ballot box rather than through a court or a parliament.

Which hunger striker won the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election on 9 April 1981, weeks before his death?

Bobby Sands took the seat by 30,493 votes to 29,046 over the Ulster Unionist Harry West, and died on 5 May after 66 days without food. Westminster then changed the law so that serving prisoners could not stand again.

Which English king landed at Waterford on 17 October 1171 with some 500 knights and 4,000 foot soldiers?

Henry II came in person partly to curb his own Norman barons, who had carved out lordships in Leinster, and Irish kings from Desmond to Ulster submitted to him at Waterford and Dublin.

Which 1494 statute made the Irish parliament submit its draft bills to the English king and council for approval?

Poynings' Law, named for the Lord Deputy Sir Edward Poynings, meant no Irish parliament could even meet without a royal licence, and it hobbled Dublin's legislators until 1782. Loosening it was the heart of the 'Constitution of 1782'.

Which Earl of Kildare rebelled against the Tudor crown in 1534 and was hanged at Tyburn with five uncles in 1537?

Silken Thomas got his nickname from the silk fringes on the helmets of the 140 gallowglasses who rode with him to St Mary's Abbey to defy the king. His revolt made the Tudors take Ireland seriously, a step toward the kingdom of 1542.

Which monastery, founded by Saint Ciarán in 544 where the Esker Riada met the Shannon, is now a ruin?

Clonmacnoise grew where the Slighe Mhór, the great east–west road along the Esker Riada, met the Shannon, which made it a crossroads of early Irish learning and trade. Its graveyard is still in use today.

At which Cork harbour town did 4,000 Spanish troops land on 2 October 1601, drawing the Ulster rebels south to defeat?

Kinsale's Spanish garrison under Don Juan del Águila held out through an English siege while the Gaelic army marched the length of Ireland to relieve it, only to be routed outside the town. The last Ulster forces surrendered in 1603.

Which monarch's 1609 plantation settled English and Scottish Protestants on confiscated Gaelic estates across Ulster?

James I was sold the scheme as a joint 'British' venture to pacify Ulster after its earls had fled; settlers poured in through Derry and Carrickfergus while 1,300 former Gaelic soldiers were shipped off to the Swedish army.

Which walled town north of Dublin did Oliver Cromwell storm on 11 September 1649, at the start of his Irish campaign?

Drogheda's governor Sir Arthur Aston refused a summons to surrender, and once the walls were breached much of the garrison was killed along with an unknown number of civilians. Cromwell's siege guns had come up the coast by sea.

What name covers the post-1695 statutes that barred Irish Catholics from public office, firearms and foreign schooling?

The Penal Laws also banned marriage to Protestants and barred Presbyterians from public office from 1707, so Dissenters too had cause to resent them. The ban on Catholics bearing arms lasted until the Militia Act of 1793.

What is the Dublin legislature of 1782 to 1800, which won legislative independence from Westminster, usually called?

Grattan's Parliament won its freedom in April 1782 with Volunteer cavalry and artillery posted on every approach as Henry Grattan carried his Declaration of Irish Rights by acclaim. The Act of Union ended it in 1800.

Storms scattered a French fleet carrying General Hoche's army and Wolfe Tone in December 1796 off which Irish inlet?

Bantry Bay came so close to a landing that Tone, aboard the Indomptable, said he could have touched either shore with his hands; the fleet had lost its commanders in the fog, in some of the worst weather on record.

Which rebel camp above Enniscorthy was overrun by General Lake's troops on 21 June 1798, ending the Wexford rising?

Vinegar Hill was the last serious attempt by the Wexford rebels to hold territory; Lake attacked in four columns, one of them sent to seize Enniscorthy and its bridge. The fighting spilled into the town's streets.

What mocking name was given to the rout of General Lake's militia by Humbert's French troops in August 1798?

The Races of Castlebar saw about 1,000 French regulars, landed at Kilcummin days before, send 6,000 militia fleeing; Humbert was cornered at Ballinamuck within a month. In Irish 1798 is Bliain na bhFrancach, the Year of the French.

Who, after his failed 1803 Dublin rising, asked from the dock that his epitaph not be written until Ireland was free?

Robert Emmet was sentenced by Lord Norbury to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and on 20 September 1803 he was hanged and then beheaded in Thomas Street. Most veterans of 1798 had held back from his rising.

Daniel O'Connell's July 1828 by-election victory, which forced Catholic emancipation, was in which constituency?

County Clare's voters chose O'Connell over a sitting British cabinet minister, and since a Catholic could not take his seat, Wellington's government had to choose between emancipation and unrest. Emancipation followed the next year.

Which tariffs did Robert Peel repeal in 1846, splitting his own party, as the Irish Famine forced the issue?

The Corn Laws had kept imported grain dear, and Peel needed Whig votes to repeal them because most of his own Conservatives opposed him. Late 1845 brought poor harvests everywhere, but scarcity in Britain meant starvation in Ireland.

By what name is the Great Famine's worst year, when the Gregory clause's quarter-acre rule became law, remembered?

Black '47 brought the Gregory clause, which denied relief to any family holding more than a quarter-acre of land and was soon recognised as an estate-clearing device. Fever and mass emigration made it the grimmest year of the whole Famine.

What Irish-language name do Irish speakers give the Famine that began in 1845?

An Gorta Mór killed roughly a million people and drove over a million more to emigrate, cutting the island's population by 20–25% between 1841 and 1871. More than three million people had depended wholly on the potato for food.

The leaders of the 1848 rising at Ballingarry, including William Smith O'Brien, were transported to which penal colony?

Van Diemen's Land received O'Brien, Meagher, MacManus and O'Donoghue after their death sentences for the 'Widow McCormack's cabbage patch' affair were commuted in June 1849. Meagher escaped in 1852 and later led the Union's Irish Brigade.

Which tenant movement of 1879, whose first mass meeting was at Irishtown in County Mayo, demanded the 'three Fs'?

The Land League elected Parnell as its president and Davitt as a secretary, and the Land War it led from 1879 to 1882 pursued fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale. In 1882 Parnell replaced it with the National League.

Which splinter group stabbed Chief Secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke in Phoenix Park on 6 May 1882?

The Invincibles used surgical knives, and five of them were hanged in 1883 after their own leader, James Carey, turned informer. Cavendish had landed in Ireland that very day to take up his post.

Charles Stewart Parnell's career collapsed in 1890 after he was named co-respondent in whose divorce case?

Captain William O'Shea filed for divorce on Christmas Eve 1889, and the November 1890 decree handed him custody of Parnell's two surviving children. Nonconformist Liberals shunned Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party split.

Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill passed the Commons in 1893 but was thrown out by 419 votes to 41 in which body?

The House of Lords, dominated by Conservatives, could still negate any legislation outright in 1893; Gladstone had committed himself to Home Rule in 1885, a fact leaked in the so-called Hawarden Kite. His first bill had died in the Commons.

Which party, founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905, won 73 of Ireland's 105 seats in the December 1918 general election?

Sinn Féin means 'We Ourselves', though it is often mistranslated as 'ourselves alone', and its 1918 winners refused Westminster, assembling in Dublin in January 1919 as Dáil Éireann. Griffith first set out the policy on 28 November 1905.

Which 1912 pledge against Home Rule drew 471,414 signatures, Sir Edward Carson signing first with a silver pen?

The Ulster Covenant was really two documents, a men's Covenant signed by 237,368 and a women's Declaration signed by 234,046; one signatory claimed to have used his own blood, which a modern forensic test found almost certainly untrue.

Which union leader's clash with tram magnate William Martin Murphy triggered the Dublin Lockout of August 1913?

James Larkin's ITGWU was locked out from 26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914 in what is often called the most severe industrial dispute in Irish history. Dublin's tram men were paid far less than Liverpool's and policed by informers.

Which former British consul landed from a German submarine at Banna Strand in Kerry three days before the 1916 Rising?

Roger Casement, knighted in 1911 for exposing abuses in Peru's rubber trade, was hanged at Pentonville on 3 August 1916 after a trial that famously turned on a comma. His landing boat is in the Imperial War Museum.

Which Lord Mayor of Cork died in Brixton Prison in October 1920 after 74 days on hunger strike?

Terence MacSwiney had become Lord Mayor only after his friend Tomás Mac Curtain was murdered in March 1920, and the British cabinet refused to release him for fear of mutiny among troops and police in the south.

By what vote did Dáil Éireann approve the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 7 January 1922, after nine days of public debate?

The vote of 64 to 57 split the movement almost exactly in half: de Valera resigned as President two days later, losing to Griffith by 60 to 58, and within six months the two sides were fighting in Dublin.

Which Dublin building, held by anti-Treaty fighters since April, was shelled on 28 June 1922, opening the Civil War?

The Four Courts bombardment began at 4 a.m., and the fires it started reached explosives stored in the Public Record Office, destroying centuries of Irish records. Rory O'Connor and three other captured leaders were later shot in reprisal.

Which party did Éamon de Valera found in 1926 and lead into government for the first time on 9 March 1932?

Fianna Fáil, 'Soldiers of Destiny', was founded when de Valera's followers broke with the abstentionists to take their seats in the Oireachtas. Its first spell in office ran almost sixteen years.

What were Berehaven, Cobh and Lough Swilly, kept by Britain after 1922 and handed to Ireland in 1938, known as?

The Treaty ports came back under the 1938 agreements that ended the Anglo-Irish Trade War, and their return meant Ireland could keep the Royal Navy out through the Second World War, which made neutrality workable in practice.

Whose 1958 report became the First Programme for Economic Expansion, steering Ireland toward free trade?

T. K. Whitaker ran the Department of Finance from 1956 to 1969, and his 'Grey Book' was published under his own name in November 1958, an unusual step for a civil servant; many credit it with drawing foreign investment into Ireland.

Which 1973 deal's power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland fell to the Ulster Workers' Council strike of May 1974?

The Sunningdale Agreement, signed in Berkshire on 9 December 1973, also promised a cross-border Council of Ireland that many unionists found intolerable; Brian Faulkner resigned on 28 May 1974 after two weeks of barricades and shortages.

Which 1985 accord, signed at Hillsborough by Thatcher and FitzGerald, gave Dublin an advisory role in Northern Ireland?

The Anglo-Irish Agreement confirmed that Northern Ireland's status would not change without majority consent, while giving Dublin a voice but no power to decide; Gerry Adams called it a recognition of partition.

Which two Northern Ireland party leaders, one SDLP and one Ulster Unionist, shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize?

John Hume and David Trimble were said to have a 'reserved' relationship even as they shared the prize; Hume's talks with Gerry Adams, begun at Clonard Monastery in 1988, had opened the road to the peace process.

Which October 2006 deal, reached at talks in Fife, led to a new Northern Ireland Executive on 8 May 2007?

The St Andrews Agreement got the DUP to share power and republicans to endorse the Police Service of Northern Ireland, with policing and justice to be devolved within two years. Ian Paisley said democracy was 'finally winning the day'.

Which sea captain sailed to Greenwich in 1593 to petition Elizabeth I for the release of her captive sons?

Grace O'Malley had been branded 'nurse to all rebellions in the province for this forty years' by Sir Richard Bingham, who had seized her sons; the two women are often said to have spoken Latin, though her biographer says English.

What was the penny-a-month subscription that funded Daniel O'Connell's mass movement from 1824 called?

The Catholic Rent turned the Catholic Association from a guinea-a-year club of the middle-class elite into a mass movement, and from 1824 the money went into the emancipation campaign. Enemies derided O'Connell as the 'King of Beggars'.

Erskine Childers's yacht Asgard landed 900 Mauser rifles for the Irish Volunteers on 26 July 1914 at which harbour?

Howth's cargo of 1871-model single-shot Mausers and 29,000 rounds was partly paid for by a fund raised by Molly Childers and Mary Spring Rice, who sailed with the guns; a smaller load went ashore at Kilcoole in Wicklow from the Chotah.

Which border body under the Anglo-Irish Treaty was scrapped after the Morning Post leaked the findings in 1925?

The Boundary Commission had even recommended moving parts of east Donegal into Northern Ireland, so after the leak all three governments buried the report and on 3 December 1925 confirmed the border exactly as it stood.