Ireland Events

1759 Sep 24 Arthur Guinness launches Guinness Brewing Company
Arthur Guinness was the founder of the Guinness brewery business, an entrepreneur, visionary and philanthropist. Guinness laid the foundations for Guinness Brewery. At 27, in 1752, Guinne...
1854 Oct 16 Oscar Wilde Is Born
Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin (now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College, Dublin) the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Wil...
1864
to 1871
Oscar Wilde Attends the Portora Royal School for Boys
We know something of Oscar Wilde's time at Portora from surviving records and from contemporaries. When Ocsar enrolled at Portora in February 1864, he signed the Roll Book, "Oscar Fingal ...
1882 Feb 2 James Joyce is Born
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was the oldest of ten surviving children; two ...
1889 Jun 12 Armagh Rail Disaster
The Armagh rail disaster happened on 12 June 1889 near Armagh, Ireland when a crowded Sunday school excursion train had to negotiate a steep incline, the steam locomotive was unable to co...
1898 James Joyce Enrolls at University College Dublin
He enrolled at the recently established University College Dublin (UCD) in 1898, and studied modern languages, specifically English, French and Italian. He also became active in theatrica...
1904 Jun 10 James Joyce Meets Nora Barnacle
The disparate strands of his life found their focus on June 10, 1904, when he met Nora Barnacle. He guessed correctly from her accent that she was Galway, and convinced her to meet him in...
1909 Dec
to 1910 Jan
James Joyce Manages The Volta Cinematograph, Ireland's First Cinema
Cinema arrived in Dublin in April 1896 when a demonstration was held in Dan Lowery’s Star of Erin theatre (later the Olympia). James Joyce was briefly the manager of the first cinema in t...
1914 Jun 15 'Dubliners' Is Published
Troubled by his conscience (a rare trait for any publisher) he now agreed, again, to publish Dubliners, the only condition being Joyce had to buy 120 copies himself and would receive no ...
1916 Apr 24
to 1916 Apr 29
 Easter Rising and the Irish Rebellion of 1916
Irish Rebels, 6,000 men James Connolly, Commander Patrick H. Pearse Edmond de Val era John O'Reilly Major John McBride Countess Markievicz English Army, 60,000 men General John ...
1916 Apr 24 Events Leading Up to the Easter Rising and the Irish Rebellion of 1916
The most audacious and yet the most inspiring rebellion in modern history — that of a handful of Irish patriots to wrest control of Ireland from Great Britain and set up a Republic — asto...
1918 May 25 'Exiles' is Published
Critics of Joyce have usually paid less attention to this play than to his other work. In the literary career of Joyce, it is both important and highly revealing. It casts light on Joyce'...
1921 Dec 6 Winston Churchill Signs The Anglo-Irish Treaty
The Anglo-Irish Treaty would replace the Third Home Rule Bill and the Ireland Act and would result in a much more independent South Ireland, or Irish Free State as the new country was cal...
1923 William Butler Yeats is Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923 was awarded to William Butler Yeats "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".
1942 Oct 2 Loss of HMS Curacoa
On 2 October 1942, she was escorting the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary carrying nearly 20,000 American troops of the 29th Infantry Division to join the Allied forces in Europe. Both ships we...
1963 Jun 27 President Kennedy Arrives in Ireland to Promote Connections between Irish Americans and their Country of Ancestry
The US President John F Kennedy has received a rapturous welcome on an emotional visit to his ancestral homeland in County Wexford, Ireland. On the second day of his four-day trip to ...
1974 Dec 10 Seán MacBride and Eisaku Sato are Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
In 1973 he was elected by the General Assembly to the post of High Commissioner for Namibia, with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General. The actions of his father John MacBride in leadi...
1979 Jan 8 Betelgeuse Incident
A TERRIFYING rumbling shattering a still winter’s night, was the prelude to Ireland’s worst maritime disaster, a quarter of a century ago.The subsequent explosion aboard the ill-fated sup...
1979 Aug 27 Louis Mountbatten is Killed by an IRA Bomb While Vacationing
"The IRA claim responsibility for the execution of Lord Louis Mountbatten. This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing..." —The IRA
1981 Feb 14 Stardust Fire
The fire at the Stardust Club in Dublin in February 1981 was responsible for the deaths of 48 people. The investigation and subsequent Inquiry revealed a large number of factors which had...
1998 Dec 10 John Hume and David Trimble are Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Hume is credited with being the thinker behind many of the recent political developments in Northern Ireland, from Sunningdale power-sharing to the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Belfast A...
2003 Jun 21
to 2003 Jun 29
 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games
The 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games were hosted in Ireland, with participants staying in various host towns around the island in the lead up to the games before moving to Dublin ...
2010 Jun 20 Graeme McDowell Wins the 2010 U.S. Open Golf Championship
In a U.S. Open with golf's biggest stars on the leaderboard, it was Graeme McDowell who played like one. McDowell seized control after a shocking collapse by Dustin Johnson, then faile...