It Happened on this date

[Bo]

1st of April 1957

BBC fools the nation

The BBC has received a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary broadcast this evening about spaghetti crops in Switzerland.
The hoax Panorama programme, narrated by distinguished broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, featured a family from Ticino in Switzerland carrying out their annual spaghetti harvest.

It showed women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry.

But some viewers failed to see the funny side of the broadcast and criticised the BBC for airing the item on what is supposed to be a serious factual programme.

Others, however, were so intrigued they wanted to find out where they could purchase their very own spaghetti bush.

Exotic delicacy

Spaghetti is not a widely-eaten food in the UK and is considered by many as an exotic delicacy.

Mr Dimbleby explained how each year the end of March is a very anxious time for Spaghetti harvesters all over Europe as severe frost can impair the flavour of the spaghetti.

He also explained how each strand of spaghetti always grows to the same length thanks to years of hard work by generations of growers.

This is believed to be one of the first times the medium of television has been used to stage an April Fools Day hoax.

[Bo]

2nd of April Irish History

1871 - A census on this date shows the population of Ireland to be 5,412,377; only 285 Jews are recorded in the census
1902 - Premiere of Yeats' Cathleen ni Houlihan starring Maud Gonne
1914 - Cumann na mBan, Irish women's Republican movement, is founded
1970 - Several days of rioting following Easter rising commemorations end on this date
1972 - Radio na Gaeltachta goes on the air for the first time and is launched by Eamon De Valera
1973 - Special Powers Act replaced by Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act
1998 - Dissident republicans, aligned to the 32 County Sovereignty Committee and a Louth-based former IRA Quartermaster are said to be behind a massive explosives find in Dun Laoghaire
1998 - Mentally exhausted and following the advice of his doctor, Christy Moore announces in an open letter to fans that he is taking a year off from live performances
1999 - More than 170 staff at the biggest Dunnes Stores branch in the west of Ireland are suspended in a row over a worker facing dismissal because she sampled food at the delicatessen counter
2000 - Westlife make pop history with five consecutive British number one chart hits
2002 - Linda and Declan Fleming win the second largest individual jackpot in Lotto history - £5.26 million
2003 - Protestors against the war in Iraq clash with gardaí outside the Dáil.
2003 - Pat Leahy, star of Fair City for eleven years, dies of kidney failure

[Bo]

1996 Unabomber arrested

3rd of April 1996
'Unabomber' suspect arrested
Police in the United States have arrested a man they believe to be the notorious "Unabomber" who has killed three people and maimed 23 others.
The suspect, named as Theodore Kaczynski, was arrested in Montana on Wednesday.

Attacks attributed to the Unabomber stretch back 18 years and span the US.

The first parcel bomb was sent in May 1978 and the last - which killed California Forestry Association president Gilbert Murray - was in April last year.

Theodore Kaczynski, 53, formerly taught mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley.

He is a graduate of Harvard University and received a doctorate from the University of Michigan.

Federal agents had long thought the Unabomber would have an academic background.

Promising career

The Unabomber tag came from a combination of the first letters of many of the targets - universities and airlines.

He was thought to be motivated by hatred of the capitalist system and technological advances.

Mr Kaczynski gave up his promising academic career in the early 1970s and moved to a tiny, primitive shack in a remote area on the edge of the Lolo National Forest in Montana.

A neighbour, Dick Lundberg, said he was considered to be a recluse.

"He kept to himself, never bothered anyone. He never did say anything bad about anybody. We thought he was all right," Mr Lundberg said.

A tip-off from members of Theodore Kaczynski's own family is said to have led to his arrest.

At the family home in Chicago they discovered notes by Mr Kaczynski which were strikingly similar to the Unabomber's "manifesto" published by the Washington Post and New York Times newspapers last year.

The family members - believed to be Mr Kaczynski's mother and brother - handed the notes over to the FBI.

They also allowed their house to be searched during which more evidence is said to have been found.








Ted Kaczynski aka the 'Unabomber' arrested


ap_ted_split_kb_120523_wg.jpg

In Context
In May 1998 Theodore Kaczynski was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
During his trial Kaczynski said the government's case against him was "political" and admitted no guilt or remorse.

Despite a diagnosis of mental illness, he initially resisted using it in his defence.

Kaczynski avoided the death penalty after a plea bargain deal but later tried to commit suicide.

His younger brother David, who had first contacted the police, received a $1m reward.

He said he would use the money to help the Unabomber's victims.

[Bo]

3rd of April Irish History

1793 - Dionysius Lardner, scientific writer and lecturer, is born in Dublin
1798 - Writer John Banim, who was praised by Yeats as a writer who tried to "make one see life plainly," is born in Kilkenny
1807 - Maurice FitzGerald, MP for Co. Kerry, resigns as Commissioner of the Treasury (UK) over the issue of Catholic relief
1825 - Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Young Irelander, journalist and promoter of Canadian Federation, is born
1843 - Birth of James McCudden, WWI ace
1846 - Death of Michael Moran, aka Zozimus, balladeer and storyteller
1900 - Queen Victoria arrives at Kingstown for a three-day visit to Ireland
1946 - Birth of Ruari Quinn, former Labour leader
1951 - Birth of Michael Morris, jockey, winner of the 1977 Irish Grand National, trainer, and son of Lord Killanin
1998 - Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announce that with ''realistic negotiation'', agreement in the Northern Ireland peace process could be reached by Thursday's deadline
1998 - Witnesses for the new inquiry into Bloody Sunday launched on this date in Derry, will not be offered blanket immunity from prosecution, according to the presiding chairman of the tribunal
2000 - Thousands of gallons of diesel oil are pumped off a storm-stricken Dutch barge which ran aground on a sandbank in Bray Harbour, Co. Wicklow
2000 - At the Special Criminal Court, John Gilligan denies having any involvement in the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin
2001 - The Government agrees to a £2 million package to bail out the financially troubled Jeanie Johnston famine ship project
2001 - The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson changes her mind about stepping down from the post on foot of a pledge that funding and staffing problems in her office will be addressed
2001 - It is announced that towns and villages within the current foot-and-mouth exclusion zone in Co. Louth have been barred from this year’s national tidy towns’ competition
2001 - Farm leaders from North and South meet in Dublin to pursue an agreed objective — the highest animal health status for all of Ireland.

[Korky]

3 April 1916

Louis Guglielmi was born in Barcelona on this date. He wrote the melody for Édith Piaf's lyrics of "La Vie en Rose"

[Bo]

4th of April in Irish History

1774 - Death of Oliver Goldsmith
1818 - Mayne Reid, pseudonym of Thomas Mayne; soldier, journalist, and writer of boys' stories, is born in Ballyroney, Co. Down
1933 - Paddy Hopkirk, international rally driver, is born in Belfast
1934 - Birth of novelist and journalist Mary Kenny
1951 - The Catholic hierarchy condemns the "Mother and Child" plan for free medical services, fearing the consequences of health education for women. Dr Noel Browne, Minister for Health, resigns; the scheme is abandoned on 6 April
1951 - Birth of singer and actress Adele King, better known as Twink
1952 - Gary Moore, rock guitarist, is born
1966 - Pirate Radio Scotland changes name to Radio Ireland
1994 - Riverdance appears in public for the very first time at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin
1999 - Sinn Féin warns that the peace process stands in crisis over provocative demands for arms decommissioning
1999 - The annual World Irish Dancing Championships come to an end in Ennis
2001 - Former employees and staff join three generations of the Barry family in a celebration of 100 years in business for a firm which has become an Irish institution
2001 - Dublin-born Butch Moore, the first singer to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest, dies after a very short illness
2001 - The Supreme Court strongly criticizes the State’s failure to provide official Irish translations of laws and important legal materials.
2007 - History is made as Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and DUP leader Ian Paisley shake hands for the first time in public prior to their milestone meeting at Farmleigh House in Dublin.

[Bo]

4th of April 1968 headline

Martin Luther King shot dead

The American black civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King, has been assassinated.
Dr King was shot dead in the southern US city of Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a march of sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions

He was shot in the neck as he stood on a hotel balcony and died in hospital soon afterwards.

Reverend Jesse Jackson was on the balcony with Dr King when the single shot rang out.

"He had just bent over. I reckon if he had been standing up he would not have been hit in the face," said Mr Jackson.


I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has taken Dr King

President Lyndon Johnson

Police in Memphis were put on alert for a "well-dressed" white man who is said to have dropped an automatic rifle after the shooting and escaped in a blue car.

There were early signs of rioting in Memphis after Dr King's death and 4,000 members of the National Guard were drafted into the city.

A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been ordered to ward off disturbances.

The US President, Lyndon Johnson, has postponed a trip to Hawaii for peace talks on Vietnam.

The president said he was "shocked and saddened" by the civil rights leader's death.

"I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has taken Dr King who lived by non-violence," Mr Johnson said.

Bus boycott

Dr King, 39, had previously survived several attempts on his life including the bombing of his home in 1956.

The charismatic civil rights leader joined the crusade for equal rights for black people in America in the mid 1950s.

He first came to national prominence as one of the leaders of the Alabama bus boycott in 1955.

In 1963 Dr King led a massive march on Washington DC where he delivered his now famous "I have a dream" speech.

Dr King advocated the use of non-violent tactics such as sit-ins and protest marches.

In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel peace prize.




In Context

Martin Luther King's assassination led to riots in more than 100 US cities.
James Earl Ray was convicted of his murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison.

But he later retracted his confession and said he had been only a minor player in a conspiracy.

However, his appeals for a new trial were rejected and he died in prison in 1998.

Ray was supported by some members of Martin Luther King's family who believed the US Government may have been involved in Dr King's death.

Their case was strengthened in December 1999 when a jury in a wrongful death case brought by the King family, decided the civil rights leader was the victim of a murder conspiracy.

However, in June 2000 after an investigation the US Justice Department said it had uncovered no reliable evidence of a conspiracy.

[Bo]

5th of April 1976

Billionaire Howard Hughes dies

Eccentric American billionaire Howard Hughes has died aged 70.
One of the world's richest men, Mr Hughes was best known as a movie magnate, aviation pioneer and businessman.

He had spent the last 20 years out of the public eye living as a recluse in hotel penthouses around the world.

He died on a plane flying him from Acapulco, Mexico, to Houston, in Texas, for medical treatment at the Methodist Hospital.

There has been much speculation in the media about his lifestyle.

Some reports say he had a phobia of germs that kept him out of contact with the outside world - in darkened rooms, eating little and wearing nothing for fear of catching a disease.

He is believed to have lived on the top floor of the Xanadu Princess Hotel in Freeport, Bahamas, since 1973.

Before that he had spent a few months in a penthouse at London's Inn on the Park and some years in Managua, Nicaragua.

From 1966 until 1970 he occupied the top floor of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas where he bought several properties, casinos and mining claims.

Films and flying

Howard Robard Hughes was born in Houston, Texas, in 1905. He was just 17 when he took over his father's Hughes Tool Company that patented a drill bit used on most of the world's oil drills.

The company became the foundation of his fortune which now stands at around $2 billion.

He used his wealth to become a Hollywood producer he made such films as Hell's Angels (1930), Scarface (1932), and The Outlaw (1941).

During this time he "discovered" actresses Jean Harlow and Jane Russell and was reported to have had affairs with Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Gene Tierney and Ava Gardner.

He married actress Jean Peters in 1957 but they divorced in 1971.

Howard Hughes had a passion for aviation and founded the Hughes Aircraft Company and even set a world speed record flying his own plane in 1935. Three years later he flew around the world in record time.

His company designed and constructed airplanes for commercial and military use, and during the 1940s and 1950s a subsidiary, Hughes Electronics, was one of the major suppliers of weapons to the US Air Force and Navy.

He designed several aircraft himself including the massive eight-engine Spruce Goose, made mainly out of birch and designed to carry 700 passengers.

It had been commissioned by the US government for use in World War II, but was not completed until after the war. It flew only once, with Mr Hughes at the controls, in 1947.

That same year the billionaire aviator was nearly killed in an air crash while testing one of his own planes.

In the early 1950s Mr Hughes gave up control of the Hughes Aircraft Company to an independent executive board following senior executive departures.

In 1953 he donated all his stock in the company to his new Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Delaware founded for biomedical research.

Mr Hughes was embroiled in several legal lawsuits against him by aggrieved employees. The most costly involved TransWorld Airlines (TWA) of which he had been a majority shareholder since 1939. He was forced to sell up in 1966 after a wrangle over his failure to invest in jets for the fleet.

[Bo]

Today in Irish history

April 5
1806 - William Dool Killen, ecclesiastical historian, is born in Ballymena, Co. Antrim
1818 - Bernardo O'Higgins defeats the Spanish at the battle of Maipo River, Chile
1855 - The Dublin-Belfast railway line is completed
1869 - Birth in Dublin of Margaret Tennant, née Abraham; trade unionist and campaigner for improved working conditions
1900 - Spencer Tracy, the son of an Irish father, is born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1916 - Patrick Pearse denies rumors of a possible rising to Irish Volunteer Chief of Staff Eoin MacNeill
1938 - Bill Attley, trade unionist, is born in Rathcoole, Co. Dublin
1961 - Death of Oscar-winning Irish actor of stage and screen Barry Fitzgerald. Born in Dublin in 1888, he pursues an acting career at the Abbey Theatre and then heads for Hollywood where he becomes Paramount's resident Irishman in such films as "Going My Way" for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. His finest works are under director John Ford, including "How Green Was My Valley" and "The Quiet Man."
1962 - Guinness formally adopts the harp as its symbol
1975 - L'escargot, ridden by Tommy Carberry, wins the Aintree Grand National
Art Print by G. Isom from All-Posters
1998 - All sides in the Northern peace talks talk up the chances of a new peace agreement as Stormont sources reveal that both Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair will fly to Belfast for the final hours of talks on Thursday
1998 - Cannabis worth £2 million is seized during a dramatic early morning raid by members of the National Drugs Unit (NDU) in Ashbourne, Co Meath
1999 - More than 300 Co. Waterford people armed with gloves and plastic bags brave a driving mist and head for the hills for the annual Clean up the Comeraghs campaign
1999 - The first major event of the Loyalist marching season a controversial Apprentice Boys parade along the predominantly Nationalist Ormeau Road in Belfast - passes off peacefully
2000 - Debbie Walsh and Jennifer McCarthy are shown at the opening of 'the father of the modern day submarine' exhibition in Cobh heritage centre. This year is the 100th anniversary of the commissioning of the first US submarine invented by John Phillip Holland from Liscannor, Co. Clare

2000 - Marine Minister, Frank Fahey, announces new moves to protect Irish fishing vessels from harassment outside the 12 mile limit
2001 - Gardaí attempt to trace the origin of a herd of Friesian cattle found roaming without ear tags on a roadside at Rosadrehid in the Glen of Aherlow, Co. Tipperary
2002 - Forty-four young police graduates march their way into the North's history books as they become the first fully-fledged members of the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI)
2003 - Attended by the entire cast of Fair City, the popular RTÉ television soap in which she starred for 11 years, the funeral of veteran actress Pat Leavy takes place at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Ballyroan, south Dublin.
2011 - Filmmaker and lecturer Barry Dignam and and his partner of 17 years, Hugh Hugh Walsh become the first gay couple in Irish history to enter into a civil partnership. The event takes place at the Registry Office in Dublin city centre.

[Bo]

6th of April 1994

: Rwanda presidents' plane 'shot down'
The presidents of the African states of Rwanda and Burundi have been killed in a plane crash near the Rwandan capital, Kigali.
Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Burundi's Cyprian Ntayamira were among 10 people on the aircraft which some reports say was brought down by rocket fire.

The two presidents were returning from a meeting of east and central African leaders in Tanzania at which they discussed ways to end the ethnic violence in Burundi and Rwanda.

Bloody feuding between the majority Hutu tribe and the minority Tutsis has plagued both tiny central African states for centuries.

It has been particularly bad in Burundi where up to 100,000 people have been killed since the assassination of the country's first democratically-elected president - a Hutu - last October.

In Rwanda, President Habyarimana's Hutu coalition reached a peace accord last August with Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels, made up mainly of Tutsis, but they have failed to agree on a transitional government.

The deaths of the presidents, both Hutus, looks likely to make the situation in both states worse.

Heavy fighting has already been reported around the presidential palace in Rwanda after news of the deaths spread.

News agencies in Kigali said explosions have been rocking the city but it was not immediately clear who was involved in the fighting.

'Assassination'

Rwanda's ambassador to the United Nations, Jean Damascene Bizimana, said the presidents' deaths had been an "assassination".

Members of the UN Security Council held a minute's silence for the presidents and later appealed for calm while the crash was investigated.

From 1890 until 1962 Rwanda and Burundi were one nation, Ruanda-Urundi.

It was under the control of first Germany and later Belgium.

The Belgians supported Tutsi kings' rule over the Hutu majority - worsening the bad feeling between the tribes.


In Context
The deaths of the presidents led to more ethnic conflict in both states but it was especially savage in Rwanda.
By June 1994 the Rwandan military - helped by Hutu civilians - had massacred at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

After the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front victory captured Kigali in July, two million Hutus fled into neighbouring Zaire (later the Democratic Republic of Congo)

Many were too afraid of retribution to return in spite of the formation of a multi-ethnic government with a Hutu as president.

In 1995 a UN-appointed international tribunal began trying some of the people behind the atrocities in Rwanda.

But by the end of 2001 the tribunal had judged just nine cases, handing down eight convictions and one acquittal.

[Bo]

Today in Irish history

April 6
1830 - James Augustine Healy, the first black Roman Catholic bishop in America, was born to an Irish planter and a slave on a plantation near Macon, Georgia
1889 - Actor Barry Macollum is born
1926 - Birth in Armagh of Ian Paisley, clergyman and Unionist politician
1947 - Death of Henry Ford, automobile production pioneer and son of Irish immigrants
1954 - The Flags & Emblems Act legislates against interference with the Union Jack, effectively prohibiting display of the tricolor in Northern Ireland
1956 - Kerry GAA footballer Seanie Walsh is born
1964 - Birth of Nick Popplewell, former rugby international
1965 - Former international footballer Norman Whiteside is born
1982 - James Prior launches 'rolling devolution' for Northern Ireland
1998 - Hopes of an historic peace deal are put at "less than 50%" as the multi-party talks deadline looms
1998 - Telecom Eireann launches a commemorative 50 unit Call Card to mark the 25th anniversary of the University of Limerick
2000 - Gregory Peck receives an honorary Doctor of Literature from the National University of Ireland in recognition of his contribution to the art of film
2000 - British soldiers and police search the perimeter fence of Ebrington Army Base in Derry after a bomb explodes inside the base
2001 - The Government pledges to give the GAA £60 million over the next three years in return for their commitment to staging matches — including All Ireland semi finals — in the new National Stadium. This deal effectively undermines the argument to open up Croke Park for rugby and soccer matches
2001 -The Parades Commission agrees to allow an Apprentice Boys’ march along Belfast’s flashpoint Ormeau Road on Easter Monday
2002 - Galway man Richard Donovan becomes the first person in history to run a marathon at both the North and South Pole.

[Bo]

Today in Irish history

April 7
1720 - The Declatory Act defines the right of the British Parliament to legislate for Ireland and denies the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords
1801 - The trial of United Irishman, Napper Tandy, begins
1861 - A census shows the population to be 5,798,967. Only 393 Jews are recorded
1922 - Special Powers Act is introduced in Northern Ireland
1926 - Mussolini's Irish wife breaks his nose
1927 - The world’s first ever paid television broadcast takes place. An Irishman, Mr. A. Dolan was employed by the American Telephone and Telegraph company to provide a “short act of monologue and song”. Interestingly, the first professional artist to be seen on television in Britain, a year later, was Irish singer Peg O'Neil
1941 - A Luftwaffe bomb kills 13 people in Belfast. Ultimately, the city is devastated by air raids; 700 people are killed and 400 seriously injured in what becomes known as Belfast's Blitz. The British government appeals to De Valera for help and he authorizes fire brigades from Dublin, Dundalk, Drogheda and Dun Laoghaire to give assistance
1973 - Death of Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid
2000 - Four environmental protesters, including Diana Peuker shown here, who had been jailed for their part in the Glen of the Downs protest in Co. Wicklow, are freed in the High Court

2001 - The longest running legal action in the history of the State ends when the Superwood Group of companies, which claimed £90 million compensation from three insurance companies, are awarded a total of £300,000
2003 - A member of the British army's 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards, Lance Corporal Ian Malone from Ballyfermot, Dublin, is killed in the battle for Basra in southern Iraq.

[Bo]

Today in Irish history

April 8
1719 - Birth of Viscount Edmond Pery, speaker of the House of Commons from March 1771 to September 1785
1805 - Sir William Rowan Hamilton, mathematician and astronomer, is born in Dublin
1816 - Sir Frederick Burton, painter, is born in Corofin, Co. Clare
1835 - Jonah Barrington, the Irish Parliament's leading opponent of the Union with Britain and author of The Rise and Decline of the Irish Nation, dies
1861 - John George Adair evicts 244 tenants on his estate at Derryveagh, Co. Donegal
1867 - A. E. (George Russell), pivotal Irish Renaissance poet, painter, journalist and mystic, is born
1886 - Home Rule Bill introduced in English Parliament by Gladstone
1923 - Edward Mulhare is born in Co. Cork; he grew up to become an actor and starring roles include Capt. Daniel Gregg in the 1968 release of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

1930 - Birth in Dublin of Frank Cluskey, politician and Labour Party leader from 1977-1981
1930 - Writer and critic John Jordan is born in Dublin
1933 - The Army Comrades' Association parades in blue shirts on this date
1951 - A census on this date shows the population of the Republic to be 2,960,593 and that of Northern Ireland is1,370,921
1960 - The Royal Showband is forced to change its name to the Waterford Showband for an appearance at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London because two members of the British royal family are in attendance
1981 - Death of Greta Bowen, artist known as "The Irish Grandma Moses"
1999 - The peace process is plunged into a new crisis after mainstream loyalist paramilitaries make it clear they have no intention of handing over weapons and the Sinn Fein's leadership brands the Hillsborough Declaration "unacceptable"
1999 - The Department of Education unveils a new primary school curriculum which replaces the one of 1971
2002 - The IRA makes a second and substantial gesture of putting arms beyond use which is broadly welcomed by political leaders in Dublin, London and Belfast
2003 - U.S. president George W. Bush leaves Belfast at the end of a two-day summit attended by British Prime Minister, Tony Blair and Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern
2003 - Paul Muldoon wins the Pulitzer prize for poetry. The 51-year-old Belfast poet is awarded the prestigious prize for his work Moy Sand and Gravel.

[Bo]

Today in Irish history

April 9
1346 - Death of Ralph de Ufford, justiciar
1793 - The Relief Act grants Catholics parliamentary franchise and certain civil and military rights
1807 - After resigning as Commissioner of the Treasury (UK) over the issue of Catholic relief, Maurice FitzGerald, MP for Co. Kerry states on this date that their war effort alone merits concessions to Irish Catholics
1837 - Edward Hallaran Bennett, surgeon, is born in Cork
1916 - The merchant ship Aud leaves Germany for Ireland with arms for the Irish Republican Brotherhood
1917 - Birth of legendary racehorse trainer, Vincent O'Brien
1921 - Dr. William Walsh, archbishop and nationalist, dies
1926 - Birth in Belfast of Lord Gerry Fitt, politician
1961 - A census on this date shows the population of the Republic to be 2,818,341 and that of Northern Ireland is 1,425,642
1961 - Mark Kelly, rock keyboard musician, is born in Dublin
1981 - IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands wins a seat in the British parliament in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election
1984 - Leslie De Barra, revolutionary, wife of General Tom Barry, dies
1998 - Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is back in Norther Ireland to resume his bid with Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to save the peace talks
2000 - Nobel Peace Prize winner, Nelson Mandela, arrives in Ireland to commence a four day private visit. During his visit, he is to receive an honorary degree in law at Trinity
2001 - Celebrities from the entertainment world turn out in force for the funeral mass of former lead singer with the Capital Showband, Butch Moore, at St Canice’s Church in Finglas

[Bo]

Today in Irish History

April 10
1346 - Following the death of Ralph de Ufford, Roger Darcy is appointed justiciar
1650 - Cromwell's New Model Army is victorious at Macroom, Co. Cork
1662 - A charter of Charles II replaces Cromwell's charter of Londonderry
1726 - Birth of William Brownlow, parliamentarian and Volunteer
1816 - Birth of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, nationalist, in Monaghan
1838 - Fr. Theobald Mathew, with the support of William Martin, a quaker, founds the total abstinence movement in Cork
1865 - Oliver Sheppard, sculptor, is born in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone
1866 - Campobello New Brunswick Irish-American Fenians attack Campobello Island from Eastport, Maine; they are persuaded to leave by British warships and US agents
1867 - George William Russell (pseudonym A. E. Russell); poet, painter, writer, economist and mystic, is born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh
1918 - British Parliament proposes conscription in Ireland
1923 - Liam Lynch, chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army, is mortally wounded by Free State troops in the Knockmealdown Mountains, Co. Tipperary; Frank Aiken takes over as IRA chief of staff
1940 - Gloria Hunniford, TV personality, is born in Portadown, Co. Antrim
1966 - The widespread and prolonged commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising begins throughout the island
1990 - Death of Wexford hurling legend, Nicky Rackard
1992 - A huge IRA bomb explodes in London's financial district; three people are killed and 91 injured
1998 - The Peace Agreement comes under fire with both unionist and republican camps facing internal revolt, as the battle to sell the deal intensifies
1998 - A bronze bust of world-renowned Irish aviator, Colonel James 'Fitz' Fitzmaurice who, along with two Germans, made the first east-west transatlantic crossing in 1928, is unveiled in his hometown of Portlaoise
1998 - The Northern Ireland peace talks end with an historic agreement. The accord - dubbed the Good Friday Agreement - is reached after nearly two years of talks and 30 years of conflict.
2008 - Many of the main players who helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement meet in Belfast for a conference to mark its 10th anniversary. Notable by their absence are former US President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Also absent is David Irvine who died after suffering a heart attack and later a stroke and a brain hemorrhage in January 2007.