May (Beltaine) 13^th

1787 - On this date, which is a Sunday, Alderman Exshaw, accompanied by Archdeacon Hastings, is walking in Merrion Square, Dublin, when he encounters 'a great number of people, leaping, wrestling, shouting, etc.'. The archdeacon observes that this activity profanes the Sabbath and is a disgrace to Exshaw's district. The latter orders the police to advance and disperse the crowd with fixed bayonets. The MPs Richard Griffith, Henry Hatton and Sir John Freke intervene, and Griffith asks Exshaw 'to consider what he was about to do; that he had no right to order his men to fire without reading the Riot Act, and that if they fired, they must kill many innocent persons'. These words, according to Exshaw later, encourage the mob, and they immediately attack the police with stones. Exshaw will admit that there was no riot before he ordered the police to disperse the crowd, 'that some of his men were drunk, but not so much so, he said as to render them incapable of doing their duty; that it was with great difficulty he prevented them from firing on the mob'. Griffith will be found guilty of instigating a riot, and considered lucky not to be hanged

1842 - Arthur Sullivan, the son of an Irish musician, is born. Along with William Gilbert he invented the English operetta. Sullivan's last work is entitled "The Emerald Isle"

1848 - The Irish Confederation splits; John Mitchel starts the militant United Irishman; he is arrested on this date and is sentenced to 14 years transportation under the new Treason-Felony Act

1852 - Anna Catherine Parnell, sister of Charles and Fanny, and co-founder of the Irish Ladies Land League, is born in Avondale, Co. Wicklow

1878 - Birth of Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquis Londonderry and unionist politician

1906 - According to his birth certificate, this is the day playwright and novelist, Samuel Beckett is born in Foxrock, Co. Dublin. Throughout his life, he insists his birth is on Good Friday - April 13, 1906

1919 - Dan Breen and Sean Treacy rescue their comrade Sean Hogan from a Dublin-Cork train at Knocklong, Co. Limerick; two policemen guarding him are killed

1945 - In a radio broadcast, Churchill accuses de Valera's government of frolicking with the Germans and Japanese

1954 - Sean Patrick Michael Sherrard, better known as Johnny Logan, is born. He is considered to be the most successful Eurovision Song contestant of all time.

1972 - Battle at Springmartin – following a loyalist car bombing of a Catholic-owned pub in the Ballymurphy area of Belfast, clashes erupted between the PIRA, UVF and British Army. Seven people were killed: five civilians (four Catholics, one Protestant), a British soldier and a member of the PIRA youth wing.

1981 - Pope John Paul II survives an assassination attempt in St Peter's Square, Rome

1998 - Delegates at the Church of Ireland Synod in Dublin vote down a proposal that the church stop investing in companies involved in the production and selling of arms

1998 - Taoiseach Bertie Ahern calls on Sinn Fein and the IRA to state unequivocally that the war in Northern Ireland is over

1998 - The British Government appoints Adam Ingram as "Minister for Victims" to co-ordinate a drive towards new proposals to help the forgotten victims of terrorist violence in Northern Ireland

2000 - More than 3,500 people march through the centre of Dublin to show their opposition to the rising levels of racism directed at refugees

2003 - Ferocious winds force an Irish team hoping to scale Mount Everest to return to their base camp. Two members of the team, Clare O'Leary, 31, from Cork and Hannah Shields, 37, from Derry, hope to become the first Irish women to scale the world's highest peak.

Feast Day:

St. Abban (Abben) of Abingdon

2nd century. This early saint gave his name to Abingdon, formerly Abbendun, in Berkshire England. The use of "dun" ("fortress" or "seat")
indicates a Celtic origin, which, if true, would make Abban the earliest Irish saint. He is saint to have come from Ireland to England, where he
was baptized about 165 AD. He preached effectively and received a generous land grant in Berroccense (Berkshire) on which he founded a
monastery. Another monastery, funded by Prince Cissa and founded by Hean, replaced this one in 685 (D'Arcy, Fitzpatrick, Montague, O'Hanlon).