Events

• January 9 - Peig Sayers travels to Dublin for the first time in her 81 years.
• January 10 - An Aer Lingus Douglas DC-3 aircraft on a London–Dublin flight crashes in Wales due to vertical draft in the mountains of Snowdonia, killing twenty passengers and the three crew. It is the airline's first fatal crash in its fifteen-year history.^[1][2]
• April 30 - The Adoption Bill makes provision for the adoption of orphans and children aged between six months and seven years born outside wedlock.
• May 11 - In Washington, the House Foreign affairs Committee explains that Ireland's exclusion from Marshall Aid is due to its wartime neutrality.
• May 30 - The Minister for Education, Se n Moylan, announces longer summer holidays for national school children.
• November 24 - The Minister for Defence, Oscar Traynor, presents framed copies of the Proclamation to three printers who had been involved in the production of the original work.
• December 29 - amon de Valera arrives back in Dublin after spending four months at an eye clinic in Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Arts and literature

• July 12 - Premi re of the romantic comedy-drama film The Quiet Man, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, set in 1930s Ireland and with much location filming around Cong, County Mayo.
• October 17 - Samuel Beckett's play Waiting For Godot is published in French as En attendant Godot by Les ditions de Minuit in Paris.
• The novelist Elizabeth Bowen settles in her ancestral home, Bowen's Court at Farahy, near Kildorrery, County Cork.
• Louis le Brocquy's 1951 painting A Family sparks controversy when a group of art patrons offer to present it to the Dublin Municipal Gallery and it is rejected by the Art Advisory Committee on the grounds of incompetence.
• Daniel O'Neill paints Birth.

Sport

Football

• League of Ireland

Winners: St Patrick's Athletic

• FAI Cup

Winners: Dundalk 1 - 1, 3 - 0 Cork Athletic.

Golf

• Irish Open - no tournament held.

Births

January to June

• 30 January - Anne Doyle, newsreader
• 10 February - Martin Ferris, Provisional IRA member, Sinn F in TD for Kerry North
• 25 February - Se nie O'Leary, Cork hurler
• 3 March - Dermot Morgan, actor and comedian (died 1998)
• 18 March - Pat Eddery, flat racing jockey
• 29 March - John Gilligan, drug smuggler implicated in the murder of Veronica Guerin
• 14 April - Mickey O'Sullivan, Kerry Gaelic footballer, Limerick manager
• 28 April - Gerald Barry, composer
• May 12 — Pat Hooper, long-distance runner
• 27 June - Ger Power, Kerry Gaelic footballer
• June - Tony Killeen, Fianna F il TD for Clare, Minister of State

July to December

• 11 July - Tom Kitt, former Fianna F il TD for Dublin South, Government Chief Whip.
• 4 August - Moya Brennan, singer.
• 5 August - Louis Walsh, manager in the music industry, and judge on The X Factor.
• 7 August - Eamonn Darcy, golfer.
• 9 August - Dinny Allen, Cork Gaelic footballer.
• 25 August - Martin Duffy, filmmaker and writer.
• 11 September - Jimmy Deenihan, Fine Gael TD for Kerry North.
• 27 September - Liam Aylward, former Fianna F il TD, MEP representing East.
• 7 October - M che l Domhnaill, folk and traditional musician (died 2006).
• 22 October - Mick Fairclough, former soccer player.
• 1 November - Willie O'Dea, barrister-at-law, lecturer, Fianna F il Teachta D la representing Limerick East, Cabinet Minister.
• 21 November - Eamonn Coghlan, four-time Olympian and world championship winning runner.
• 28 November - Pat Cox, former Progressive Democrats TD, MEP representing Munster, 5th President of the directly elected European Parliament and television presenter.

Full date unknown

• Patrick Buckley, former priest.
• Ger Canning, Gaelic Athletic Association hurling and football commentator.
• Tim Crowley, Cork hurler.
• Felim Egan, painter.
• John Ellis, former Fianna F il TD, Senator.
• John MacKenna, playwright and novelist.
• Michael Mulcahy, painter.
• Brian Murphy, Cork Gaelic footballer and hurler.
• Martin O'Doherty, Cork hurler.
• Maurice Scully, poet and editor.
• Peter Sheridan, playwright, screenwriter and director.
• Noel Synnott, soccer player and manager.

Deaths

• 6 February - George VI of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (born 1895)
• 18 February - Ernest Alton, university professor, represented Dublin University in D il from 1921 to 1927, represented Dublin University in Seanad from 1938 to 1943.
• 27 February - Helena Concannon, Fianna F il politician and historian (born 1878).
• 21 March - James Perry Goodbody, nominated to the 1922 Seanad and the 1925 Seanad by the President of the Executive Council.
• 9 May - P. J. Ruttledge, Sinn F in, then Fianna F il, TD and Cabinet Minister (born 1892).
• 23 October - Windham Wyndham-Quin, 5th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl, peer and politician (born 1857).
• 2 November - Maire O'Neill, actress (born 1885).

Full date unknown

• J. J. O'Reilly, Cavan Gaelic footballer (born 1919)
• Louisa Watson Small Peat, writer and lecturer (born 1883)

References