History.com has this for 21 April:
On Easter Monday, 21 April 1916, in Dublin, Ireland, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret organization of Irish nationalists led by Patrick Pearse, launched the so-called Easter Rising, an armed uprising against British rule. Assisted by militant Irish socialists under James Connolly, Pearse and his fellow Republicans rioted and attacked British provincial government headquarters across Dublin and seized the capital’s General Post Office. Following these successes, they proclaimed the independence of Ireland, which had been under the repressive thumb of the United Kingdom for centuries and, by the next morning, were in control of much of the city. Later that day, however, British authorities launched a counteroffensive and, by 29 April, the uprising had been crushed. Nevertheless, the Easter Rebellion is considered a significant marker on the road to establishing an independent Irish republic.
Following the uprising, Pearse and fourteen other nationalist leaders were executed for their participation and still considered martyrs by many in Ireland. There was little love lost among most Irish people for the British, who had enacted a series of harsh anti-Catholic restrictions, the Penal Laws, in the eighteenth century, and then let a million and a half Irish starve during the Potato Famine of 1845-1848. Armed protest continued after the Easter Rebellion and, in 1921, 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties won independence with the declaration of the Irish Free State (map). The Free State became an independent republic in 1949, however, six northeastern counties of Ireland remain part of the United Kingdom, prompting nationalists to reorganize themselves into the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to continue their struggle for full Irish independence.
In the late 1960s, influenced in part by the American civil rights movement, Catholics in Northern Ireland, long discriminated against by British policies that favored Irish Protestants, advocated for justice. Civil unrest broke out between Catholics and Protestants in the region, and the violence escalated as the pro-Catholic IRA battled British troops. An ongoing series of terrorist bombings and attacks ensued in a drawn-out conflict that came to be known as The Troubles. Peace talks eventually took place throughout the mid- to late-1990s, but a permanent end to the violence remained elusive. Finally, in July of 2005, the IRA announced its members would give up all their weapons and pursue the group’s objectives solely through peaceful means. By the fall of 2006, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA’s military campaign to end British rule was over.
Rico says they didn't exactly win, at least not right away, but it did make for a lot of good songs... (And, no, not the GOP Republicans...) But only the Irish would refer to a decade of internecine killing as The Troubles...
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