The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978 the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. 1980 saw seven prisoners participate in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days. The second hunger strike took place in 1981, and was a showdown between the prisoners and the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. One hunger striker, Bobby Sands, was elected as a Member of Parliament during the strike, prompting media interest from around the world. By the end of the strike, ten prisoners had starved themselves to death including Sands, and 100,000 people attended his funeral. The strike radicalised nationalist politics, and was the driving force that enabled Sinn Féin to become a mainstream political party.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Irish_hunger_strike

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1283: Dafydd ap Gruffydd the Prince of Wales, the last native ruler of Wales to resist English domination, was executed by drawing and quartering. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_ap_Gruffydd)

1918: World War I: Following his armed forces' defeat to the Allied Powers, Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria abdicated in favor of his son Boris III. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_I_of_Bulgaria)

1929: King Alexander I renamed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and changed its subdivisions from the 33 oblasts to nine new banovinas. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Yugoslavia)

1990: German reunification (reunited country flag pictured): The five re-established German states (Bundesländer) of East Germany formally joined West Germany. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reunification)

1993: Soldiers from Malaysian, Pakistani and U.S. armed forces attempted to capture Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in the Battle of Mogadishu. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_%281993%29)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

ruddy: Reddish in color, especially of the face, sky, or fire. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ruddy)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

I'm an optimist. In order to be libertarian, you have to be an optimist. You have to have a benign view of human nature, to believe that human beings left to their own devices are basically good. But I'm not so sure about human institutions, and I think the real point of argument here is whether or not large corporations are human institutions or some other entity we need to be thinking about curtailing. Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government. -- John Perry Barlow (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Perry_Barlow)