August 1st, 1961: Ireland applies for full membership of the European Economic Community.
December 31st, 1961: President de Valera opens Radio Telefis Eireann, as 700 guests toast the occasion with champagne at the Gresham Hotel on Dublin's O'Connell Street. In his speech, President de Valera admits he feels "somewhat afraid" of the immense power of TV. "Like atomic energy it can be used for incalculable good, but it can also do irreparable harm," he says.
February 26th, 1962: The IRA calls off its six-year Border campaign due to waning support from the general public.
June 26th-29th, 1963: US President John F. Kennedy comes to Ireland on a state visit, described in The Irish Times
as "a homecoming that was refreshingly free from sentiment and formality". He is assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22nd.
February 1st, 1965: Taoiseach Sean Lemass goes to Stormont to meet Northern Ireland prime minister, Capt Terence O'Neill, marking a thaw in cross-Border relations for the first time since partition.
December 14th, 1965: The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement is signed by British prime minister Harold Wilson and Taoiseach Sean Lemass. Britain abolishes import duties on most Irish goods, and Ireland cuts import duties on UK goods by 10 per cent, effective from July 1st 1966.
March 8th, 1966: Nelson's Pillar on O'Connell Street, Dublin, is partially demolished when it is blown up by the IRA. The army removes the remainder of the column a week later and crowds cheer and clap as the pillar falls. "There was a crack of a giant whip; a blue flash with a red core, and that was the end of the Nelson Pillar at exactly 3.30 a.m. today," says an Irish Times
April 27th, 1966: The first in a succession of farmers' protests culminates in the arrest of 28 members of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association under the Offences against the State Act. They had been protesting against milk prices outside the Dail and the Department of Agriculture.
April 11th, 1967:
Charles Haughey's budget increases pensions and children's allowances and allows medical expenses to be written off against tax.
March 24th, 1968: The Aer Lingus plane, St Phelim, plunges into the sea near Tuskar Rock, Wexford, killing 61 people. The cause of the crash is never determined.
October 5th, 1968:
Violence erupts when the banned Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) march is baton-charged in Derry by the RUC.
January 4th, 1969:
Students and members of the People's Democracy on a civil rights march are ambushed by militant unionists at Burntollet Bridge, Co Derry, as the RUC look on.
February, 1969: A wave of world-wide student revolt reaches UCD with the gentle revolution triggered by discontent over the management of the university and the handling of the move to Belfield Campus. The administration offices are occupied and lectures boycotted in favour of a continuous teach-in in the Aula Maxima.
August 12th, 1969:
The "Battle of the Bogside", sparked by the annual parade of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, develops into a 50-hour siege between members of the RUC, B-Specials and loyalists on one side, and Catholic residents of the Bogside behind barricades on the other. Bernadette Devlin, the 22-year-old mid-Ulster MP, is later sentenced to six months' imprisonment for her activities during the siege.
September 12th, 1969: The Cameron Commission's report blames much of the violence in Northern Ireland on the Stormont government and the RUC. The Hunt Report a month later recommends that the RUC be relieved of military duties and the B-Specials disbanded.
