Burning of Cork

After an IRA ambush on an Auxiliary patrol at Dillon's Cross, Auxiliaries and other British forces set fire to Cork's city centre overnight. Much of St Patrick's Street, the City Hall and the Carnegie Library were destroyed and about 2,000 people lost their jobs; a military inquiry blamed the Auxiliaries but was never published. Weeks earlier the lord mayor, Terence MacSwiney, had died on hunger strike in Brixton prison.