August 22, 1922, 100 years: Michael Collins is assassinated in Béal na Bláth, County Cork, Ireland. He was only 31 years old.
"The Big Fellow" was born 19 miles away, also in County Cork, in Woodfield. Here, sports led to larger history. At the time, the entirety of Ireland was still part of the British Empire. Collins' father, and most of the male role models he sought out after he was 6, when his father died, had been involved in Ireland's occasional rebellions.
Nevertheless, at age 15, he took a civil service exam, passed it, and was rewarded with a job in London, the Empire's capital. While living there, he was a member of the London County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the governing body for traditional Irish sports such as "Gaelic football" and hurling. So sports had an effect on history in this case: This association brought him into contact with rebels trying to establish Irish independence. In 1915, he moved to New York to work in a bank, a job that lasted one year.
Thus, the executions of the Easter Rising of 1916 did not include him. Indeed, the removal of several of the cause's leaders meant that others had to step in, and this aided his rise through the ranks. His background, working in banks in the Irish communities of London and New York, led to his appointment as the Minister for Finance in the early Republic of Ireland. He became Adjutant General for the Irish Volunteers, and became renowned for his guerrilla warfare strategy.
Sent to London to negotiate peace terms, he was offered a treaty that would establish the Irish Free State -- with an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown. The British Crown, held by King George V. Collins accepted this compromise, calling it "the freedom to achieve freedom." Some in the Provisional Government did not, and the end of the Irish War of Independence led to the beginning of the Irish Civil War.
Collins was named Chairman of the Provisional Government and commander-in-chief of the National Army. On August 22, 1922, returning from a visit to Cork City, a rebel stronghold, his convoy stopped at around 7:15 PM, at a bar called Long's Pub. It is now named the Diamond Bar. They were ambushed.
Collins' aide, Emmet Dalton, ordered the driver of Collins' armored car to "Drive like hell!" But Collins said, "No, stop, and we'll fight 'em!" A great example of "famous last words." Collins jumped out of the vehicle with his Lee Enfield rifle. He and his men fired from behind the car, which had a Vickers machine gun. But the Vickers jammed, and was of no use.
Collins moved back, his men presuming that it was to get a better view. He got off a couple of shots, and was reloading when he was hit in the head from a shot by former British Army sniper Denis "Sonny" O'Neill, a native of West Cork who had met Collins on a few occasions, before the split in the Irish nationalist ranks. Collins was the only man to die in the firefight.
O'Neill was granted a pension by the post-civil war government, and worked for a board of elections before dying peacefully in 1950.
Collins was played by Brendan Gleeson in the 1991 made-for-TV film The Treaty, by Liam Neeson in the 1996 film Michael Collins, and by Gavin Drea in the 2019 film Resistance.
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