1955 Attack
On 29 October 1955, a group of nine University College Dublin students locked themselves inside the pillar and tried to melt the statue with flamethrowers. From the top they hung a poster of Kevin Barry—a Dublin Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer who was executed by the British during the Irish War of Independence. A crowd gathered below and began to sing the well-known Irish rebel song "Kevin Barry". Gardaí forced their way inside with sledgehammers. They took the students' names and addresses and brought them downstairs. As a Garda van arrived it was attacked by the sympathetic crowd. Rather than arrest the students, the Gardaí merely confiscated their equipment and told everyone to leave quietly. None were ever charged.
Read more about this topic: Nelson's Pillar
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“His spiritual life has been exaggerated by a chronic attack of mental gallstones.”
—Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878–1957)