August 12–14, 1969 · Derry (Londonderry) Theater

Three days of pitched street fighting erupted in the Catholic Bogside district of Derry when residents, fearing loyalist and police incursions after a contentious Apprentice Boys parade, barricaded their neighbourhood and battled the Royal Ulster Constabulary with stones and petrol bombs behind 'Free Derry' walls. Unable to retake the area, the exhausted police were withdrawn and the British Army was deployed onto the streets of Northern Ireland.

August 9–11, 1971 · Belfast Theater

The introduction of internment without trial saw hundreds of nationalist men rounded up and imprisoned, almost none of them loyalists, in a one-sided policy that inflamed the Catholic community. During the operation, soldiers of the Parachute Regiment shot dead eleven civilians in the Ballymurphy area of Belfast over three days, an atrocity that fed a surge of recruitment into the Provisional IRA.

January 30, 1972 · Derry (Bogside) Theater

During a banned civil-rights march against internment in Derry, soldiers of the Parachute Regiment opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing thirteen people on the day and wounding others, one of whom later died. The victims were unarmed; a discredited early inquiry exonerated the soldiers, but the Saville Inquiry decades later found the killings 'unjustified and unjustifiable.'

July 21, 1972 · Belfast Theater

In just over an hour, the Provisional IRA detonated around twenty bombs across Belfast, killing nine people — including civilians and two soldiers — and injuring 130 in scenes of carnage that shocked the province. The bombings overwhelmed the emergency services and left body parts scattered across the city.

July 31, 1972 · Derry and Belfast Theater

In the largest British military operation since Suez, over 20,000 troops with armoured bulldozers moved in before dawn to demolish the barricades and reoccupy the republican and loyalist 'no-go' areas — including 'Free Derry' — that paramilitaries had controlled. The IRA largely melted away rather than fight, and the Army retook the streets with relatively little bloodshed.

November 21, 1974 · Birmingham, England Theater

Bombs exploded in two crowded Birmingham pubs, killing 21 people and injuring around 180 in the deadliest attack of the Troubles on the British mainland. The atrocity led to the wrongful conviction of the 'Birmingham Six,' who spent sixteen years in prison before their convictions were quashed as one of Britain's worst miscarriages of justice.

August 27, 1979 · Warrenpoint, County Down; Mullaghmore, County Sligo Theater

On a single day the IRA struck two devastating blows. At Narrow Water near Warrenpoint, a double roadside-bomb ambush killed eighteen British soldiers — the Army's worst loss of the Troubles — catching the survivors of the first blast with a second. Hours earlier, a bomb planted on his boat at Mullaghmore had killed Lord Mountbatten, uncle of Prince Philip and a member of the royal family, along with three others.

May 5, 1981 · HM Prison Maze (Long Kesh) Theater

Republican prisoners demanding political status went on hunger strike in the Maze prison. Their leader, Bobby Sands, was elected a Member of Parliament while starving, drawing global attention, before dying after 66 days; nine more strikers died over the following months as Margaret Thatcher refused to concede. The prisoners eventually ended the strike, but most of their demands were quietly granted.

May 8, 1987 · Loughgall, County Armagh Theater

Acting on intelligence, the SAS ambushed an IRA unit as it attacked the Loughgall police station with a bomb-laden digger, killing all eight IRA members — the movement's greatest single loss of the war — along with a passing civilian caught in the crossfire.

November 8, 1987 · Enniskillen, County Fermanagh Theater

An IRA bomb exploded during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the war memorial in Enniskillen, killing eleven people — all civilians gathered to honour the war dead — and injuring dozens. The victim Gordon Wilson's moving forgiveness of his daughter's killers, spoken from his hospital bed, became one of the enduring images of the Troubles.

April 10, 1998 · Belfast (Stormont) Theater

After years of secret talks and ceasefires, the parties reached the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement, establishing a power-sharing devolved government, cross-border bodies, the principle that Northern Ireland's status would change only by consent, prisoner releases, and the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. It was overwhelmingly endorsed by referendums north and south.

August 15, 1998 · Omagh, County Tyrone Theater

Dissident republicans of the 'Real IRA,' opposed to the peace agreement, detonated a car bomb in the crowded market town of Omagh, killing 29 people and two unborn children and injuring hundreds — the single deadliest attack of the entire Troubles, committed months after the peace deal was signed.