1916 Centenary Commemorative Medal commemorations programme. The medal is based on the 1916 Medal which was awarded to those who rendered recognised military service during the week of 23 April 1916. The project to deliver a National Flag to all primary schools in the Republic of Ireland was conducted between September 2015 and March 2016 and involved 10,000 Defence Forces personnel visiting 3,200 schools and presenting them with a handmade National Flag and a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The Easter Rising centenary parade at the General Post Office, Dublin (GPO) included 2,800 members of the Defence Forces and a display
Easter, 1916 figures who eventually led the uprising. The deaths of these revolutionary figures at the hands of the British, however, were as much a shock to Yeats as they were to ordinary Irish people at the time, who did not expect the events to take such a bad turn so soon. Yeats was working through his feelings about the revolutionary movement in this poem, and the insistent refrain that "a terrible beauty is born" turned out to be prescient, as the execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising by the British had the opposite effect to that intended. The killings