Bobby Sands, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), died on May 5, 1981, after 66 days of a hunger strike while he was imprisoned in Northern Ireland. Sands was one of several Republican prisoners who participated in the hunger strike to protest the British government’s policy of treating them as criminals rather than political prisoners. His death and those of other hunger strikers sparked significant public outcry and intensified the conflict in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.