August 21

  • 1970 The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) was founded by a coalition of political figures who had been prominent in the civil rights struggle of the late 1960s. The first leader was the West Belfast MP Gerry Fitt.
  • 1976 The remains of William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw Haw’, Nazi propagandist executed for treason in 1946, were reinterred in Galway’s Bohermore cemetery.
  • 1970 The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) was formed in Belfast by a coalition of political figures who had been prominent in the Civil Rights struggle of the late 1960s.The party was initially led by Gerry Fitt, MP for West Belfast.
  • 1968 A five-nation Warsaw Pact force, led by the Soviet Union, invaded Czechoslovakia.
  • 1879 Over 20 local people claim to have seen a vision of Our Lady, St Joseph and St John over a two-hour period in Knock, Co. Mayo.
  • 1861 Queen Victoria arrived on her third visit to Ireland. During her ten-day stay she visited the Curragh, where her eldest son, later Edward VII, was undergoing military training, and spent three days in Killarney as a guest of leading landlords Lord Castlerosse and Colonel Herbert.
  • 1973 The Derry city coroner, Major Hubert O’Neill, described the actions of the British Parachute Regiment on ‘Bloody Sunday’ as ‘sheer unadulterated murder’.