1980 Percival Arland Ussher, writer, philosopher and Irish scholar who published the first translation of Brian Merriman’s The midnight court, died.
1989 The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed after a brief military trial.
1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union. The Cold War ended the following day, when the Supreme Soviet met and formally dissolved the Soviet Union.
1066 William of Normandy, latterly known as William the Conqueror, was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey.
1929 The disappearance of postman Larry Griffin. On Christmas morning Griffin, a married man with three children, set out on his mail round from Kilmacthomas, Co. Waterford, to Stradbally. The following morning his bicycle was found two miles from there on the road back to Kilmacthomas. Despite extensive searches of local mineshafts, bogs and cemeteries his body was never found. The investigating officer, a superintendent from Waterford, took statements from the gardaí in Stradbally and various locals, which gave contradictory versions of the postman’s movements and led him to believe that the gardaí were somehow involved. Then a local labourer came forward and gave what became the accepted version of events. Griffin had been in a local public house where a number of people, including local gardaí, were drinking and was involved in an altercation during which he struck his head on a stove and was mortally wounded. To cover up the fact that they were drinking illegally on Christmas Day, which would have seen the publican losing his licence and the gardaí facing dismissal, it was decided to dispose of the postman’s body and cover up his death. Eventually ten people, including the publican, his wife and two children, a local schoolteacher and two gardaí were charged with murder. But Larry Griffin was denied justice. In court the defendants held firm to their statements, whilst the labourer, the prosecution’s star witness, deviated from his, and in the absence of a body the trial collapsed. All charges were subsequently dropped, and the case officially remains unsolved. Some of the defendants later successfully sued for defamation and false arrest, including the publican and his family, who won substantial damages against two newspapers for implicating them in the case.
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Personal Histories
Personal Histories is an initiative by History Ireland,
which aims to capture the individual histories of Irish
people both in Ireland and around the world. It is hoped
to build an extensive database reflecting Irish lives,
giving them a chance to be heard, remembered and to
add their voice to the historical record.
Click Here to go to the Personal Histories page
1806 Patrick Cotter (46), giant, died. Born in Kinsale, Co. Cork, Cotter was just eighteen when he began exhibiting himself in England as Patrick Cotter O’Brien, ‘a lineal descendant of the old puissant King Brien Boreau’. It was recorded that Cotter ‘had less imbecility of mind than the generality of overgrown persons’ but also had ‘all the weakness of body by which they are characterized. He walked with difficulty, and felt considerable pain when rising up or sitting down.’ He also feared that his remains would be taken by grave-robbers and sold to anatomists. Retiring after some five years on the road, he directed that his casket be encased with lead and interred in a grave secured with iron bars. Thus they remained undisturbed for over a century before being reinterred in a crypt at the Jesuit chapel in Trenchard Street, Bristol, where they still rest. It was established then that he was 8ft. 1in. tall at the time of his death, the first of only seventeen people in medical history to stand at a verified height of 8ft or more.
1966 The first episode of Star Trek, ‘The Man Trap’, was broadcast, in which Captain Kirk faced an alien desperate to suck the salt out of human bodies.
1812 ‘Honest John’ Martin, Young Irelander and Home Rule MP, born in Loughorne, Newry, Co. Down.
1798 The Rising in Connacht ended with the defeat of Jean Joseph Humbert’s French/Irish forces by Crown forces under Lord Lieutenant Cornwallis at the Battle of Ballinamuck, Co. Longford.
1944 The SS Empire Heritage, en route from New York to Liverpool with a cargo of war supplies, was struck by two German torpedoes some fifteen miles off Malin Head, Co. Donegal, with the loss of 113 lives.
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