1921 Brian Faulkner, the sixth and last prime minister of Northern Ireland (3/1971–3/1972) and the only one to have been educated in the Irish Free State, born in Helen’s Bay, Co. Down, the son of a shirtmaker.
1920 Timothy Quinlisk, a Catholic ex-soldier and former member of Sir Roger Casement’s Irish Brigade, was executed by the IRA as a British spy in Ballyphehane, Co. Cork. Most IRA executions (66) during the War of Independence occurred in that county.
1992 In what became known as the ‘X Case’, the attorney-general obtained an injunction preventing a fourteen-year-old rape victim from travelling to Britain for an abortion.
1967 Robert Oppenheimer (62), theoretical physicist who played a key role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first nuclear weapons, died.
1948 John A. Costello (Fine Gael) was elected taoiseach in the first interparty government.
1564 Michelangelo (88), archetypal Renaissance man, died in Rome.
1516 Mary Tudor, queen of England and Ireland (1553–8), who was responsible for the first of the English plantations in Ireland (in counties Laois and Offaly), born, the only child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.
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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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