August 01

  • 1960 Micheál Martin, TD for Cork South-Central since 1989, leader of Fianna Fáil since 2011, [and Taoiseach?] born in Turner’s Cross, Cork.
  • 1980 Seventeen people were killed when the Dublin–Cork train left the rails and jackknifed at Buttevant Station, Co. Cork.
  • 1819 Herman Melville, novelist, short-story writer and poet, author notably of Moby Dick (1851), born in New York.
  • 2008 Eleven climbers from international expeditions were killed in a series of accidents on K2. Amongst the dead was Gerard McDonnell (37) from County Limerick, after becoming the first Irishman to reach its summit.
  • 1980 Seventeen people were killed at Buttevant Station, Co. Cork, when the Dublin–Cork train left the rails.
  • 1936 The 11th Olympic Games were officially opened in Berlin by Führer Adolf Hitler. There was no Irish team present,owing to a dispute over whether all-Ireland sporting bodies had jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.
  • 1932 Dr Pat O’Callaghan retained his Olympic hammer-throwing title at the Los Angeles games. In that event at the previous Olympics (Amsterdam, 1928), he became the first person from an independent Ireland to win a gold medal.
  • 1915 At the funeral of the Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Patrick Pearse declares ‘.…the fools, the fools, the fools!—they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace’.
  • 1914 Germany declared war on Russia. France and Germany began a general mobilisation.
  • 1932 Dr Pat O’Callaghan won his second Olympic gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics in the hammer event. Bob Tisdal won gold in the 400m hurdles.