Nick Maxwell

1969 Ho Chi Minh (79), founding Vietnamese leader affectionately known as ‘Uncle Ho’, died. 1998 Bill Clinton arrived on the second of his three visits to Ireland as president of the United States. 1972 Mary Peters of Belfast took the gold medal in the women’s pentathlon at the Olympic Games in Munich with a world … Read more

1967 Siegfried Sassoon (80), novelist, biographer and one of the leading poets of the First World War, died. 1864 Sir Roger Casement, civil servant and revolutionary nationalist, born in Sandycove, Co. Dublin. 1159 Nicholas Breakspear, Pope Adrian IV from 1154, died. The only Englishman to become pontiff, he allegedly prefigured the ‘Irish Question’ by encouraging Henry … Read more

1971 Clifford Loring (18) of the Royal Artillery Regiment was shot dead by an IRA sniper whilst on checkpoint duty in West Belfast, the 35th death since the introduction of internment that month. 1994 The IRA announced a ‘complete cessation of military operations’. 1997 Diana, Princess of Wales (36), was killed in a road traffic … Read more

1951 Rosemary Scanlon, a singer known as ‘Dana’, broadcaster in the US with the conservative Catholic television channel EWTN and independent MEP for Connacht-Ulster (1999–2004), who made two bids for the Irish presidency, born in London. 1911 The Parliament Act reduced the power of veto of the House of Lords over legislation initiated in the … Read more

1971 Two men were killed and 27 injured in an unclaimed IRA bomb attack on the crowded Four Step Inn on Belfast’s Shankill Road. 1871 Jack Butler Yeats, illustrator and painter, born in London, the youngest child of the portraitist John Butler Yeats and brother of W.B. Yeats. 1975 Eamon de Valera, revolutionary, Fianna Fáil … Read more