Nick Maxwell

1870 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, revolutionary, politician and political theorist, born in Simbirsk, the third of eight children. 1969 Prime Minister Terence O’Neill agreed to universal suffrage—‘one man, one vote’—in local elections in Northern Ireland. His cousin, Major James Chichester Clarke, resigned in protest the following day. 1967 Walter Mackin (50), actor, dramatist … Read more

1968 In what became known as the ‘rivers of blood’ speech, Enoch Powell MP strongly criticised mass immigration, especially Commonwealth immigration to the UK, and the then proposed Race Relations Act. 1954 Michael Manning (25), a carter from Groody, Limerick city, was hanged in Mountjoy Jail for the murder of an elderly nurse. He was … Read more

1952 Edmund O’Brien (71), County Limerick-born author and yachtsman who in 1923 circumnavigated the globe in his ketch Saoirse, died. 1870 Robert Noonan, house-painter, sign-writer and author, notably of The ragged-trousered philanthropists (1914), born Robert Croker, the illegitimate son of an RIC officer, at 37 Wexford Street, Dublin. 1949 Under the terms of the Republic of Ireland Act … Read more

1971 Tailors’ Hall, Back Lane, Dublin, reopened after restoration. The sole survivor of Dublin’s old guild halls, it was the meeting-place of the Catholic Committee’s ‘Back Lane Parliament’ in December 1792. 1969 Bernadette Devlin (21, Unity candidate) won the Mid-Ulster Westminster by-election to become the youngest-ever MP in the House of Commons. 1917 Jane Barlow … Read more

1871 John Millington Synge, key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre and playwright, notably of The Playboy of the Western World, born in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin. 1947 The expression ‘Cold War’, a war waged through proxies, was coined by the US statesman and millionaire financier Bernard Baruch. 1917 … Read more