Nick Maxwell

1918 Cork-born Major Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock (31), one of the most celebrated fighter pilots of the RFC (Royal Flying Corps), with 73 credited enemy ‘kills’ in fourteen months, was shot down and killed by enemy fire. 1917 The Irish Convention, an attempt to secure a final settlement to the Home Rule question, met at Trinity … Read more

1750 John Philpot Curran, lawyer and politician and father of the nationalist heroine Sarah Curran (1782–1808), born in Newmarket, Co. Cork. 1914 The Buckingham Palace Conference, a last-minute attempt to break the impasse between nationalists and unionists over Home Rule, ended in failure after four days.

1693 Patrick Sarsfield, earl of Lucan, died of fever aggravated by injuries sustained four days earlier whilst fighting under the flag of France at the Battle of Landen. 1803 Robert Emmet’s rebellion in Dublin. 1885 Ulysses S. Grant, eighteenth president of the United States (1869–77), whose maternal great-grandfather emigrated from Dergina, Ballygawley, Co. Tyrone, in 1738, died. … Read more

1873 James Cousins, writer and poet who taught at the Theosophical College in Madanapalle for over twenty years and latterly worked for the Indian government as an adviser on the arts, born in Belfast. He established the first public art galleries in India in Mysore and Travancore. 1946 The King David Hotel in Jerusalem, British … Read more

1920 ‘Protestant and unionist’ workers at Workman and Clarke’s shipyard in Belfast, incited by unionist politicians, resolved to drive out ‘disloyal workers’—Sinn Féiners and socialists. In three days of violence seven Catholics and six Protestants were killed. 1972 ‘Bloody Friday’ in Belfast. Nine people, including two British soldiers, were killed and a further 130 were … Read more