Nick Maxwell

1821 John Keats (25), English Romantic poet, died from tuberculosis in Rome. 1943 Thirty-six orphan girls in the care of the nuns of the Poor Clare Order died in a fire at St Joseph’s Orphanage in Cavan town. None of the nuns lost their lives. A subsequent tribunal blamed inadequate fire drill, too many locked … Read more

1973 Elizabeth Bowen (73), essayist, short-story writer and novelist, notably author of the best-selling The heat of the day (1949), died. 1972 In the wake of Bloody Sunday in Derry, the Official IRA bombed the officers’ mess of the Parachute Regiment in Aldershot, killing five female canteen workers, a gardener and a Catholic chaplain. 1973 … Read more

1972 President Richard Nixon arrived in China on a week-long visit, the first US president to set foot on Chinese soil. 1922  Enlistment began into the police service of the Provisional Government, initially known as the Civic Guard. The first member was Patrick Joseph Kerrigan from County Mayo. 1823 Charles Wolfe (32), Church of Ireland … Read more

1921 Twelve Volunteers were shot dead and a further eight taken prisoner when Crown forces surrounded them in a disused farmhouse overlooking the village of Clonmult, near Midleton, Co. Cork. It marked the IRA’s greatest loss of Volunteers in a single action during the War of Independence. 1920 Robert Peary (63), explorer and US Navy … Read more

1890 Joseph Gillis Biggar, Home Rule MP for Cavan since 1874, died. The Presbyterian pork butcher from Henry Street, Belfast, who taught C.S. Parnell the technique of parliamentary obstruction, is popularly remembered for his appearance (he was a diminutive hunchback) and for his ability to talk interminably on any subject in a rasping Belfast accent. … Read more