Nick Maxwell

1840 The Treaty of Waitangi proclaimed British sovereignty over New Zealand. Designed to safeguard the interests of the Empire and to appease sections of the native Maori population who sought Crown protection, the treaty was negotiated by the recently appointed lieutenant-governor, Captain William Hobson from Waterford. It was considerably flawed, however, not least because of … Read more

1992 Five Catholics were killed when UFF gunmen attacked a betting shop on the Ormeau Road, Belfast. Seven others were wounded. 1921 Katherine O’Shea Parnell (76), widow of Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–91), died at Littlehampton, Sussex. (See ‘100 Years Ago’, p. 70.) 1820 William Drennan (66), United Irishman, physician, co-founder of the Royal Belfast Academical … Read more

1922 John Butler Yeats (83), painter and father of W.B. Yeats and Jack B. Yeats, died. 1919 Éamon de Valera and two other prisoners escaped from Lincoln prison in a break arranged by Michael Collins and Harry Boland. 1963 Brinsley MacNamara (real name John Weldon), writer, notably of The valley of the squinting windows (1918), … Read more

1922 Ulysses by James Joyce was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on the writer’s 40th birthday. 1939 Desmond O’Malley, Fianna Fáil TD and government minister in the 1970s and 1980s and first leader of the Progressive Democrats (1985–93), born in Limerick. 1969 Boris Karloff (81), stage name of William Henry Pratt, an English actor best … Read more

1982 Corporal punishment was banned in schools in the Republic of Ireland. 1969 Charles Bewley, lawyer and diplomat, first Irish minister to the Holy See (1929) and to Berlin (1933–9), from where he was recalled by de Valera, died. 1968 The image of South Vietnam’s police chief General Loan summarily executing a captured Viet Cong … Read more