Nick Maxwell

1984 Ann Lovett (15) died while giving birth near a Marian grotto in Granard, Co. Longford. 1953 The Princess Victoria, an early roll-on–roll-off ferry, en route from Stranraer to Larne, sank in hurricane-force conditions off Belfast Lough, with the loss of 133 lives. It was Ireland’s worst peacetime maritime disaster. 1917 Germany announced unrestricted submarine … Read more

1820 Edward Bransfield from Ballinacurra, Middleton, Co. Cork, commander of the English merchant vessel Williams, made the first sighting of the mainland of Antarctica—Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the continent. 1968 Vietnam War—the Tet Offensive. After declaring a truce over the seven-day Tet (lunar New Year) holiday, c. 70,000 Viet Cong troops launched surprise … Read more

1970 Gerard Sweetman (61), Fine Gael politician and Minister for Finance (1954–7), was killed in a car crash in County Kildare. 1939 W. B. Yeats, poet, died at Roquebrune, France. 1918 Lt.-Col. John McCrae (45), Canadian surgeon and poet, who composed In Flanders Field (05/1915), died of pneumonia in Boulogne. 1547 King Henry VIII (55) … Read more

1942 Six weeks after the US entered the Second World War, the first US soldiers came ashore at Belfast’s Dufferin Quay. By May 1942 some 37,000 US servicemen were stationed in Northern Ireland. 1871 Sir Arthur Philip Du Cros, pioneer of the pneumatic tyre industry who founded the multinational Dunlop Rubber Company (1901), born in … Read more

1971 Idi Amin, British-trained commander of the Ugandan armed forces, deposed President Milton Obote. His rule (1971–9) was one of the most brutal in African history. 1917 The White Star liner Laurentic, carrying 479 passengers (mostly British Army personnel) and a secret cargo of gold bullion, struck German mines a few miles off Lough Swilly … Read more