Nick Maxwell

1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo. 1945 During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore … Read more

1931 Chuck Feeney, businessman and philanthropist who gave away his fortune of $8 billion over a 38-year period, including $1.3b to projects in the Republic of Ireland and $570m to projects in Northern Ireland, born to Irish-American parents in New Jersey. 1971 C.B. (Cyril Bentham) Falls, military correspondent of The Times (1939–53), historian and author … Read more

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