1930 Edna O’Brien, novelist, most famous for her first, The country girls (1960), born in Tuamgraney, Co. Clare, the daughter of a farmer. 1920 Canon Thomas Magner and a local man, Tadhg Crowley, were shot dead by an Auxiliary officer in Dunmanway, West Cork. 1994 John Bruton, leader of Fine Gael, was elected taoiseach in succession … Read more
1921 Dáil Éireann met to debate the Treaty. 1966 Walt Disney (65), film producer and pioneer of film animation, died of lung cancer. 1918 General election (to 28/12). Lloyd George returned as head of a coalition government. Sinn Féin secured 73 of Ireland’s 105 seats. 1911 The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his five-man team, … Read more
2000 President Bill Clinton visited Northern Ireland for the final time in an official capacity, addressing a massive crowd at the Odyssey Arena. 1867 In a failed attempt to rescue Colonel Richard O’Sullivan Burke, Fenians blasted a wall at London’s Clerkenwell house of detention, killing twelve people. 1868 Revd Henry Cooke (80), theologian and popular … Read more
1971 Two men and two children were killed and nineteen others injured, some seriously, in an IRA no-warning bomb attack on a furniture showroom on the Shankill Road, Belfast. 1920 Following an IRA ambush near Victoria Barracks in Cork, Auxiliaries and Black and Tans went on the rampage, looting and setting fire to large parts … Read more
1968 Captain Terence O’Neill, prime minister of Northern Ireland, appealed for calm in his ‘Ulster at the Crossroads’ television address. 1960 D.A. Chart, archivist, historian and social scientist who was Deputy Keeper of the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (1924–48), died. 1861 John O’Donovan, official with the Ordnance Survey (1830–42) and leading scholar in … Read more