October 25

1920 Terence MacSwiney (41), lord mayor of Cork, died after 74 days of hunger strike in Brixton Prison, London. 2002 Richard Harris (72), actor and Oscar nominee for This sporting life (1963) and The field (1990), died. 1968 The New University of Ulster in Coleraine, Co. Derry, Ireland’s first new university in over 50 years, … Read more

October 24

1878 Paul Cullen, Ireland’s first cardinal and the principal architect of modern Catholicism in Ireland, died.

October 23

1921 John Dunlop (81), Scottish-born veterinary surgeon based in Belfast, who invented the pneumatic tyre (1887) in response to his son’s plea to make his solid-tyred bicycle go faster, died. 1960 Seamus MacManus (91), poet, historian and novelist, died. His wife, the writer Ethna Carbery, died suddenly just a year after their marriage (1902). 1969 … Read more

October 22

1966 The British spy George Blake was sprung from Wormwood Scrubs prison by Limerickman Seán Burke. 1935 Sir Edward Carson, Unionist leader, died. 1641 The Rising in Ulster began when Sir Phelim O’Neill took over Charlemont Fort, Co. Armagh. 1811 Franz Liszt, international piano virtuoso, inventor of the master class and prolific composer, born in … Read more

October 21

1966 One hundred and forty-four died—116 children and 28 adults—when a landslide of coal slag demolished a school and houses in the village of Aberfan, Merthyr Valley, South Wales. 1805 The Royal Navy, under Admiral Horatio Nelson, heavily defeated a combined Franco-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, off the south-west coast of Spain. On … Read more