1919 Two RIC officers, Sgt Peter Wallace and Constable Michael Enright, were killed during the rescue of Seán Hogan by Dan Breen and Seán Treacy, both of whom were wounded, at Knocklong station, Co. Limerick. (See 100 Years Ago, p. 70.)
1914 Joe Louis, American heavyweight world boxing champion known as ‘the Brown Bomber’, born in Alabama.
1917The first of the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children near the village of Fatima, Portugal (to 13/10/17).
1986 Peadar O’Donnell (93), revolutionary, agitator and novelist, died.
1968 The 58-acre island Ireland’s Eye and 220 acres of the Hill of Howth, Dublin, were presented to the Irish state by Christopher Gaisford-St Lawrence.
1986 Peadar O’Donnell (93), militant socialist, died. Born in the Irish-speaking Rosses of north-west Donegal, the youngest of nine children of a musician and migrant worker, O’Donnell was amongst the most influential left-wing republicans during the early years of the twentieth century. His entire life was devoted to the cause of a 32-county socialist republic. Abandoning his position as a teacher on Arranmore Island, he joined the IRA during the latter stages of the War of Independence to lead a flying column in his native county. Thereafter he opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty (he was amongst the anti-Treaty garrison that occupied the Four Courts), was imprisoned and took part in the mass hunger strike by anti-Treaty prisoners in late 1923, which lasted for 41 days. Afterwards, as editor of An Phoblacht (1926–9), he tried unsuccessfully to wean republicans from militarism to socialist agitation and during the inter-war years was a key figure in the short-lived Republican Congress (1934–5), which sought to establish a workers’ republic on the lines advocated by James Connolly. His solitary success was in organising small farmers against payment of land annuities to the British government in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a policy that was adopted by Fianna Fáil and contributed to that party’s electoral success in 1932. Better remembered today, perhaps, as a prolific writer, journalist and editor over a 40-year period until the 1960s, he was editor for a time of The Bell (1940), founded by Seán Ó Faoláin. Two of his six novels, Islanders (1928) and The big windows (1955), are regarded today as classic depictions of rural life.
1974 A Dublin couple successfully challenged a section of the Adoption Act (1952) relating to the prohibition on a husband’s adoption of his wife’s illegitimate son if the latter’s religion differed from his.
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Personal Histories
Personal Histories is an initiative by History Ireland,
which aims to capture the individual histories of Irish
people both in Ireland and around the world. It is hoped
to build an extensive database reflecting Irish lives,
giving them a chance to be heard, remembered and to
add their voice to the historical record.
Click Here to go to the Personal Histories page
1806 Patrick Cotter (46), giant, died. Born in Kinsale, Co. Cork, Cotter was just eighteen when he began exhibiting himself in England as Patrick Cotter O’Brien, ‘a lineal descendant of the old puissant King Brien Boreau’. It was recorded that Cotter ‘had less imbecility of mind than the generality of overgrown persons’ but also had ‘all the weakness of body by which they are characterized. He walked with difficulty, and felt considerable pain when rising up or sitting down.’ He also feared that his remains would be taken by grave-robbers and sold to anatomists. Retiring after some five years on the road, he directed that his casket be encased with lead and interred in a grave secured with iron bars. Thus they remained undisturbed for over a century before being reinterred in a crypt at the Jesuit chapel in Trenchard Street, Bristol, where they still rest. It was established then that he was 8ft. 1in. tall at the time of his death, the first of only seventeen people in medical history to stand at a verified height of 8ft or more.
1966 The first episode of Star Trek, ‘The Man Trap’, was broadcast, in which Captain Kirk faced an alien desperate to suck the salt out of human bodies.
1812 ‘Honest John’ Martin, Young Irelander and Home Rule MP, born in Loughorne, Newry, Co. Down.
1798 The Rising in Connacht ended with the defeat of Jean Joseph Humbert’s French/Irish forces by Crown forces under Lord Lieutenant Cornwallis at the Battle of Ballinamuck, Co. Longford.
1944 The SS Empire Heritage, en route from New York to Liverpool with a cargo of war supplies, was struck by two German torpedoes some fifteen miles off Malin Head, Co. Donegal, with the loss of 113 lives.
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