May 31

  • 1916 The two-day Battle of Jutland, the first and only meeting between the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet, began.
  • 1962 Adolf Eichmann was executed in Ramleh Prison near Tel Aviv for his part in the wartime mass execution of millions of Jews.
  • 1941 Over a 37-minute period in the early hours of the morning four German bombs were dropped on Dublin, hitting the Phoenix Park, North Circular Road, Summerhill and the North Strand. The latter—a 500lb bomb—killed 29, injured a further 90 and left at least 500 people homeless.
  • 1906 Michael Davitt, agrarian radical, journalist and ‘father of the Land League’, died.