November 23

  • 1974 Cornelius Ryan, Dublin-born war correspondent and author of the best-selling The longest day (1959), an account of the D-Day landings of 1944, died.
  • 1941 Derek Mahon, leading Irish lyric poet, born in Belfast of Protestant working-class parents (70 today).
  • 1966 Seán T. (Thomas) Ó Ceallaigh/O’Kelly (84), president of Ireland (1945–59), died.
  • 1910 The American Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was hanged at Pentonville Prison, having been convicted of poisoning his wife, Belle, and dismembering her body.
  • 1867 William Phillip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O’Brien—the ‘Manchester Martyrs’—were executed in Salford Jail, Manchester, for the murder of a policeman (see 08/12).
  • 1867 William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O’Brien—the so-called ‘Manchester Martyrs’—were executed in Salford jail, Manchester, having been convicted of murdering a policeman during the rescue of Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy from a prison van in the city the previous month.
  • 1814 Elbridge Gerry, vice-president of the United States since 1813, who gave his name to the term ‘gerrymandering’ (the process by which electoral districts are drawn with the aim of aiding the party in power), died.
  • 1923 The mass hunger strike by over 7,000 republican internees in over ten prisons and camps ended after 41 days. Two internees—Denis Barry and Andrew O’Sullivan—died as a result.