November 26

  • 2009 The Murphy Report into sexual abuse in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin was published. The report concluded that the church had prioritised its own reputation over all other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims.
  • 1791 The first convicts transported directly from Ireland to Australia, from Cork on the Queen, arrived in the British penal colony in Sydney, New South Wales. From then until 1868, when transportation ended in Western Australia, some 40,000 Irish men and women were shipped there.
  • 1922 The archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings.
  • 1998 Tony Blair became the first British prime minister to address a joint sitting of the Oireachtas.