November 03

  • 1918 A week after being ordered by the imperial naval command to sail out and make a last stand in the North Sea against the British, crews of the German fleet at Kiel, on the Baltic coast, mutinied.
  • 1917 Conor Cruise O’Brien, writer, historian, academic and politician, born in Dublin.
  • 1917 The Balfour Declaration—Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary in Lloyd George’s coalition government, proclaimed the support of the British government for a Jewish state in Palestine.
  • 1916 Ninety-seven lives were lost when the SS Connemara, a passenger and cargo steamer, was struck amidships by a coal boat, the SS Retriever, during a storm at the mouth of Carlingford Lough. The only survivor was a non-swimmer.
  • 1815 John Mitchel, political journalist, social revolutionary, transported felon, author of Jail Journal and public voice for the American Confederate states in the 1850s and 1860s, born in Camnish, near Dungiven, Co. Derry.
  • 1923 Tomás Ó Fiaich, scholar, archbishop of Armagh (1977–90) and cardinal from 1979, born in Anamar, Cullyhanna, Co. Armagh. Both of his parents were schoolteachers.