1971 Two men and two children were killed and nineteen others injured, some seriously, in an IRA no-warning bomb attack on a furniture showroom on the Shankill Road, Belfast.
1920 Following an IRA ambush near Victoria Barracks in Cork, Auxiliaries and Black and Tans went on the rampage, looting and setting fire to large parts of the city centre, including City Hall. Over five acres of property, valued at £20 million, were destroyed.
1936 King Edward VIII abdicated after a reign of just ten months, prompting the biggest constitutional crisis for the British monarchy in the twentieth century.
1920 The IRA ambushed an RIC patrol near Victoria Barracks, Cork. Black and Tans later set fire to parts of the city. The government claimed that the arson was inflicted by citizens of Cork, but later paid £3m compensation.
1918 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, historian and short-story writer—notably of The Gulag Archipelago (1973)—and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1970), born.
1862 The Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, during which the Irish Brigade secured its reputation for gallantry with a suicidal charge against impregnable Confederate defences, began. The four-day engagement ended in victory for General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
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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
1822 Ulysses Simpson Grant, general in the Union army and 18th president of the United States (1869–77), born in Ohio.
1521 Ferdinand Magellan (c. 40), Portuguese navigator, was killed by natives on the island of Mactan in the Philippines during the first circumnavigation of the Earth.
1920 The IRA attacked the RIC station at Ballylanders, Co. Limerick. The Black and Tans terrorised Limerick city the following day.
1967 The Abortion Act, making abortion legal up to 28 weeks’ gestation, came into effect in the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland.
1953 Maud Gonne MacBride, revolutionary and iconic figure in nationalist mythology, died.
1916 Outside Hulluch, north of Loos in northern France, the 16th (Irish) Division suffered one of the heaviest gas attacks of the First World War; 538 men died and a further 1,590 were injured.
1923 Eamon de Valera offered terms for negotiation to end the Civil War, which were rejected by the Free State government.
1953 Maud Gonne (86), iconic figure in Irish nationalism, died.
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