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July 21

Published in On this Day listing

1920 ‘Protestant and unionist’ workers at Workman and Clarke’s shipyard in Belfast, incited by unionist politicians, resolved to drive out ‘disloyal workers’—Sinn Féiners and socialists. In three days of violence seven Catholics and six Protestants were killed.
1972 ‘Bloody Friday’ in Belfast. Nine people, including two British soldiers, were killed and a further 130 were injured when the Provisional IRA carried out twenty bombings in the space of 65 minutes.
1969 Six and a half hours after landing, Neil Armstrong, before a television audience of hundreds of millions, became the first man to walk on the moon.
1920 In Belfast, ‘Protestant and unionist’ workers from Workman Clark’s shipyard marched into Harland and Wolff’s yard and forcibly expelled all Catholic and socialist workers. Some were forced to swim for their lives. In three days of violence seven Catholics and six Protestants were killed in the city.
1972 In what became known as ‘Bloody Friday’, one of the most violent days in Belfast’s history, nine were killed—seven civilians, including a fourteen-year-old schoolboy, and two soldiers—and 130 others injured, including 77 women and a number of children, when the IRA detonated twenty devices over a 65-minute period.

On this Day

1968 In what became known as the ‘rivers of blood’ speech, Enoch Powell MP strongly criticised mass immigration, especially Commonwealth immigration to the UK, and the then proposed Race Relations Act.
1954 Michael Manning (25), a carter from Groody, Limerick city, was hanged in Mountjoy Jail for the murder of an elderly nurse. He was the last person to be judicially executed in the Republic of Ireland. The last judicial execution in Northern Ireland took place seven years later, in December 1961, when Robert McGladdery (26) from Newry was hanged for the murder of a local woman.
1912 Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker (65), author, notably of Dracula (1897), died.
1954 Michael Manning (25), a carter from Limerick, was hanged in Mountjoy prison for the murder of an elderly nurse. He was the last man to be judicially executed in the Republic of Ireland.