1871 The Gaiety Theatre in Dublin opened with a performance of Goldsmith’s She stoops to conquer.
1869 Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, imprisoned Fenian, was returned as MP in a County Tipperary by-election but was disqualified as a convicted felon.
1812 John Dunlap, printer and publisher, who founded the first American daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet (1771), later the North American and United States Gazette, and printer of the Declaration of Independence (1777), died in Philadelphia.
1812 John Dunlap (c. 65), County Tyrone-born printer and property developer, died. Best remembered for printing the first copy of the American Declaration of Independence—written in the hand of County Derry-born Charles Thomson—Dunlap’s success was down to family connections, hard work and good luck. Emigrating to Philadelphia at the age of ten, he served his apprenticeship with his uncle, a bookseller and printer, and took over the business within a decade when the elder Dunlap departed to study theology with a view to becoming an Anglican clergyman. He then launched a weekly newspaper, The Pennsylvania Packet, which later became a daily and the first successful newspaper in America. When the American War of Independence began in April 1774, he enlisted as an officer in Philadelphia’s city cavalry and rose to the rank of major, serving as Washington’s bodyguard in his victories at Trenton (December 1776) and Princeton (January 1777). In the meantime, his printing business continued to thrive and, on the evening of 4 July 1776, as official printer to the Continental Congress, he famously printed the first copy of the Declaration of Independence and overnight several hundred other copies, known as the ‘Dunlap broadsides’, ready for dispatch to the colonies by dawn. Meanwhile, he speculated in real estate, purchasing pieces of land confiscated from colonists who refused to take Pennsylvania’s new loyalty oath. With other purchases, mainly in Kentucky, he owned some 98,000 acres when he retired at the age of 48. Retirement, however, didn’t entirely suit him and he apparently became somewhat of a drunkard in his later years. His birthplace in Strabane is marked by a plaque, and the eighteenth-century Gray’s Printing Press on Main Street is maintained as a museum.
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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
1922 Commandant O’Neill, 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area over the following four days.
1920 RIC Sergeant Cornelius Crean, brother of the explorer Tom Crean, was killed by the IRA in an ambush near Upton, Co. Cork.
1870 Daniel Maclise (64), history and portrait painter who worked for most of his life in London, died.
1719 The life and strange adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.
1819 Vere Foster, philanthropist and educationist, born in Copenhagen, where his Irish-born father was British minister.
1987 Lord Justice Gibson and his wife were killed by an IRA bomb as they crossed the border south of Newry, Co. Down.
1917 Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer, born in Newport News, Virginia.
1922 Commandant O’Neill of the third Cork Brigade IRA was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area between 26 and 29 April.
1915 During the First World War, Allied troops landed on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign, ending in January 1916, cost 46,000 Allied lives, including over 2,295 Irishmen.
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