September 17
Published in On this Day listing- 1937 Ten male seasonal workers aged between 13 and 21 years from Achill Island, Co. Mayo, perished in a fire in Kirkintillock, Scotland.
- 1918 Chaim Herzog, sixth president of Israel (1983–93), born in Belfast, the son of Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, Ireland’s Chief Rabbi (1919–37).
- 1862 The battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, western Maryland, the bloodiest single day in the American Civil War and in all of American history—22,000 killed or wounded, including 540 from the Union Army’s Irish Brigade.
- 1711 John Holwell, surgeon, East India Company employee and author of A genuine narrative of the deplorable deaths of the English gentlemen and others who were suffocated in the Black Hole (London, 1758) about hispart in the alleged ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’incident of June 1756, born in Dublin.
- 1939 The British aircraft-carrier HMS Courageous is torpedoed by the German submarine U-29 200 miles off the coast of Cork, sinking with the loss of 518 of her crew.
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