On this day
Published in 20th-century / Contemporary History, Issue 3 (May/June 2012), On this Day, Volume 20May
2 1982
The Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine Conqueror some 30 miles outside the 200-mile ‘exclusion zone’ that Britain had declared around the Falkland Islands. Some 260 crewmen perished.
7 1812
Robert Browning, English poet and playwright, born in Camberwell, London.
8 1987
Eight IRA men, all members of the East Tyrone brigade, were shot dead by a 24-man British Army SAS unit as they attempted to bomb Loughgall RUC station, Co. Armagh. A passing motorist was also killed.
8 2007
Devolution day in Northern Ireland. Ian Paisley (DUP) and Martin McGuinness (SF) were sworn in as first minister and deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland executive.
10 1972
Referendum in the Republic of Ireland on entry to the European Economic Community—1,041,890 in favour, 211,891 against.
12 1712
Building commenced on the library of Trinity College, Dublin, designed by Thomas Burgh, at a cost of £15,000.
20 1932
Amelia Earhart completed the first transatlantic solo flight by a woman from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, landing in Culmore, Derry—2,206 miles in thirteen hours.
22 1922
W.J. Twaddell, MP for Woodvale, was shot dead in Belfast, the only MP to be assassinated in Northern Ireland until the murder of Revd Robert Bradford in 1981. During that month some 44 Catholics and 22 Protestants died in violence in the city.
24 2007
In the general election Fianna Fáil secured 41.6% of first preference votes, leading to the appointment of Bertie Ahern to a third successive term as taoiseach.
29 1972
The Official IRA ordered a cessation of hostilities following the killing, four days earlier, of Ranger William Best while visiting his family.
31 1962
Adolf Eichmann was executed in Ramleh Prison near Tel Aviv for his part in the wartime mass execution of millions of Jews.
June
5 2002
Former US President Bill Clinton opened a new £3 million peace centre named after him on the site of the 1987 Remembrance Sunday bombing in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh.
11 1862
Violet Florence Martin, novelist under the pen-name Martin Ross, and literary partner of Edith Somerville, born in Ross House, Co. Galway.
12 1972
Twelve prominent Irish businessmen were amongst the 118 victims when a BEA Trident crashed at Staines, Middlesex, a few minutes after taking off from Heathrow. It was Britain’s worst air disaster to date.
14 1982
Argentinian troops surrendered to the British commander of land forces on the Falkland Islands. The surrender marked the end of a six-week conflict that cost the lives of 254 British and 750 Argentinians.
16 1912
Enoch Powell, soldier, classical scholar, poet, writer and politician who held the South Down seat for the Official Unionist Party in Westminster (1974–87), born in Stechford, Birmingham.
17 1922
In reprisal for the deaths of Catholics in South Armagh, the IRA attacked a number of Presbyterian farmhouses in the townlands of Altanaveigh and Lisdrumliska. Six people were murdered, including a husband and wife and a father and son, and a number of others were badly wounded.
22 1922
General Sir Henry Wilson, military adviser to the government of Northern Ireland, was assassinated by the IRA in London. Two Irishmen, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan, were subsequently hanged for his murder.
22–26 1932
The 31st Eucharistic Congress was held in Dublin.
28 1912
The Irish Labour Party was founded in Clonmel, when the Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) constituted itself the ‘Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party’.
28 1922
The bombardment of the Four Courts in Dublin, occupied by an anti-Treaty IRA garrison, by the pro-Treaty National Army commences at 4am, marking the beginning of the Civil War.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.