1971 At its annual congress in Belfast the GAA voted to abolish Rule 27, the ban that prohibited the playing of soccer, rugby, hockey and cricket by members of the association.
1770 George Canning, Tory statesman and prime minister for the final 118 days of his life, who described himself as ‘an Irishman born in London’, born to George Canning, a failed wine merchant and lawyer from Garvagh, Co. Derry, and Irish actress Mary Ann Costello.
1968 President L.B. Johnston signed the historic Civil Rights Act, also known as the Fair Housing Act, into law.
1912 Prime Minister Asquith introduced the third Home Rule bill in the House of Commons.
1986 Brian Keenan (35), a teacher from Belfast at the American University of Beirut, was kidnapped by a Shi’a militia group. As the Belfast man was no doubt aware, the situation back home at the time was fairly unsettled. By-elections caused by a mass resignation of unionist MPs in protest against the Anglo-Irish Agreement, signed the previous November, were followed throughout the spring by violent loyalist protests leading to rioting, along with attacks on the homes of Catholics and hundreds of RUC officers. The situation in Lebanon, however, as those of us who tried to follow the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90) can attest, was altogether more complex. A multi-faceted armed conflict between various Christian and Muslim forces, in which alliances shifted rapidly and unpredictably, the conflict involved various foreign powers, such as Israel and Syria. That month, following US airstrikes, a new round of hostage-taking had begun. In all, between 1982 and 1992 over 100 foreign hostages, mostly Americans and Western Europeans, were taken, of whom at least eight died. Keenan was not amongst them. After spending two months in isolation, he was moved to a cell shared with the British journalist John McCarthy. Blindfolded and chained hand to foot throughout most of his 1,574-day ordeal, he later described feeling ‘bereft, riven with pity and grief’, and his situation as a hostage as one of ‘crucifying aloneness, a silent screaming slide into the bowels of ultimate despair’. Listening to the screams of other hostages being tortured was worst of all. His bestseller, An evil cradling, revolves very much around his friendship with McCarthy and the brutality they experienced at the hands of their captors. He was released on 24 August 1990.
1923 In retaliation for the execution of six Republicans, Spiddal House, Co. Galway, home of Lord Killanin, unionist and ardent supporter of the Gaelic revival movement, was burnt to the ground.
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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
1876 James McKnight (75), journalist and agrarian reformer, died. McKnight came to national prominence in 1847 as spokesman for the thousands of Presbyterian tenant farmers who flocked to join the Ulster Tenant Right League, which sought to give legal protection to the Ulster Custom. Regarded at the time as the leading Presbyterian layman, it was he who was chiefly responsible for focusing the aims of the League on the extension of the Ulster Custom to the whole island—the ‘three Fs’: fair rent, free sale and fixity of tenure, meaning no eviction if rent had been paid. This programme was to guide the Irish land reform movement for the next 30 years. His lifelong passion, however, was in the cultural field, as an Irish-speaker who promoted the preservation and publication of ancient Irish manuscripts. Born near Rathfriland, Co. Down, he initially intended to become a Presbyterian minister before turning to journalism and becoming editor of the Belfast News Letter (1829–46). In the columns of that paper, he continually highlighted the common origins of the Irish and Scots Gaelic languages and, by implication, the shared culture of Irish Catholics and their Presbyterian neighbours. As a committed unionist, albeit a liberal one, he was sharply critical of the nationalist politics of Daniel O’Connell. The Repeal campaign, for instance, he described as divisive, suggesting that patriotic sentiment would be better served by reviving and promoting the Irish language. His enthusiasm for the language never waned. On his deathbed, the story goes, he asked his servant, a Catholic, to recite for him the Lord’s Prayer in Irish. She did as he requested, but at one point was interrupted by the dying McKnight, who pointed out that she had mispronounced one of the words.
1972 Garda Inspector Sam Donegan (61) was fatally injured by a gelignite bomb reportedly left by the Provisional IRA on the Cavan–Fermanagh border.
1949 George Orwell’s Nineteen-eighty-four, mostly written on the Scottish island of Jura when he was seriously ill with tuberculosis, was published.
1859 The first edition of the Irish Times as a daily newspaper was published.
1917 The Butte, Montana, mine disaster: 168 died, including many Irish, when fire broke out in a mineshaft. Butte was the US’s foremost mining town at the time, with a population of 50,000, a quarter of whom were Irish, mostly from County Cork.