2010 Volcanic eruptions at Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland covered large areas of northern Europe in ash, forcing some twenty countries to close their airspace. Some ten million travellers were affected.
1912 The White Star Line’s Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York with 2,201 passengers and crew on board, struck an iceberg some 400 miles (640km) south of Newfoundland at 11.40pm, sustaining a 300ft gash in her hull. She sank at 2.20am the following morning, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people.
1923 Austin Stack, politician and leading opponent of the Anglo-Irish Treaty who supported the anti-Treaty IRA during the Civil War, was captured by Free State forces and imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail, where he led a hunger strike that severely weakened his health.
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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
2002 Alex Maskey (50) became the first Sinn Féin lord mayor of Belfast.
1981 It was reported that five men in California were suffering from a rare form of pneumonia that was found in patients with weakened immune systems—the first recognised cases of AIDS, which was to kill over 30 million worldwide.
1920 Cornelius Ryan, war correspondent and author, notably of the best-seller The longest day (1959), which became a film that set box-office records, born in Dublin.
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.
1988 Robert Dudley Edwards, professor of modern Irish history at UCD (1945–79) and writer, notably of Church and state in Tudor Ireland (1935), died.
1968 Robert Kennedy (42), leading candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency, was mortally wounded by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. He died the following day.
1967 The Six-Day War began, in which Israel heavily defeated Egypt and her Arab allies, capturing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria.
1916 Kerry-born Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, secretary of state for war, lost his life, along with over 600 others, when HMS Hampshire struck a German mine and sank west of the Orkney Islands, Scotland.
1916 Lord Kitchener, Kerry-born field marshal, was lost at sea when HMS Edinburgh was struck by a mine off the Orkneys. Winston Churchill would have accompanied him in what was a war-boost trip to Russia had he not been dropped from the coalition cabinet the previous January owing to pressure from the Conservatives.
1868 James Connolly, socialist and revolutionary, born in Cowgate, Edinburgh, to Irish immigrant parents.