April 30

September 15

• 2008 Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest US investment bank, filed for bankruptcy, bringing the global financial system close to collapse.
• 1866 John Blake Dillon (50), lawyer, Young Irelander and co-founder of The Nation (1842), died from cholera.
• 1859 Isambard Kingdom Brunel (53), Victorian engineer, died. Brunel’s SS Great Britain—the world’s first liner to be made entirely from iron and powered by a propeller—ran aground on the sands of Dundrum Bay, Co. Down, in September 1846 and remained there for eleven months.