1769 Napoleon Bonaparte, statesman and military leader, born in Ajaccio, Corsica, the son of a lawyer.
1969 After three days of intense violence in Belfast, during which seven lives were lost and c. 1,800 families were forced to leave their homes, British troops were deployed.
1969 The Woodstock music festival, featuring over 30 acts, including Janis Joplin, Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix, opened before an audience of over 400,000 in Bethal Woods, New York.
1998 Twenty-nine people, including a woman pregnant with twins, died when a Real IRA car bomb exploded in Omagh, Co. Tyrone.
1969 The third day of serious violence in Belfast. Overnight disturbances on the Falls Road/Shankill Road divide and in Ardoyne led to six deaths. Over 100 houses, mainly Catholic-owned, were destroyed. Huge barricades sprang up, particularly in the Falls. That afternoon British troops moved into the city, to be welcomed by residents of the Falls Road with cups of tea.
1917 Jack Lynch, outstanding Gaelic footballer and hurler, leader of Fianna Fáil (1966–79) and twice taoiseach (1966–73, 1977–9), born in Shandon, Cork City.
1914 The 48-mile-long Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic Ocean, via the Caribbean Sea, with the Pacific Ocean, was officially opened.
1868 A teachers’ conference in Dublin led to the foundation of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO).
1808 Irish Christian Brothers founded in Waterford by Edmund Ignatius Rice.
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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
1972 Neil Blaney was expelled from Fianna Fáil for ‘conduct unbecoming a member of the organisation’.
1972 The Provisional IRA announced a ceasefire.
1917 The first of over one million troops of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), under General John J. ‘Black Jack’ Pershing, arrived in France.
1966 Peter Ward (18), a Catholic barman, was shot dead by the UVF in Malvern Street, off Belfast’s Shankill Road. Three members of the UVF, including Augustus ‘Gusty’ Spence, were later convicted of his murder.
1986 A referendum on making divorce available in the Irish Republic was defeated, with a vote of 63% against and 36% for, in a 62% turnout.
1996 Veronica Guerin (35), investigative journalist with the Sunday Independent, was shot dead in Dublin.
1981 The 22nd Dáil Éireann assembled. Garret Fitzgerald was elected taoiseach in a Fine Gael–Labour coalition government.
1963 US President John F. Kennedy arrived in Ireland on a four-day official visit.
1819 Sir Francis Leopold McClintock, explorer who confirmed the deaths of Sir John Franklin and his crew of 129 in an attempt to chart and navigate the Northwest Passage (1845), born in Seatown Terrace, Dundalk.
1819 Ellen Hanley (15), the celebrated ‘Colleen Bawn’, was murdered on the River Shannon by Stephen Sullivan, servant of her alleged husband, John Scanlan.