August 15
Published in On this Day listing- 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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