1980 Five adults and five children died in a fire at the Central Hotel, Bundoran, Co. Donegal.
1969 Bulmer Hobson, leading member of the Irish Volunteers and IRB prior to the Easter Rising, died.
1966 The Chinese Communist Party central committee endorsed Chairman Mao Zedong’s ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’, which was to claim the lives of between 1.5m and 2m people.
1958 Brendan Bracken, County Tipperary-born publisher, Conservative Party MP, parliamentary private secretary to Winston Churchill 1939–40, died.
1918 The Battle of Amiens began, marking the beginning of the Hundred Days (Allied) Offensive that led to the end of the First World War.
1914 The Endurance, commanded by Sir Ernest Shackleton, set off on its celebrated expedition to the Antarctic.
1910 Harry Ferguson flew a distance of three miles at Dundrum Bay, Newcastle, Co. Down, winning him a prize of £100. In December the previous year he had flown some 130 yards at Hillsborough, Co. Down, becoming the first man to build and fly his own plane in Ireland.
1923 The Civic Guard, established in February of the previous year, was reconstituted and renamed An Garda Síochána.
1953 The Chester Beatty Library and Museum, housing the collections of mining magnate Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, opened. The present museum, in the grounds of Dublin Castle, opened in 2000 and was named European Museum of the Year in 2002.
1974 US President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford was sworn in as 38th president the following day.
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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
1920 Recruitment began, mainly from among demobilised British Army officers, into a new force—the ‘Auxiliary Division’—to augment the RIC.
1939 Michael Longley, poet, notable for ‘Gorse Fires’ (1991), ‘The Weather in Japan’ (2000) and ‘The Stairwell’ (2014), born in Belfast of English parents.
2004 Bob Tisdall (96), Olympic gold medal-winner in the 400m hurdles (Los Angeles, 1932) in a world record time of 51.7 seconds—which was not recognised under the rules at the time because he had hit a hurdle—died.
1866 The SS Great Eastern completed the laying of a transatlantic telegraph cable between Valentia Island, Co. Kerry, and Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.
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