January 26

• 1942 Six weeks after the US entered the Second World War, the first US soldiers came ashore at Belfast’s Dufferin Quay. By May 1942 some 37,000 US servicemen were stationed in Northern Ireland.
• 1871 Sir Arthur Philip Du Cros, pioneer of the pneumatic tyre industry who founded the multinational Dunlop Rubber Company (1901), born in Dublin.
• 1942 Some six weeks after the US entered World War II, the first American troops stepped ashore at Belfast’s Dufferin Quay. By May of that year the number of American servicemen in Northern Ireland had reached 37,000.
• 1861 William (Willie) Redmond, younger brother of Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond and MP for East Clare, born in Ballytrent, Co. Wexford.