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December 11

Published in On this Day listing

1971 Two men and two children were killed and nineteen others injured, some seriously, in an IRA no-warning bomb attack on a furniture showroom on the Shankill Road, Belfast.
1920 Following an IRA ambush near Victoria Barracks in Cork, Auxiliaries and Black and Tans went on the rampage, looting and setting fire to large parts of the city centre, including City Hall. Over five acres of property, valued at £20 million, were destroyed.
1936 King Edward VIII abdicated after a reign of just ten months, prompting the biggest constitutional crisis for the British monarchy in the twentieth century.
1920 The IRA ambushed an RIC patrol near Victoria Barracks, Cork. Black and Tans later set fire to parts of the city. The government claimed that the arson was inflicted by citizens of Cork, but later paid £3m compensation.
1918 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, historian and short-story writer—notably of The Gulag Archipelago (1973)—and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1970), born.
1862 The Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, during which the Irish Brigade secured its reputation for gallantry with a suicidal charge against impregnable Confederate defences, began. The four-day engagement ended in victory for General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

On this Day

1992 The Maastricht Treaty, the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU), was signed by the then twelve member states of the European Communities. It was ratified by referendum in the Republic of Ireland in June by 69.1% to 30.9%.
1991 An IRA mortar bomb exploded in the garden of 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister John Major and his cabinet were discussing the progress of the Gulf War.
1991 The Provisional IRA fired a mortar bomb into the garden of Number 10 Downing Street, which landed less than fifteen yards from a room where Prime Minister John Major was chairing a meeting of his cabinet.
1940 Peter Barnes and James McCormack were hanged in Birmingham following their convictions for the IRA bombing in Coventry the previous August.
1867 William Dargan (68), engineer and railway-builder, who at one time employed 50,000 men on various projects, died in poverty.
1812 Charles (John Huffam) Dickens, English novelist, was born in Landport, Portsmouth, the son of a clerk in the navy pay office.
1873 Sheridan Le Fanu, writer of mysterious and spine-chilling tales, notably Uncle Silas (1864), died.
1993 The Maastricht Treaty, the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU), signed by the then twelve member states of the European Communities, came into effect.