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December 22

Published in On this Day listing

1969 Bernadette Devlin was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for her activities during the Battle of the Bogside
1989 Samuel (Barclay) Beckett, novelist, poet and playwright, notably of En attendant Godot (1953), and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1969), died.
1919 ‘Any attempt at [Ireland’s] secession will be fought with the same resolve as the Northern States of America put into the fight against the Southern States’—Lloyd George, speaking in the House of Commons.
1916 Around 600 untried Irish internees were released from Frongoch and Lewes jails. Convicted prisoners remained in custody. James O’Kelly, Fenian, war correspondent and MP for County Roscommon, died.

On this Day

1931 Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who held an hour of talks with Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey and government ministers during a stopover in Shannon on his way to Cuba in the spring of 1989, born to a poor peasant family in Privolnoye, southern Russia.
1989 The first Soviet–Irish summit. During a stopover in Shannon on his way to Cuba, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev held an hour of talks with Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey and government ministers.
1917 President Woodrow Wilson delivered a war address to Congress. Four days later the US declared war on Germany.
1982 In a continuing dispute with Britain over the sovereignty of the islands, Argentinian forces invaded the Falkland Islands (pop. c. 2,000) and, the following day, South Georgia.