1920 The Sinn Féin president, Éamon de Valera, returned to Ireland after an eighteen-month fund-raising tour of the United States.
1920 The Act for the Better Government of Ireland created the states of Northern Ireland (six counties) and Southern Ireland (26 counties).
1996 Sophie Toscan du Plantier (39), French film producer, was murdered outside her holiday home near Toormore, Schull, Co. Cork.
1968 The 83 crew members of the USS Pueblo, held in captivity for eleven months after she was seized by the North Korean navy, were released when the US government agreed in writing that the vessel had been spying and offered an apology. The US then retracted the statement.
1920 The Act for the Better Government of Ireland, which divided the country into two home rule states—Northern Ireland (six counties) and Southern Ireland (26 counties)—came into effect.
1864 James O’Brien, County Longford-born Chartist leader who wrote revolutionary articles under the pen-name ‘Bronterre’, died in poverty in London.
1967 South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant at the Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town.
1964 Desmond Ryan (71), secretary to Patrick Pearse and journalist, died.
1958 Dorothy Macardle, republican, writer of Gothic fiction and historian, whose works notably include Tragedies of Kerry (1924), an account of Free State terror in Kerry during the Civil War, and the monumental The Irish Republic (1937, revised 1951), died.
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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
2002 Alex Maskey (50) became the first Sinn Féin lord mayor of Belfast.
1981 It was reported that five men in California were suffering from a rare form of pneumonia that was found in patients with weakened immune systems—the first recognised cases of AIDS, which was to kill over 30 million worldwide.
1920 Cornelius Ryan, war correspondent and author, notably of the best-seller The longest day (1959), which became a film that set box-office records, born in Dublin.
2002 Former US President Bill Clinton opened a new £3 million peace centre named after him on the site of the 1987 Remembrance Sunday bombing in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh.
1988 Robert Dudley Edwards, professor of modern Irish history at UCD (1945–79) and writer, notably of Church and state in Tudor Ireland (1935), died.
1968 Robert Kennedy (42), leading candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency, was mortally wounded by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. He died the following day.
1967 The Six-Day War began, in which Israel heavily defeated Egypt and her Arab allies, capturing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria.
1916 Kerry-born Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, secretary of state for war, lost his life, along with over 600 others, when HMS Hampshire struck a German mine and sank west of the Orkney Islands, Scotland.
1916 Lord Kitchener, Kerry-born field marshal, was lost at sea when HMS Edinburgh was struck by a mine off the Orkneys. Winston Churchill would have accompanied him in what was a war-boost trip to Russia had he not been dropped from the coalition cabinet the previous January owing to pressure from the Conservatives.
1868 James Connolly, socialist and revolutionary, born in Cowgate, Edinburgh, to Irish immigrant parents.