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December 27

Published in On this Day listing

1821 Jane Francesca Elgee, Lady Wilde, poet and writer, widely known by her pen-name, Speranza, and mother of Oscar Wilde (1856–1900), born in Dublin.
1969 Dan Breen (75), IRA veteran, the first Fianna Fáil TD to take the oath of allegiance (April 1927), died.
1997 Billy Wright (36), notorious leader of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, was assassinated in the Maze prison by the INLA
1849 James Fintan Lalor, Young Irelander whose theories on the land question were later taken up by the Land League (1879), died.
1973 Thomas Niedermayer (45), manager of the Grundig electronics factory in Dunmurry, was abducted from his Belfast home by the IRA. He died just days later in captivity.

On this Day

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.