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February 15

Published in On this Day listing

1921 Three IRA volunteers were killed and two others wounded in an abortive attack on a train carrying British soldiers at Upton, Co. Cork. Six civilian passengers were also killed and ten wounded in the crossfire.
1970 Eoin ‘the Pope’ O’Mahony (66), barrister, genealogist and raconteur, died.
1989 The Soviet–Afghan War ended after nine years. Over 14,000 Soviet troops lost their lives, along with c. 18,000 of their Afghan allies and c. 90,000 Mujahideen.
1989 The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan after a nine-year conflict, often referred to as the Soviet Union’s ‘Vietnam’, in which 14,453 of its troops were killed, along with c. 18,000 of their Afghan allies and c. 90,000 Mujahideen.
1928 H.H. (Herbert Henry) Asquith (76), Liberal prime minister (1908–16), died.
1901 Brendan Bracken, press baron, Conservative Party MP and parliamentary private secretary to Winston Churchill during World War II, was born in Templemore, Co. Tipperary, the son of John K. Bracken, a building contractor and founding member of the GAA.
1564 Galileo, Italian astronomer and physicist, born in Pisa.

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.