1921 Twelve Volunteers were shot dead and a further eight taken prisoner when Crown forces surrounded them in a disused farmhouse overlooking the village of Clonmult, near Midleton, Co. Cork. It marked the IRA’s greatest loss of Volunteers in a single action during the War of Independence.
1920 Robert Peary (63), explorer and US Navy officer who, in 1909, became the first man to reach the North Pole, died.
1979 Eleven members of the UVF ‘Shankill Butchers’ gang were convicted of 112 offences, including nineteen murders, mainly of Catholics, along with attempted murders, kidnappings and bomb explosions.
1954 Henry Harrison, County Down-born nationalist whose life’s work was devoted to the cause of rehabilitating Charles Stewart Parnell, died. He published two books in defence of Parnell and, two years before his death, secured amendments to the account of the Pigott forgeries as recorded in the History of the Times newspaper.
1921 The East Cork IRA flying column was almost entirely wiped out when Crown forces surrounded a cottage at Clonmult, seven miles north of Middletown, which they were using as training and living quarters. Twelve were shot dead and a further two were later executed.
1973 A bus driver was killed and over a dozen others were injured when a bomb, most likely planted by the UVF, exploded without warning at Sackville Place, near O’Connell Street, Dublin.
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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
1960 Sixty-nine people were killed and 189 others injured when police opened fire on a crowd of c. 5,000–7,000 protesting against pass laws outside the police station in the South African township of Sharpeville.
1920 An t-Athair Peadar Ó Laoghaire (81), scholar and author, notably of Mo scéal féin (1915), died.
1978 Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh (66), jurist and president of Ireland (1974–6), died.
1961 Joseph Holloway, architect and theatrical enthusiast, born in Lower Camden Street, Dublin. Over a 50-year period Holloway attended every theatre performance in the city and kept a journal in which he wrote some 28 million words on Dublin’s theatre world.
1960 South African police opened fire on black protesters at Sharpeville, a black township near Johannesburg, killing 69 and injuring over 180.