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January 08

Published in On this Day listing

1871 James Craig, Unionist politician and first prime minister of Northern Ireland, born in Sydenham, Belfast, the son of a wealthy whiskey distiller.
1979 An explosion on Whiddy Island, Bantry Bay, Co. Cork, killed 50 and destroyed the French tanker Betelgeuse.
1989 A Boeing 737, en route from Heathrow to Belfast, crashed on the M1 at Kegworth, near East Midlands Airport; 47 lost their lives.

On this Day

1933 The eighth Dáil Éireann assembled: Eamon de Valera formed his second government, with a one-seat majority.
1929 James Connell, County Meath-born Fenian, Land Leaguer and writer of the British Labour Party anthem The Red Flag, died.
1926 The Plough and the Stars by Seán O’Casey opened in the Abbey Theatre. During the fourth performance there was a full-scale riot when the audience protested at what they perceived to be a slanderous distortion of historical events.
1912 The British home secretary, Winston Churchill, shared the platform with John Redmond at a Home Rule meeting in Celtic Park, Belfast. The organisers had been refused the use of the Ulster Hall, where Churchill’s father, a quarter of a century earlier, had warned that Home Rule could come upon them ‘as a thief in the night’.