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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

1822 Ulysses Simpson Grant, general in the Union army and 18th president of the United States (1869–77), born in Ohio.
1521 Ferdinand Magellan (c. 40), Portuguese navigator, was killed by natives on the island of Mactan in the Philippines during the first circumnavigation of the Earth.
1920 The IRA attacked the RIC station at Ballylanders, Co. Limerick. The Black and Tans terrorised Limerick city the following day.
1967 The Abortion Act, making abortion legal up to 28 weeks’ gestation, came into effect in the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland.
1953 Maud Gonne MacBride, revolutionary and iconic figure in nationalist mythology, died.
1916 Outside Hulluch, north of Loos in northern France, the 16th (Irish) Division suffered one of the heaviest gas attacks of the First World War; 538 men died and a further 1,590 were injured.
1923 Eamon de Valera offered terms for negotiation to end the Civil War, which were rejected by the Free State government.
1953 Maud Gonne (86), iconic figure in Irish nationalism, died.