1922 Arthur Griffith was elected president of Dáil Éireann.
1920 The League of Nations held its first meeting in Geneva. It was superseded by the United Nations on the same date in 1946.
1970 An estimated 6,000 attended an anti-apartheid demonstration outside Lansdowne Road as Ireland played South Africa in rugby.
1984 Seán MacEntee (95), Belfast-born founder member of Fianna Fáil (1926), eleven times minister for finance in various Fianna Fáil governments and tánaiste (1959–65), died. He was the last surviving member of the first Dáil Éireann.
1957 Harold Macmillan (Conservative) succeeded Sir Anthony Eden as British prime minister.
1952 An Aer Lingus Dakota aircraft, St Kevin, en route from Northolt (Middlesex) to Dublin, crashed in Snowdonia, Wales, killing all 23 (twenty passengers and three crew) on board. It was the first fatal crash in the airline’s fifteen-year history.
1941 Sir John Lavery, painter, died.
1917 William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, so called for killing 4,280 buffalo (American bison) over eight months (1867–8) to feed the workers on the Union Pacific railroad, died.
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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
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.
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