1984 Ann Lovett (15) died while giving birth near a Marian grotto in Granard, Co. Longford.
1953 The Princess Victoria, an early roll-on–roll-off ferry, en route from Stranraer to Larne, sank in hurricane-force conditions off Belfast Lough, with the loss of 133 lives. It was Ireland’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.
1917 Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare.
1913 Having pledged to use ‘all means which may be found necessary’ to stop Home Rule, the Ulster Unionist Council formally inaugurated the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Up to 100,000 enlisted.
1923 The ferry Princess Victoria, en route from Stranraer to Larne, capsized off County Down after a wave burst unsecured bulkhead doors in the stern; 128 lives were lost and 43 survived.
'
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
1982 Corporal punishment was banned in schools in the Republic of Ireland.
1969 Charles Bewley, lawyer and diplomat, first Irish minister to the Holy See (1929) and to Berlin (1933–9), from where he was recalled by de Valera, died.
1968 The image of South Vietnam’s police chief General Loan summarily executing a captured Viet Cong suspect was widely circulated in the American press, shaking the American public’s confidence in their South Vietnamese allies.
1966 Buster Keaton (70), comedian and one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest actor-directors, notably of The General (1926), died.
1963 Cardinal John Francis D’Alton, archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland since 1946, died.
1918 William Melville (67) from Sneem, Co. Kerry, head of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and from 1909 first chief of the British Secret Service, died.
1815 In a duel, regarded at the time as a contest between Orange and Green, Daniel O’Connell fatally wounded Dublin councillor John d’Esterre.
1814 Belfast Academical Institution, locally known as ‘Inst’, was formally opened. In his inaugural address, the poet and former United Irishman Dr William Drennan announced that the aim of the school was to ‘diffuse useful knowledge, particularly among the middling orders of society, as a necessity, not a luxury of life’.
1612 Conor O’Devany, Franciscan bishop of Down and Connor, and Fr Patrick O’Loughran of Donaghmore in the archdiocese of Armagh were hanged, drawn and quartered at George’s Hill, Dublin, for suspected association with the earl of Tyrone.
2008 Taoiseach Bertie Aherne and the North’s First Minister, Revd Ian Paisley, opened a resort and spa in Ballymena, Co. Antrim.