To renew a subscription please login first

July 17

Published in On this Day listing

- 1935 George William Russell, poet, editor, artist and mystic, known as ‘AE’, died.

- 1936 The Spanish Civil War began with an attemptedcoup d’état by General Franco’s colonial army of Africa.

- 1918 The Russian imperial family—Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their five children—were assassinated by their Bolshevik guards in a cellar in the city of Yekaterinburg on the edge of the Urals.The RMS Carpathia, famous for rescuing over 700 survivors from the Titanic (1912), was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine off the Irish coast as she sailed from Liverpool, bound for Boston. Her 57 passengers were rescued but five crewmen were killed.

- 1917 With anti-German sentiment reaching fever pitch in Britain, George V issued a proclamation changing the royal surname from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more patriotic-sounding ‘Windsor’.

1798 Henry Joy McCracken hanged in Belfast.
1974 The coalition government’s Control of Importation, Sale and Manufacture of Contraceptives Bill was defeated in Dáil Éireann. Amongst the seven Fine Gael TDs who voted against was Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave.

On this Day

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.