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.
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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
1820 Edward Bransfield from Ballinacurra, Middleton, Co. Cork, commander of the English merchant vessel Williams, made the first sighting of the mainland of Antarctica—Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the continent.
1968 Vietnam War—the Tet Offensive. After declaring a truce over the seven-day Tet (lunar New Year) holiday, c. 70,000 Viet Cong troops launched surprise attacks on US and South Vietnam forces throughout South Vietnam.
1948 Mahatma Ghandi (78), India’s prophet of non-violence, was assassinated in his own garden in New Delhi by the Hindu extremist Nathuran Vinayak Godse.
1864 The National Gallery of Ireland in Merrion Square, Dublin, financed by William Dargan from a testimonial of £5,000 he received in acknowledgement of his services to the Dublin Exhibition (1853), was formally opened.
1661 Oliver Cromwell, former lord protector of England, was formally executed, more than two years after his death.
1933 Adolph Hitler was appointed German chancellor by President von Hindenburg.