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July 29

Published in On this Day listing

1929 The Ardnacrusha hydroelectric station in County Clare, constructed over a period of four years by the German firm Siemens-Schuckert and employing several thousand local men and a thousand Germans, was officially opened.
1969 In the Republic, the Finance Act (1969, Section 2) exempted persons deemed to have written, composed or executed works of cultural or artistic merit from income tax on gains arising from such works.
1968 Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (‘Of Human Life’) reaffirmed orthodox Catholic teaching by rejecting all forms of artificial contraception.
1960 Cedric Gibbons, Dublin-born art director and set decorator credited with designing the Oscar statuette (1928), died.
1848 Young Ireland rebellion, Ballingarry, Co. Tipperary.

On this Day

1931 Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who held an hour of talks with Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey and government ministers during a stopover in Shannon on his way to Cuba in the spring of 1989, born to a poor peasant family in Privolnoye, southern Russia.
1989 The first Soviet–Irish summit. During a stopover in Shannon on his way to Cuba, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev held an hour of talks with Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey and government ministers.
1917 President Woodrow Wilson delivered a war address to Congress. Four days later the US declared war on Germany.
1982 In a continuing dispute with Britain over the sovereignty of the islands, Argentinian forces invaded the Falkland Islands (pop. c. 2,000) and, the following day, South Georgia.