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June 12

Published in On this Day listing

1916 The Ulster Unionist Council agreed to accept Lloyd George’s offer of the permanent exclusion of six north-eastern counties from Home Rule.
1964 The Rivonia Trial in South Africa, which had begun the previous October, concluded. Nelson Mandela and two of his co-accused were sentenced to life imprisonment.
1972 Twelve prominent Irish businessmen were amongst the 118 victims when a BEA Trident crashed at Staines, Middlesex, a few minutes after taking off from Heathrow. It was Britain’s worst air disaster to date.
1889 The Armagh railway disaster, the worst in Irish railway history—80 killed and almost 400 injured.
1973 Six elderly people, four women and two men, including three from the same family, were killed when an IRA car bomb exploded in Coleraine, Co. Derry.

On this Day

1920 Units of Cork No. 2 (North) Brigade led by Liam Lynch and Ernie O’Malley captured the military barracks in Mallow, Co. Cork, the only one captured during the War of Independence, and recovered a large quantity of arms and ammunition. Mallow was sacked in reprisal.
2001 Martin O’Hagan (51), investigative journalist who specialised in exposing paramilitary drug-dealing gangs, was assassinated by loyalists near his home in Lurgan, Co. Armagh.
1966 The ‘Tricolour riots’, the worst disturbances in Belfast for over 30 years, began when the RUC, under the terms of the notorious Flags and Emblems Display Act (1954), forcibly removed a tricolour from a window at the election headquarters in Divis Street of Liam McMillan, Republican (Sinn Féin) candidate in the impending Westminster election.
The Ulster Orchestra was founded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
1920 The IRA, led by Liam Lynch and Ernie O’ Malley, captured the military barracks in Mallow, Co. Cork—the only military barracks captured by the IRA during the War of Independence. Crown forces sacked the town in reprisal.
1912 In a demonstration of their hostility to the proposed Third Home Rule Bill, over 200,000 unionists, led by Sir Edward Carson, signed the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’.