1919 Two RIC officers, Sgt Peter Wallace and Constable Michael Enright, were killed during the rescue of Seán Hogan by Dan Breen and Seán Treacy, both of whom were wounded, at Knocklong station, Co. Limerick. (See 100 Years Ago, p. 70.)
1914 Joe Louis, American heavyweight world boxing champion known as ‘the Brown Bomber’, born in Alabama.
1917The first of the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children near the village of Fatima, Portugal (to 13/10/17).
1986 Peadar O’Donnell (93), revolutionary, agitator and novelist, died.
1968 The 58-acre island Ireland’s Eye and 220 acres of the Hill of Howth, Dublin, were presented to the Irish state by Christopher Gaisford-St Lawrence.
1986 Peadar O’Donnell (93), militant socialist, died. Born in the Irish-speaking Rosses of north-west Donegal, the youngest of nine children of a musician and migrant worker, O’Donnell was amongst the most influential left-wing republicans during the early years of the twentieth century. His entire life was devoted to the cause of a 32-county socialist republic. Abandoning his position as a teacher on Arranmore Island, he joined the IRA during the latter stages of the War of Independence to lead a flying column in his native county. Thereafter he opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty (he was amongst the anti-Treaty garrison that occupied the Four Courts), was imprisoned and took part in the mass hunger strike by anti-Treaty prisoners in late 1923, which lasted for 41 days. Afterwards, as editor of An Phoblacht (1926–9), he tried unsuccessfully to wean republicans from militarism to socialist agitation and during the inter-war years was a key figure in the short-lived Republican Congress (1934–5), which sought to establish a workers’ republic on the lines advocated by James Connolly. His solitary success was in organising small farmers against payment of land annuities to the British government in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a policy that was adopted by Fianna Fáil and contributed to that party’s electoral success in 1932. Better remembered today, perhaps, as a prolific writer, journalist and editor over a 40-year period until the 1960s, he was editor for a time of The Bell (1940), founded by Seán Ó Faoláin. Two of his six novels, Islanders (1928) and The big windows (1955), are regarded today as classic depictions of rural life.
'
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
2002 Alex Maskey (50) became the first Sinn Féin lord mayor of Belfast.
1981 It was reported that five men in California were suffering from a rare form of pneumonia that was found in patients with weakened immune systems—the first recognised cases of AIDS, which was to kill over 30 million worldwide.
1920 Cornelius Ryan, war correspondent and author, notably of the best-seller The longest day (1959), which became a film that set box-office records, born in Dublin.
2002 Former US President Bill Clinton opened a new £3 million peace centre named after him on the site of the 1987 Remembrance Sunday bombing in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh.
1988 Robert Dudley Edwards, professor of modern Irish history at UCD (1945–79) and writer, notably of Church and state in Tudor Ireland (1935), died.
1968 Robert Kennedy (42), leading candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency, was mortally wounded by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. He died the following day.
1967 The Six-Day War began, in which Israel heavily defeated Egypt and her Arab allies, capturing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria.
1916 Kerry-born Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, secretary of state for war, lost his life, along with over 600 others, when HMS Hampshire struck a German mine and sank west of the Orkney Islands, Scotland.
1916 Lord Kitchener, Kerry-born field marshal, was lost at sea when HMS Edinburgh was struck by a mine off the Orkneys. Winston Churchill would have accompanied him in what was a war-boost trip to Russia had he not been dropped from the coalition cabinet the previous January owing to pressure from the Conservatives.
1868 James Connolly, socialist and revolutionary, born in Cowgate, Edinburgh, to Irish immigrant parents.