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May 02

Published in On this Day listing

1982 During the Falklands War, the Argentinian battle-cruiser General Belgrano was sunk by a British submarine outside the British-imposed 200-mile exclusion zone around the islands; 323 Argentine sailors lost their lives. The Charles Haughey-led Irish government announced its intention to propose the withdrawal of EC sanctions against Argentina.
1920 Revd Professor Walter McDonald (66), theologian at Maynooth College, author of Reminiscences of a Maynooth professor (published posthumously in 1925), died.
1519 Leonardo da Vinci (67), Italian polymath of the Renaissance and one of the greatest painters of all time, died at the Château Cloux near Amboise.
1916 ‘I am to be shot at dawn. I am glad I am getting a soldier’s death. I feared it might be hanging or imprisonment. I have had enough of jail’—Thomas Clarke, in a letter to his wife, on the eve of his execution.
1984 The report of the New Ireland Forum was published.
1982 The Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine Conqueror some 30 miles outside the 200-mile ‘exclusion zone’ that Britain had declared around the Falkland Islands. Some 260 crewmen perished.
1974 Six people were killed in a loyalist bomb attack on the Rose and Crown public house in south Belfast.
1858 Edith Somerville, literary partner of Violet Martin, with whom she published fourteen titles, was born in Corfu, where her father, Lt.-Col. Somerville, was stationed.

On this Day

1992 The Maastricht Treaty, the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU), was signed by the then twelve member states of the European Communities. It was ratified by referendum in the Republic of Ireland in June by 69.1% to 30.9%.
1991 An IRA mortar bomb exploded in the garden of 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister John Major and his cabinet were discussing the progress of the Gulf War.
1991 The Provisional IRA fired a mortar bomb into the garden of Number 10 Downing Street, which landed less than fifteen yards from a room where Prime Minister John Major was chairing a meeting of his cabinet.
1940 Peter Barnes and James McCormack were hanged in Birmingham following their convictions for the IRA bombing in Coventry the previous August.
1867 William Dargan (68), engineer and railway-builder, who at one time employed 50,000 men on various projects, died in poverty.
1812 Charles (John Huffam) Dickens, English novelist, was born in Landport, Portsmouth, the son of a clerk in the navy pay office.
1873 Sheridan Le Fanu, writer of mysterious and spine-chilling tales, notably Uncle Silas (1864), died.
1993 The Maastricht Treaty, the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU), signed by the then twelve member states of the European Communities, came into effect.