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November 16

Published in On this Day listing

1986 Siobhán McKenna (63), Belfast-born stage and screen actor, died.
1965 W.T. (William Thomas) Cosgrave (85), politician, leader of Cumann na nGaedheal (1922–33), leader of Fine Gael (1934–44) and first president of the Executive Council of the Free State (1922–32), died.
1615 St Columbanus, monk and missionary from Bangor, Co. Down, died in Bobbio, northern Italy, the site of his most famous monastery.

On this Day

1920 General Tom Barry’s Cork No. 3 (West Cork) Brigade wiped out an eighteen-man Auxiliary patrol at Kilmichael, on the Macroom–Dunmanway road, Co. Cork.
1979 John Hume MEP was elected leader of the SDLP in succession to Gerry Fitt.
1990 Margaret Thatcher, Conservative prime minister of the UK since May 1979, resigned. She was succeeded by John Major.
1979 John Hume succeeded Gerry Fitt as leader of the SDLP, a position he held until 2001.
1905 The Sinn Féin movement—the name famously coined by Máire Butler, a cousin of Irish unionist leader Sir Edward Carson—was launched by Arthur Griffith with the aim of re-establishing the independence of Ireland by withdrawing from the Westminster parliament and setting up a government in Dublin.
1863 First edition of the Fenian newspaper the Irish People. Circulating chiefly in Dublin, it was suppressed by the authorities in September 1865.
1977 Following a strike (from 3 August) at the Ferenka steel cord factory in County Limerick, the plant was closed with the loss of 1,400 jobs.