1870 Michael Balfe (62), composer who wrote several operas for performance at Drury Lane, most famously The Bohemian Girl (1843), died.
1999 Jack Lynch, outstanding Gaelic footballer and hurler, leader of Fianna Fáil (1966–79) and taoiseach (1966–73, 1977–9), died.
1986 General Michael J. Costello, colonel commandant in the National Army during the Civil War (1922–3) at the age of eighteen, assistant chief-of-staff (1937–9) and latterly general manager of the Irish Sugar Company (1945–66), died.
1964 Herbert Hoover, 31st president of the United States (1929–33), died.
1917 W.B. Yeats, poet and dramatist (52), married Georgie Hyde-Lees (25).
1910 The Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic, built by Harland and Wolff, Belfast, for the White Star Line, was launched. At 45,324 gross tons it was the biggest ship ever launched.
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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
1821 Napoleon Bonaparte (51), outstanding military leader and emperor of the French (1804–14), died from cancer as a prisoner of the British on the island of St Helena.
1980 The Iranian Embassy siege in London ended after five days when the SAS stormed the building, killing all but one of the six members of an Arab terrorist group who had taken 26 people, mainly embassy staff, hostage.
1916 Major John MacBride (47) executed.
1966 In Britain the ‘Moors murders’ trial ended with the sentencing of Ian Brady and his accomplice Myra Hindley to terms of life imprisonment.
1808 Sarah Curran, aged 26, youngest daughter of the lawyer John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) and lover of Robert Emmet, died in Hythe, Kent, from tuberculosis.
1879 Isaac Butt, barrister, writer and politician who founded the Home Rule movement (1870), died.
1818 Karl Marx, German philosopher, author notably of the pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (1848) and the three-volume Das Capital (1867), born in Trier, south-west Germany.
1999 Taoiseach Bertie Ahern apologised on behalf of the Irish people to those who had spent their childhoods in residential institutions run by eighteen religious orders, an apology that came before the broadcast of the final episode of the three-part ‘States of Fear’ series by Mary Raftery, which detailed the abuse of children in such institutions. He also announced the setting up of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and the establishment of a Redress Board.
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