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February 15

Published in On this Day listing

1921 Three IRA volunteers were killed and two others wounded in an abortive attack on a train carrying British soldiers at Upton, Co. Cork. Six civilian passengers were also killed and ten wounded in the crossfire.
1970 Eoin ‘the Pope’ O’Mahony (66), barrister, genealogist and raconteur, died.
1989 The Soviet–Afghan War ended after nine years. Over 14,000 Soviet troops lost their lives, along with c. 18,000 of their Afghan allies and c. 90,000 Mujahideen.
1989 The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan after a nine-year conflict, often referred to as the Soviet Union’s ‘Vietnam’, in which 14,453 of its troops were killed, along with c. 18,000 of their Afghan allies and c. 90,000 Mujahideen.
1928 H.H. (Herbert Henry) Asquith (76), Liberal prime minister (1908–16), died.
1901 Brendan Bracken, press baron, Conservative Party MP and parliamentary private secretary to Winston Churchill during World War II, was born in Templemore, Co. Tipperary, the son of John K. Bracken, a building contractor and founding member of the GAA.
1564 Galileo, Italian astronomer and physicist, born in Pisa.

On this Day

1937 During the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica, a bastion of Republican resistance, was pounded by the German Condor Legion with high-explosive bombs and at least 3,000 incendiary bombs. Over 1,600 people were killed in the subsequent firestorm.
1900 Queen Victoria concluded her final, three-week visit to Ireland, the purpose of which was to encourage Irishmen to join the British Army and fight in the Second Boer War. Nationalist opposition to her visit was led by Arthur Griffith and his newspaper, The United Irishman.
1974 Nineteen Old Masters paintings were stolen from the Blessington, Co. Wicklow, home of Sir Alfred and Lady Beit by a Provisional IRA gang which included Dr Rose Dugdale.