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July 9

Published in On this Day listing

1921 The IRA ambushed an RIC/USC patrol in Raglan Street, West Belfast, killing one RIC officer. During a cycle of sectarian violence over the following 24 hours, some 22 lives were lost, including thirteen Catholic civilians and six Protestant civilians.
1669 Oliver Plunkett appointed archbishop of Armagh.
1917 The battleship HMS Vanguard, anchored in Scapa Flow, sank after a series of internal magazine explosions. Of the 845 men on board only two survived.
1916 Sir Edward Heath, British Conservative prime minister (1970–4) whose government imposed direct rule on Northern Ireland in March 1972, born.
1797 Edmund Burke, philosopher and politician, died.
1972 Gun battles raged throughout West Belfast following the breakdown of an IRA ceasefire. Five people were shot dead by the Parachute Regiment in the Springhill area, including a thirteen-year-old girl and a Catholic priest.

On this Day

1871 John Millington Synge, key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre and playwright, notably of The Playboy of the Western World, born in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
1947 The expression ‘Cold War’, a war waged through proxies, was coined by the US statesman and millionaire financier Bernard Baruch.
1917 After twelve years in exile, the leading Russian Bolshevik, Vladimir Illyich Lenin (47), arrived in St Petersburg after a week-long journey from Zurich in a sealed train.
1862 Sir Thomas Wyse, politician and diplomat and major player in the struggle for Catholic Emancipation, died in Athens.
1660 Sir Hans Sloane, physician and collector, whose natural history collection formed the foundation of the British Museum, was born at Killyleagh Castle, Co. Down.