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September 15

Published in On this Day listing

2008 Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest US investment bank, filed for bankruptcy, bringing the global financial system close to collapse.
1866 John Blake Dillon (50), lawyer, Young Irelander and co-founder of The Nation (1842), died from cholera.
1859 Isambard Kingdom Brunel (53), Victorian engineer, died. Brunel’s SS Great Britain—the world’s first liner to be made entirely from iron and powered by a propeller—ran aground on the sands of Dundrum Bay, Co. Down, in September 1846 and remained there for eleven months.

On this Day

1920 Recruitment began, mainly from among demobilised British Army officers, into a new force—the ‘Auxiliary Division’—to augment the RIC.
1939 Michael Longley, poet, notable for ‘Gorse Fires’ (1991), ‘The Weather in Japan’ (2000) and ‘The Stairwell’ (2014), born in Belfast of English parents.
2004 Bob Tisdall (96), Olympic gold medal-winner in the 400m hurdles (Los Angeles, 1932) in a world record time of 51.7 seconds—which was not recognised under the rules at the time because he had hit a hurdle—died.
1866 The SS Great Eastern completed the laying of a transatlantic telegraph cable between Valentia Island, Co. Kerry, and Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.