Ireland

Sir William Howard Russell, Dublin born journalist, died

Sir William Howard Russell, the renowned journalist and war correspondent, passed away on February 11, 1907. Sir William Howard Russell, CVO (28 March 1827 – 10 February 1907) was an Irish reporter with The Times, and is considered to have been one of the first modern war correspondents.

Synges Playboy of the Western World is performed for the first time at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, riot ensues

The Playboy of the Western World is a three-act play written by Irish playwright John Millington Synge, first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on 26 January 1907. It is set in Michael James Flaherty’s public house in County Mayo during the early 1900s. It tells the story of Christy Mahon, a young man running away from his farm, claiming he killed his father.

Michael Cusack, one of the founders of the GAA, died

Michael Cusack, one of the founders of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), passed away on November 27, 1906. He was a key figure in the establishment of the GAA in 1884, along with Maurice Davin, John Wyse Power, and others. The GAA was founded with the aim of promoting and preserving traditional Irish sports and culture.

Saidie Paterson, trade unionist and peace activist, born in Belfast

Saidie Patterson MBE (25 November 1906 – 16 January 1985) was a feminist, trade unionist and peace activist in Northern Ireland.

Charles Lynch, pianist, is born in Parkgariff, Co. Cork

Trevor G. McVeagh, cricket, hockey, squash and tennis player, is born in Athboy, Co. Meath

Death of Michael Davitt, Father of the Irish Land League.

Death of Michael Davitt, founder of the Irish National Land League, occurs on May 30, 1906. Born in County Mayo in 1846, at the height of the Great Famine, Davitt’s early life was shaped by hardship. At the age of four, his family was evicted from their home, prompting emigration to England, where they settled in Lancashire.

Samuel Beckett, is born in Foxrock, Co. Dublin

William Joyce aka Lord Haw-Haw; born in Brooklyn, New York

William Brooke Joyce (24 April 1906 – 3 January 1946), nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born fascist and Nazi propaganda broadcaster during the Second World War. After moving from New York to Ireland and subsequently to England, Joyce became a member of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) from 1932, before finally moving to Germany at the outset of the war where he took German citizenship in 1940.

Birth of Samuel Beckett in Foxrock, Co. Dublin

Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd.