During Ireland's Great Famine, Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, gave £30 to the hungry but spent £150,000 on home improvements
Fact of the Day
Quote of the Day
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
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~ Friedrich Engels
On This Day
1067 William the Conqueror set sail from Normandy to England, having heard of an English plot to kill the Normans.
1648 Colonel Thomas Pride's Purge of the Long Parliament removed all members sympathetic to Charles I. It left just 200 members, who became known as the Rump Parliament.
1907 361 people were killed in Monongah, West Virginia, in America's worst mining disaster.
1917 Finland proclaimed its independence from Russia.
1917 2,000 people were killed and 9,000 injured when two ships carrying munitions collided in Halifax, Nova Scotia, causing an explosion that obliterated nearly all structures within an 800m radius.
1922 Under the terms of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Free State officially came into existence.
