Today in history

I remember that as if it was yesterday. I was walking up to a mates house in the evening with my new transistor radio to my ear.

23 rd November 1867

The Manchester martyrs:
The Manchester Martyrs are hanged in Manchester, England, for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish Republican Brotherhood members from custody.

The Manchester Martyrs (Irish: Mairtirígh Mhanchain) were three Irish Republicans – William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien – who were hanged in 1867 following their conviction of murder after an attack on a police van in Manchester, England, in which a police officer was accidentally shot dead, an incident that was known at the time as the Manchester Outrages. The three men were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians, an organisation dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland, and were among a group of 30 to 40 Fenians who attacked a horse-drawn police van transporting two arrested leaders of the Brotherhood, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, to Belle Vue Gaol. Police Sergeant Charles Brett, travelling inside with the keys, was shot and killed while looking through the keyhole of the van as the attackers attempted to force the door open by shooting the lock.
Kelly and Deasy were released after another prisoner in the van took the keys from Brett's body and passed them to the group outside through a ventilation grill; the pair were never recaptured, despite an extensive search. Although Allen and Larkin admitted taking part in the attack, none of the defendants was accused of firing the fatal shot, but they were convicted on the basis of "joint enterprise" for taking part in a criminal enterprise that ended in the killing. The trial has nonetheless been described by an eminent Irish historian as "unsatisfactory", and the evidence as "dubious".

Two others were also charged and found guilty of Brett's murder, Thomas Maguire and Edward O'Meagher Condon, but their death sentences were overturned—O'Meagher Condon's through the intercession of the United States government (he was an American citizen), and Maguire's because the evidence given against him was considered unsatisfactory by the court. Allen, Larkin and O'Brien were publicly hanged on a temporary structure built on the wall of Salford Gaol, on 23 November 1867, in front of a crowd of 8,000–10,000.

Ireland reacted with revulsion and anger to the executions, and Allen, Larkin and O'Brien were hailed as political martyrs. Annual commemorations were held throughout Ireland, and monuments were built in many Irish towns. Brett, the first Manchester City Police officer to be killed on duty, is memorialised in a monument in St Ann's Church.

24 th November 1859:


Charles Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species’ on November 24, 1859 :-

When it was published it caused controversy by contradicting Christian beliefs by introducing the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection.
The book contradicted the idea that God created all creatures "according to their kind" and that humans have a special place in the natural order.
It was famous for suggesting that humans were descended from apes.

The first printing of Charles Darwin's book, ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’, sold out in a matter of days.
Darwin considered the volume a short abstract of the ideas he'd been developing about evolution by natural selection for decades.
He'd been building on his ideas since his five-year journey in the 1830s to the South American coast, the Galapagos Islands, and other regions on the British ship H.M.S. Beagle.
Darwin probably wouldn't have published in 1859 if not spurred by Alfred Russel Wallace's paper touching on the idea of natural selection. Wallace was a young naturalist who had developed his ideas while working in the islands of the Malay Archipelago.
Darwin's exploratory survey on the H.M.S. Beagle had brought him into contact with a wide variety of living organisms and fossils.
The adaptations he saw in the finches and tortoises on the Galapagos Islands struck him particularly acutely.
Darwin concluded that species change through natural selection, or - to use Wallace's phrase - through "the survival of the fittest" in a given environment.
Darwin's book immediately attracted attention and controversy, not only from the scientific community, but also from the general public, who were ignited by the social and religious implications of the theory.
Darwin eventually produced six editions of this book.
In time, a growing understanding of genetics helped vindicate Darwin's proposals.


Many thanks to Ray for the information for todays history.