November 22

  • 1921 The Northern Ireland government assumed control of the RIC and responsibility for law and order under Minister for Home Affairs Dawson Bates.
  • 1819 George Eliot (pen-name of Mary Ann Evans), one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, notably of Middlemarch (1871/2), born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
  • 1968 Captain Terence O’Neill, prime minister of Northern Ireland, announced a series of reforms, including the abolition of the business vote in local government, fair allocation of local authority housing and reform of local government within three years.
  • 1912 Donagh McDonagh, poet, playwright, broadcaster and son of the revolutionary Thomas McDonagh, born in Dublin.
  • 1916 Jack London (40), American author, notably of The call of the wild (1903), journalist and social activist, died.
  • 1614 Thomas ‘Black Tom’ Butler (82), 10th earl of Ormond, died.
  • 1990 British prime minister Margaret Thatcher resigned in the wake of a back-bench revolt after eleven years in office.
  • 1963 John Fitzgerald Kennedy (46), 35th president of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
  • 1963 C.S. Lewis (64), scholar, writer and Christian apologist, author notably of The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–6), died in Oxford.
  • 1963 Aldous Huxley (69), writer and philosopher, author notably of Brave New World (1932), died in Los Angeles.