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Events on November 8 in history

1987Nov, 8

Remembrance Day bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb explodes in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland during a ceremony honouring those who had died in wars involving British forces. Twelve people are killed and sixty-three wounded.

The Remembrance Day bombing (also known as the Enniskillen bombing or Poppy Day massacre) took place on 8 November 1987 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb exploded near the town's war memorial (cenotaph) during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony, which was being held to commemorate British military war dead. Eleven people (10 civilians and a police officer) were killed, many of them elderly, and 63 were injured. The IRA said it had made a mistake and that its target had been the British soldiers parading to the memorial.

The bombing was strongly condemned by all sides and undermined support for the IRA and Sinn Féin. It also facilitated the passing of the Extradition Act, which made it easier to extradite IRA suspects from the Republic of Ireland to the United Kingdom. Loyalist paramilitaries responded to the bombing with revenge attacks on Catholic civilians. The bombing is often seen as a turning point in the Troubles, an incident that shook the IRA "to its core", and spurred on new efforts by Irish nationalists towards a political solution to the conflict.

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Events on 1987

  • 27Apr

    Kurt Waldheim

    The U.S. Department of Justice bars Austrian President Kurt Waldheim (and his wife, Elisabeth, who had also been a Nazi) from entering the USA, charging that he had aided in the deportations and executions of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
  • 1May

    Auschwitz concentration camp

    Pope John Paul II beatifies Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.
  • 5Jul

    Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

    Sri Lankan Civil War: The LTTE uses suicide attacks on the Sri Lankan Army for the first time. The Black Tigers are born and, in the following years, will continue to kill with the tactic.
  • 27Jul

    RMS Titanic

    RMS Titanic Inc. begins the first expedited salvage of wreckage of the RMS Titanic.
  • 7Nov

    Habib Bourguiba

    In Tunisia, president Habib Bourguiba is overthrown and replaced by Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.