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Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

:For other things named Beckett, see Beckett (disambiguation) Samuel Barclay Beckett (April 13, 1906 – December 22, 1989) was an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. Beckett's work is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and deeply pessimistic about human nature and the human condition, although the pessimism is mitigated by a great and often wicked sense of humor. His later work explores his themes in an increasingly cryptic and attenuated style. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 and elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.

Early life and education

The Beckett family (originally Becquet) were of Huguenot stock and had moved to Ireland from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Beckett family were members of the Church of Ireland. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court and had been built in 1903 by Beckett's father William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse, Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line were all later to feature in his prose and plays. At the age of five, Beckett attended a local kindergarten where he first started to learn music and then moved to Earlsford House School in the city centre near Harcourt Street. In 1919, Beckett went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh (Oscar Wilde's old school). A natural athlete, he excelled at cricket as a left hand batsman and left arm medium pace bowler. Later on, he was to play for Dublin University and played two first-class games against Northamptonshire. As a result, he became the only Nobel laureate to have an entry in Wisden, the cricket bible.

Early writings

He studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927, graduating with a B.A. and shortly thereafter took up the post of lecteur d'anglais in the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d'Ulm Paris. While there he was introduced to James Joyce by Thomas MacGreevy. This meeting was to have a profound effect on the younger man. Beckett continued his writing career while assisting Joyce in various ways. In 1929 he published his first work, "Dante...Bruno.Vico..Joyce", a critical essay defending Joyce's work, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness. This was Beckett's contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a book of essays on Joyce which also included contributions by Eugene Jolas, Robert McAlmon, William Carlos Williams and MacGreevy, amongst others. His first short story, "Assumption", was published the same year in Jolas' periodical transition, and in 1930 he won a small literary prize with his hastily composed poem "Whoroscope", which draws from a biography of René Descartes that Beckett happened to be reading when he was encouraged to submit. Beckett's relationship with the Joyce family cooled when he rejected the advances of Joyce's daughter Lucia. He returned to Trinity College as a lecturer in 1930, but left after less than two years and began to travel in Europe. He also spent time in London, publishing his critical study of Proust there in 1931. Two years later, in the wake of his father's death, he began two years of Jungian psychotherapy with Dr. Wilfred Bion, who took him to hear Jung's third Tavistock lecture, an event which he would still recall many years later. In 1932 he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, but after many rejections from publishers he decided to abandon it. The book was eventually published in 1992. Despite his inability to have Dream published, it did serve as a source for many of his early poems and for his first full-length book, More Pricks Than Kicks 1933. This was a collection of short stories or vignettes with several characters recurring. Beckett attempted to publish a book of poems in 1934, with no success. He also published a number of essays and reviews around that time, including Recent Irish Poetry (in The Bookman August, 1934) and Humanistic Quietism (a review of MacGreevy's Poems in The Dublin Magazine, also 1934). These two reviews focused on the work of MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin and Blanaid Salkeld, comparing them favourably with their Celtic Twilight contemporaries and invoking Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and French symbolists as their precursors. In describing these poets as forming 'the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland', Beckett traced the outlines of an Irish poetic modernist canon. Unsurprisingly, these reviews were reprinted in the early 1970s in The Lace Curtain as part of a conscious attempt by the editors of that journal to revive this alternative tradition. In 1935 he worked on his novel Murphy. In May of that year Beckett wrote to MacGreevy that he had been reading about film and wished to go to Moscow to study with Eisenstein; in the Summer of 1936 he wrote to Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, offering to become their apprentices. Nothing came of this. He finished Murphy and in 1936 departed for extensive travel around Germany, during which time he filled several notebooks with lists of noteworthy artwork that he had seen, and also noted his distaste for the Nazi savagery which was then overtaking the country. He returned to Ireland briefly in 1937. During this visit, Murphy (1938) was published and the next year translated into French by the author. After a falling-out with his mother he decided to settle permanently in Paris. He returned to that city after the outbreak of war in 1939, preferring, in his own words, 'France at war to Ireland neutral'. Around December 1937, he had a brief affair with Peggy Guggenheim. In January of 1938, when refusing the solicitations of a notorious Parisian pimp (who ironically went by the name of Prudent), Beckett was stabbed in the chest and nearly killed. Joyce arranged for a private room at the hospital he was taken to. The publicity attracted the attention of Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumesnil, who knew Beckett from his first stay in Paris, but this time, the two would become lifelong companions. When asked by Beckett for the motive behind the stabbing at a preliminary hearing, his assailant casually replied "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur": "I do not know, sir", and this statement by the attacker became an important, if not thematic line in several of his plays. (It's also worth noting that Beckett occasionally recounted the incident in jest, and eventually dropped the charges against his attacker -- partially to avoid further formalities but also because the author found the pimp to be personally likable and well mannered.)

World War II

Following the 1940 occupation by Germany, Beckett joined the French Resistance, working as a courier. During the next two years, on several occasions he was almost caught by the Gestapo. In August 1942 his unit was betrayed by a former Catholic priest. He and Suzanne fled south on foot to the safety of a small village in Roussillon, in the Vaucluse département in the Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur region, where he was still actively assisting the French Resistance by storing armaments in the back yard of his home. Although Samuel Beckett rarely if ever spoke about his wartime activities, during the two years he stayed in Roussillon, he helped the Maquis sabotage the German army in the Vaucluse mountains. While in hiding, he continued work on the novel Watt, started in 1941, completed in 1945, but not published until 1953. For his efforts in fighting the German occupation, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance by the French government. Even to the end of his life, Beckett would refer to his laborious efforts for the French Resistance as "boy scout stuff".

Fame: novels and the theatre

In 1945, Beckett returned to Dublin for a brief visit. During his stay, he had a revelation in his mother's room in which his entire future literary direction appeared to him. This experience was later fictionalized in the play Krapp's Last Tape (1958). In the play, Krapp's revelation is set on the East Pier in Dun Laoghaire during a dark and stormy night. Some critics have identified Beckett with Krapp to the point of presuming Beckett's own artistic epiphany was at the same location, in the same weather. In 1946 Sartre’s magazine Les Temps Modernes published the first part of Beckett’s story Suite, not realizing that Beckett had only submitted the first half of the story. Simone de Beauvoir refused to publish the second part. Beckett began to write Mercier et Camier, his fourth novel. In 1947 he began writing Eleutheria. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Beckett wrote his best-known novels, the series written in French (often referred to, against Beckett's explicit wishes, as "the Trilogy") and later translated into English, mostly by the author: Molloy (finished in 1947, published in 1951, English, translated in collaboration with Patrick Bowles, 1953), Malone Dies (finished in 1948, published in 1951, English translation 1956) and The Unnamable (1953, English translation 1957). In these three novels, the reader can trace the development of Beckett's mature style and themes. Molloy has many of the characteristics of a conventional novel: time, place, movement and plot. Indeed, on one level it is a detective novel. In Malone Dies, movement and plot are more or less dispensed with, but there is still some indication of place and the passage of time. The 'action' of the book takes the form of an interior monologue. Finally, in The Unnamable all sense of place and time have also disappeared. The essential theme seems to be the conflict between the voice's drive to continue speaking so as to continue existing and its almost equally strong urge to find silence and oblivion. It is tempting to see in this a reflection of Beckett's experience and understanding of what the war had done to the world. Despite the widely-held view that Beckett's work is essentially pessimistic, the will to live seems to win out. Beckett is most renowned for the play Waiting for Godot, which was famously described by the critic Vivian Mercier as 'a play in which nothing happens, twice'. Like most of his works after 1947, the play was first written in French (under the title En attendant Godot). Beckett worked on the play between October 1948 and January 1949, published it in 1952,and premiered it in 1953; the English translation appeared two years later. The play was a critical, popular, and controversial success in Paris. It opened in London in 1955 to mainly bad reviews, but the tide turned with positive reactions by Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times and, later, Kenneth Tynan. In the United States, it flopped in Miami, and had a qualified success in New York. After this, the play became extremely popular, with highly successful performances in the United States and Germany, and it is still frequently performed today. As has already been noted, Beckett was now writing mainly in French. He translated all of his works into the English language himself, with the exception of Molloy, which translation was collaborative (see above). The success of Waiting for Godot opened up for Beckett a career in theatre, and he went on to write numerous successful plays, including Endgame (1957) the aforementioned Krapp's Last Tape (written in English), Embers (1959) and Happy Days (also written in English) (1960). In general, the plays of this period reflect the same themes as the novels: despair and the will to survive in the face of an uncomprehending world. In all the works of this period, it is also possible to see the working out of Beckett's faith in writing as a process of self-relevation and of dealing with the space between the self and the world of objects. In most, if not all, of these writings there is also a prominent comedic element in the handling of the themes.

Later life and work

The 1960s were a period of change, both on a personal level and as a writer. In 1961, in a secret civil ceremony in England, he married Suzanne, mainly due to reasons relating to French inheritance law. The success of his plays led to invitations to attend rehearsals and productions around the world, leading eventually to a new career as a theatre director. In 1959 he had his first commission from the BBC for a radio play, Embers. He was to continue writing for radio and ultimately for film, with the work Film (1964), and, from the mid 1970s, for television. He also started to write in English again, although he continued to do some work in French until the end of his life. This new-found fame, coupled with the Nobel award, meant that academic interest in the life and work grew, creating eventually something of a 'Beckett industry'. Other writers also started to seek out Beckett, with the result that a steady stream of students, poets, novelists and playwrights passed through Paris hoping to meet the master. In 1961, he published his last full-length prose work, Comment C'est (How It Is, 1964). This work, written as a sequence of unpunctuated paragraphs in a style approaching telegraphese, relating the adventures of an unnamed narrator crawling through the mud with a sack of canned food, is generally considered to mark the end of Beckett's middle period as a writer. There followed a series of short minimalist plays and prose works exploring themes of the self confined and observed. Beckett came to focus more clearly on his long-standing opposition to the tyranny of realism in art and of what he viewed as the dictatorship of social norms and expectations. In the 1982 play Catastrophe, dedicated to Václav Havel, he turned his attention to harder forms of dictatorship. In the last ten years of his life, this minimalist style resulted in three of Beckett's most important prose works, the three novellas Company (1979), Ill Seen Ill Said (1982) and Worstward Ho (1984). His last work, the poem "What is the Word" (1989), was written in bed in the nursing home where he spent the last period of his life, suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson's disease. Suzanne died on July 17 1989. Beckett died on December 22 that same year and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France. His gravestone is a massive slab of polished black granite. Chiseled into its surface is "Samuel Beckett 1906–1989" below the name and dates for Suzanne, who is buried with him. At the foot of his grave stands one lone tree, a reminder of the stage set for his most famous play.

Beckett's legacy

Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition. He, more than anyone else, opened up the possibility of drama and fiction that dispense with conventional plot and the unities of place and time in order to focus on essential components of the human condition. Writers like Václav Havel, Aidan Higgins and Harold Pinter have publicly stated their indebtedness to Beckett's example, but he has had a much wider influence on experimental writing since the 1950s, from the Beat generation to the happenings of the 1960s and beyond. In an Irish context, he has exerted great influence on writers like Trevor Joyce and Catherine Walsh, who write in the modernist tradition as an alternative to the dominant realist mainstream. Many major 20th-century-composers, including György Kurtág, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass or Heinz Holliger created musical works based on his texts. Beckett's work influenced many artists, including the visul artist Bruce Nauman, the aformentioned Philip Glass, and the writer Charlie Kaufman.

Selected bibliography

Dramatic works


- Eleutheria (1940s/published 1995)
- Waiting for Godot (1952)
- All That Fall (1956)
- Act Without Words I (1956)
- Act Without Words II (1956)
- Endgame (1957)
- Krapp's Last Tape (1958)
- Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s)
- Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s)
- Embers (1959)
- Happy Days (1960)
- Rough for Radio I (1961)
- Rough for Radio II (1961)
- Words and Music (1961)
- Cascando (1962)
- Play (1963)
- Film (film, 1963)
- Come and Go (1965)
- Eh Joe (1965)
- Breath (1969)
- Not I (1972)
- That Time (1975)
- Footfalls (1975)
- Ghost Trio (1975)
- ... but the clouds ... (1976)
- A Piece of Monologue (1980)
- Rockaby (1981)
- Ohio Impromptu (1981)
- Quad (1982)
- Catastrophe (1982)
- Nacht und Träume (1982)
- What Where (1983)

Prose


- Proust (1931)
- Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1932/published 1992)
- More Pricks Than Kicks (1934)
- Murphy (1938)
- Mercier and Camier (1946/published 1974)
- Molloy (1951)
- Malone Dies (1951)
- The Unnamable (1953)
- Watt (1953)
- Stories and Texts for Nothing (1954)
- Bram van Velde (with Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam)(1958)
- How It Is (1961)
- The Lost Ones (1971)
- First Love (1973)
- Fizzles (1976)
- Company (1979)
- Ill Seen Ill Said (1981)
- Disjecta (1983)
- Worstward Ho (1984)
- Stirrings Still (1988)

Poetry


- Whoroscope (1930)
- Echo's Bones and other Precipitates (1935)
- Collected Poems in English (1961)
- Collected Poems in English and French (1977)
- What is the Word (1989)

Translations


- Negro: an Anthology (Nancy Cunard, editor) (1934)
- Anna Livia Plurabelle (James Joyce, French translation by Beckett and others) (1931)
- Anthology of Mexican Poems (Octavio Paz, editor) (1958)
- The Old Tune (Robert Pinget) (1963)

References

Print


- Bair, Deirdre, Samuel Beckett ISBN 0-09-980070-5
- Caselli, Daniela, Beckett's Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism (MUP 2005) ISBN 0719071569
- Cronin, Anthony, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist
- Igoe, Vivien, A Literary Guide to Dublin ISBN 0-4136912-0-9
- Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett
- Mercier, Vivian, Beckett/Beckett (OUP 1977) ISBN 0-19-281269-6
- O'Brien, Eoin, The Beckett Country
- Ricks, Christopher, Beckett's Dying Words ISBN 0-19-282407-4

Online


- [http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/b/Beckett,Samuel/life.htm Samuel Beckett at the Princess Grace Irish Library]
- [http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,868126,00.html Article by Peter Hall, director of the first London production of Waiting for Godot]

External links


- [http://beckett.english.ucsb.edu/ beckett.english.ucsb.edu]
- [http://samuel-beckett.net samuel-beckett.net]
- [http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-19,00.html Samuel Beckett in The Guardian]
- [http://www.themodernword.com/beckett/index.html themodernword.com]
- [http://www.Samuel-Beckett.net/samgrave.jpg Beckett's grave]
- [http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~msfriedl/whatistheword.html Text of What is the Word, Beckett's last published work]
- [http://www.samuelbeckett.nl Samuel Beckett in the Netherlands]
- [http://www.samuelbeckett.it Italian Samuel Beckett page]
- [http://netsoc.dit.ie/~jamesf/samuel_beckett/samuel_beckett_dublin_ireland.html Samuel Beckett Dublin Ireland]
- [http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/beckett.html Beckett's Prose Fiction]
- [http://www.ubu.com/film/ The film "Film" (1965) online] (170MB) Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Beckett, Samuel ja:サミュエル・ベケット simple:Samuel Beckett

Beckett (disambiguation)

Beckett may refer to: __NOTOC__

People


- Arthur William a Beckett (1844 – 1909), English journalist and man of letters
- Christopher Beckett, 4th Baron Grimthorpe (1915 – 2003)
- Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe (1816 – 1905)
- Ernest Beckett, 2nd Baron Grimthorpe (1856 – 1917)
- Gilbert Abbott à Beckett (1811 – 1856), an English comic writer
- Gilbert Arthur a Beckett (1837 – 1891), an English writer
- John Beckett (1894 – 1964), a British politician
- Josh Beckett (b. 1980), a Major League Baseball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox
- Lenny Beckett (b. 1980), an Australian rugby player
- Margaret Beckett (b. 1943), a British Labour Party member of parliament
- Ralph Beckett, 3rd Baron Grimthorpe
- Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989), a Nobel Prize-winning Irish writer
- Scotty Beckett (1929 – 1968), an American child actor who was a regular in the Our Gang series
- Wendy Beckett (b. 1930), known as Sister Wendy, a South African nun famous for presenting art history documentaries

Places


- Beckett, New Jersey, USA
- Beckett, Ohio, USA
- Beckett Ridge, Ohio, USA

Fictional characters


- Carson Beckett, a character on the television series Stargate Atlantis
- Dr. Samuel Beckett, a character on the television series Quantum Leap

Other


- Beckett Comics
- Beckett Dragonball Z Collector, an anime magazine

See also


- Becket (disambiguation)

1906

1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar).

Events


- January 8 - Landslide in Haverstraw, New York kills 20
- January 31 - Earthquake in Ecuador (8.6 in Richter scale)
- February 11 - Pope Pius X publishes the encyclical Vehementer nos.
- February 15 - Representatives of the Labour Representation Committee in the UK parliament take the name Parliamentary Labour Party
- March 10 - Explosion in coalmine in Courrières, France kills 1060
- March 15 - Rolls-Royce Ltd. is registered
- March 18 - Traian Vuia flies first self-propelled heavier than air aircraft
- April 7 - Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.
- April 18 - 1906 San Francisco earthquake on the San Andreas Fault destroys much of San Francisco, California, killing at least 3000. The estimated magnitude of the earthquake is 7.8.
- June 9-June 10 - Riots in Stockholm, Ladugårsdgärden - 50 policemen injured
- June 25 - New York playboy Harry K. Thaw shoots architect Stanford White
- June 28-July 6 - Crown Jewels of Ireland stolen during this period
- September 5 - Brandbury Robinson throws the first legal forward pass in an American football game.
- September 18 - Typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10.000 persons in Hong Kong
- September 22 - Race riots in Atlanta, Georgia (12 killed)
- October 11 - San Francisco public school board sparks United States diplomatic crisis with Japan by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools.
- October 16 - The Captain of Köpenick fools a city hall in Köpenick by impersonating a Prussian officer
- October 23 - Aeroplane of Alberto Santos-Dumont takes off on Bagatelle in France and flies 60 meters (200 feet)
- October 28 - Creation of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, a Belgian mining trust in Congo.
- November 3 - SOS becomes an international distress signal
- November 9 - US President Theodore Roosevelt leaves for a trip to Panama to inspect the construction progress of the Panama Canal (this was the first time a sitting President of the United States made an official trip outside of the United States).
- December 4 - Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans, was founded at Cornell University
- December 6 - Politic creation of district of Chimbote.
- December 24 - Reginald Fessenden makes the first radio broadcast: a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech.
- 26 December - The world's first feature film, "The Story of the Kelly Gang", is released.

Unknown dates


- Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) immunization for tuberculosis first developed
- Richard Oldham argues that the Earth has a molten interior
- Second Geneva Convention
- Construction begins on the current Great Mosque of Djenné.
- The muffuletta sandwich is invented in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Births


- January 22 - Robert E. Howard, American author (d. 1936)
- February 4 - Clyde Tombaugh, American astronomer (d. 1997)
- February 10 - Erik Rhodes, American actor (d. 1990)
- March 1 - Pham Van Dong, Prime Minister of Vietnam (d. 2000)
- March 16 - Henny Youngman, English born comedian (d. 1998)
- March 19 - Adolf Eichmann, Nazi official (d. 1962)
- March 31 - Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1979)
- April 9 - Antal Dorati, Hungarian conductor (d. 1988)
- April 13 - Samuel Beckett, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
- April 25 - William J. Brennan, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (d. 1997)
- April 28 - Paul Sacher, Swiss conductor (d. 1999)
- May 6 - André Weil, French mathematician (d. 1998)
- May 28 - Phil Regan, American actor (d. 1996)
- May 29 - T. H. White, British writer (d. 1964)
- June 7 - Glen Gray, American saxophonist (d. 1963)
- June 15 - Léon Degrelle, Belgian fascist (d. 1994)
- June 19 - Ernst Boris Chain, German-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1979)
- June 20 - Catherine Cookson, English author (d. 1998)
- June 20 - Robert Trent Jones, English-born golf course designer (d. 2000)
- June 22 - Anne Morrow Lindbergh American author and aviator (d. 2001)
- June 22 - Billy Wilder screenwriter, film director and producer (d. 2002)
- June 24 - Pierre Fournier, French cellist (d. 1986)
- June 28 - Maria Goeppert-Mayer, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1972)
- July 1 - Estée Lauder, American cosmetics entrepreneur (d. 2004)
- July 2 - Hans Bethe, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2005)
- July 23 - Vladimir Prelog, Croatian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1998)
- August 5 - Wassily Leontief, Russian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
- August 12 - Tedd Pierce, American animator (d. 1972)
- August 28 - John Betjeman, English poet (d. 1984)
- September 1 - Franz Biebl, German composer (d. 2001)
- September 4 - Max Delbrück, German biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1981)
- September 6 - Luis Federico Leloir, French-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)
- September 25 - Dmitri Shostakovich, Russian composer (d. 1975)
- October 10 - Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan Indian novelist (d. 2001)
- October 14 - Imam Hassan al Banna, Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (d. 1949)
- October 23 - Gertrude Ederle, American swimmer (d. 2003)
- October 27 - Earle Cabell, American politician (d. 1975)
- November 5 - Fred Lawrence Whipple, American astronomer (d. 2004)
- November 18 - Klaus Mann, German writer (d. 1949)
- November 18 - George Wald, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1997)
- December 5 - Otto Preminger, Austrian-born film director (d. 1986)
- December 25 - Ernst Ruska, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1988)

Deaths


- January 29 - King Christian IX of Denmark (b. 1818)
- February 9 - Paul Laurence Dunbar, American poet and publisher (b. 1872)
- February 27 - Samuel Pierpont Langley, American astronomer, physicist, and aeronautics pioneer (b. 1834)
- March 13 - Susan B. Anthony, American civil rights and women's suffrage activist (b. 1820)
- March 29 - Slava Raskaj, Croatian painter (b. 1877)
- April 6 - Alexander Kielland, Norwegian author (b. 1849)
- April 11 - Francis Pharcellus Church, American editor and publisher (b. 1839)
- April 19 - Pierre Curie, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1859)
- April 24 - Mary Hunt, American temperance movement leader (b. 1830)
- May 14 - Carl Schurz, German revolutionary and American statesman (b. 1829)
- May 23 - Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright (b. 1828)
- September 5 - Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian physicist (b. 1844)
- October 22 - Paul Cézanne, French painter (b. 1839)
- December 7 - Élie Ducommun, Swiss journalist and activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1833)

Nobel Prizes


- Physics - Sir Joseph John Thomson
- Chemistry - Henri Moissan
- Medicine - Camillo Golgi, Santiago Ramón y Cajal
- Literature - Giosuè Carducci
- Peace - Theodore Roosevelt

Buildings

St Mary's Star of the Sea Catholic School Balboa Pavilion in Newport Beach, California Category:1906 ko:1906년 ms:1906 ja:1906年 simple:1906 th:พ.ศ. 2449

1989

1989 (MCMLXXXIX) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. The world population growth in absolute numbers is believed to have been the highest ever around this time. [http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html]

Events

January


-
- January 8 - the Kegworth Air Disaster - A British Midland Boeing 737 crashes on approach to East Midlands Airport - 44 dead January 16-18 - Race riots in Overtown, Miami
- January 10 - Cuban troops begin withdrawing from Angola
- January 10 - Assistant Australian Federal Police commissioner Colin Winchester is shot dead in the driveway of his Canberra home
  - January 17 - A gunman kills 5 children, wounds 30 and then shoots himself in Stockton, California January 7 - Akihito becomes Emperor of Japan following the death of Hirohito. The Heisei period begins
- January 20 - George Herbert Walker Bush succeeds Ronald Wilson Reagan as President of the United States of America
- January 24 - Serial killer Ted Bundy is executed in Florida's electric chair
- January 30 - American Olympic medalist Bruce Kimball is sentenced to 17 years in prison for killing two teenagers in a drunk driving accident

February


- February 1 - Joan Kirner becomes Victoria's 1st female Deputy Premier after resignation of Robert Fordham, over VEDC (Victorian Economic Development Co-operation) Crisis
- February 2 - Soviet war in Afghanistan: The last Soviet Union armored column leaves Kabul ending nine years of military occupation
- February 3 - Military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay
- February 3 - After a stroke, P.W. Botha resigns party leadership and the presidency of South Africa
- February 10 - Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee becoming the first African American to lead a major American political party
- February 11 - Barbara Clementine Harris is consecrated first female bishop in the Episcopal Church (United States of America)
- February 14 - Union Carbide agrees to pay USD $470 million to the Indian government for damages it caused in the 1984 Bhopal Disaster
- February 14 - Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini encourages Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
- February 14 - The first of 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System is placed into orbit
- February 15 - Soviet war in Afghanistan: The Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops had left Afghanistan
- February 16 - Pan Am flight 103: Investigators announce that the cause of the crash was a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player
- February 24 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a three-million-US dollar bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie
- February 24 - A United Airlines Boeing 747 bound to New Zealand from Honolulu, Hawaii rips open during flight, sucking 9 passengers and crew out of the first class section. Luckily most passengers and crew were still belted to their seats at the time
- February 27 - Venezuela is rocked by the Caracazo.

March

Caracazo
- March 1 - The Berne Convention is ratified and enters into force with regard to the United States
- March 1 - A curfew is imposed in Kosovo where protests continue at the alleged intimidation of the Serb minority
- March 1 - Louis Wade Sullivan starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, serving under President George H. W. Bush
- March 1 - James D. Watkins starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Energy, serving under President George H. W. Bush
- March 1 - The Politieke Partij Radicalen, Pacifistisch Socialistische Partij, Communistische Partij Nederland and the Evangelische Volks Partij amalgamate to form Netherlands political party the GroenLinks (GL, GreenLeft)
- March 2 - 12 European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end century
- March 4 - Time, Inc. and Warner Communications announce plans for a merger, forming Time Warner
- March 4 - The Purley rail crash - 5 dead, 94 injured
- March 4 - First ACT (Australian Capital Territory) elections held
- March 7 - Iran breaks off diplomatic relations with United Kingdom over Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses"
- March 9 - A strike forces financially-troubled Eastern Airlines into bankruptcy
- March 12 - Musician Billy was born
- March 14 - Gun control: President George H. W. Bush bans the importation of assault rifles into the United States
- March 14 - Christian General Michel Aoun declares a 'War of Liberation' to rid Lebanon of Syrian forces and their allies.
- March 15 - Surgeon Bimal Ghosh removes a huge gallbladder weighing 10.4 kg (23 lbs) at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, USA
- March 18 - In Egypt, a 4,400-year-old mummy is found in the Great Pyramid of Giza
- March 20 - Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke weeps on national television as he admits marital infidelity.
- March 23 - Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce cold fusion at the University of Utah
- March 23 - A 300m (1,000 ft) diameter Near-Earth asteroid misses the Earth by 500,000 km (400,000 miles)
- March 24 - Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil after running aground
- March 27 - The first free elections for the Soviet parliament go against the Communist Party.

April-May


- April 4 - Richard M. Daley elected mayor of Chicago, Illinois
- April 6 - National Safety Council of Australia chief executive John Friedrich is arrested after defrauding investors to the tune of $235 million
- April 7 - Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea - 41 dead
- April 9 - Massacre of Georgian demonstrators by Red Army soldiers in Tbilisi's central square during a peaceful rally; 20 citizens are killed (most of them young women), many injured. The use of toxic gas by the Soviets was alleged. [http://www.phrusa.org/research/health_effects/humsov.html]
- April 15 - Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies in European football, takes place
- April 19 - Gun turret explodes on the US battleship Iowa - 47 dead
- April 20 - NATO debates modernising short range missiles; although the US and UK are in favour, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl obtains a concession defering a decision.
- April 21 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: Students in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Nanjing started to strike.
- April 25 - End of term for Baginda Almutawakkil Alallah Sultan Iskandar Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail as the 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia
- April 26 - Sultan Azlan Muhibbudin Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Yusuff Izzudin Shah Ghafarullahu-lahu, Sultan of Perak, becomes the 9th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia
- May 2 - Hungary dismantles 150 miles of barbed wire fencing, opening its border to Western Europe.
- May 9 - Andrew Peacock deposes John Howard as Federal Opposition Leader
- May 11 - ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Legislative Assembly meets for 1st time
- May 12 - a Southern Pacific Railroad freight train crashes on Duffy Street in San Bernadino, California
- May 14 - Mikhail Gorbachev visited China, he was the first Soviet leader to visit China since the 1960s.
- May 15 Australia's 1st Private tertiary institution Bond University Opens On the Gold Coast
- May 15 - Jackie Mann, a 74-year-old former Battle of Britain pilot, is abducted in Beirut
- May 19 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: Zhao Ziyang met the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
- May 20 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The Chinese government declared martial law in Beijing.
- May 30 - Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The 10 m (33 ft) high "Goddess of Democracy" statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators
- May 30 Ananda Marga Member Tim Anderson is arrested on charges related to the 1978 Hilton Bombing

June

May 30.
- June 1 - The SkyDome stadium is opened in Toronto
- June 3 - The Ayatollah Khomeini dies
- June 4 - The Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in Beijing and is covered live on television
- June 4 - Solidarity's victory in the first partly free parliamentary elections in post-war Poland spark off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe.
- June 4 - Train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia kills 645 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline
- June 8 - Kurt Waldheim elected president of Austria
- June 13 - The wreck of the German battleship Bismarck, which was sunk in 1941, is located 600 miles west of Brest, France
- June 14 - Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor is arrested in Beverly Hills, California after slapping a motorcycle police officer. [http://www.mugshots.net/zsa_zsa_gabor/]
- June 21 - British police arrest 250 citizens for celebrating the summer solstice at Stonehenge
- June 22 - Ireland's first universities established since independence in 1922 are set up:Dublin City University and University of Limerick

July


- July 2 - Andreas Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece resigns. New government formed under Tzannis Tzannetakis
- July 5 - The television show Seinfeld premiers.
- July 6 - At 01:23:45 AM the time and date by British reckoning was 01:23:45 6/7/89. This was also true 12 hours later excepting 24-hour time.
- July 19 - A Douglas DC-10 carrying United Airlines flight 232 crashes in Sioux City, Iowa killing 112 but due to extraordinary efforts by the pilot and his crew, 184 on board survive
- July 19 - The BBC programme "Panorama" accuses Lady Porter Tory Leader of Westminster City Council of "gerrymandering"
- July 20 - Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi placed under house arrest
- July 26 - A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. for releasing a computer virus, making him the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

August


- August 6 - The comic strip Bloom County ends.
- August 7 - US Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX), and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
- August 8 - STS-28: The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.
- August 9 The asteroid 4769 Castalia is the first asteroid directly imaged, by radar from Arecibo.
- August 13 - 13 people die in hot air balloon accident near Alice Springs NT.
- August 18 - Leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galán is assassinated near Bogotá in Colombia.
- August 19 - Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominates Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be Prime Minister, thus becoming the first non-communist in power in 42 years.
- August 20 - In Beverly Hills, California, Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their wealthy parents to death in their family's den.
- August 20 - 51 people die when the Marchioness pleasure boat collides with a barge on the River Thames adjacent to Southwark Bridge.
- August 23 - Baltic Way, uninterrupted 600 kilometre human chain, in which two million indigenous people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then still occupied by the Soviet Union, joined hands to demand freedom and independence.
- August 23 - Hungary removes border restrictions with Austria.
- August 23 - All of Australia's 1,645 domestic airline pilots resign over an airline's move to sack and sue them over a dispute.
- August 24 - Indonesia's first privately-owned television station, Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia, (RCTI) begins broadcasting.
- August 25 - Voyager II passes the planet Neptune and its moon Triton.
- August 29 - Yusef Hawkins shot in Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, sparking racial tensions between African Americans and Italian Americans.

September


- September 5 - President George Bush holds up a bag of cocaine purchased across the street at Lafayette Park in his first televised speech to the nation.
- September 10 - The Hungarian government opens the country's western borders to refugees from the German Democratic Republic.
- September 21 - Hurricane Hugo makes landfall in South Carolina, causing 7 billion dollars in damage.
- September 22 - Deal barracks bombing: IRA bomb explodes at the Royal Marine School of Music in Deal, United Kingdom - 11 dead, 22 injured

October


- October 5 - US TV Evangelist Jim Bakker is found guilty of embezzlement of $158 million
- October 9 - An official news agency in the Soviet Union reports the landing of a UFO in Voronezh.
- October 9 - In Leipzig, East Germany protesters demand the legalization of opposition groups and democratic reforms
- October 17 - The Loma Prieta earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the richter scale, strikes the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose and Santa Cruz areas in the American state of California, killing 63.
- October 19 - The Guildford Four are freed after 14 years
- October 30 - The qualification for the 1990 Football World Cup ends.

November

1990 Football World Cup
- November 4 - Typhoon Gay devastates the Thai province of Chumphon.
- November 7 - Douglas Wilder wins the governor's seat in Virginia and becomes the first elected African American governor in the United States.
- November 7 - Cold War: The Communist government of East Germany resigns, although SED leader Egon Krenz remains head of state.
- November 7 - David Dinkins becomes the first African American mayor of New York City.
- November 7 - In California, convicted murderer Richard Ramirez (the "Night Stalker") is sentenced to death.
- November 9 - Cold War: East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to freely travel to West Germany for the first time in decades (the next day celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down).
- November 10 - After 45 years of Communist rule in Bulgaria, Bulgarian Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov is replaced by Foreign Minister Petar Mladenov, who changes the party's name to the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
- November 10 - Gaby Kennard becomes the first Australian woman to fly non-stop around the world.
- November 12 - Brazil holds its first free presidential election since 1960
- November 16 - Six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter are shot in San Salvador, El Salvador
- November 16 - South African President FW de Klerk announces scrapping of Separate Amenities Act
- November 17 - Cold War: Velvet Revolution begins - In Czechoslovakia a peaceful student demonstration in Prague is severely beaten back by riot police. This sparks a revolution aimed at overthrowing the Communist government (it succeeded on December 29)
- November 20 - Cold War: Velvet Revolution - The number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
- Tuesday, November 21, 1989 - North Carolina celebrates its bicentennial statehood.
- November 22 - In west Beirut, a bomb explodes near the motorcade of Lebanese President Rene Moawad and kills him.
- November 26-27 night - Group of Bob Denard's mercenaries ousts Ahmed Abdullah Abderemane in the Comoros. Said Mohammed Djohor becomes interim president
- November 28 - Cold War: Velvet Revolution - With other Communist regimes falling all around it and with growing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces they will give up their monopoly on political power (elections held in December brought the first non-communist government to Czechoslovakia in more than 40 years)
- November 30 - Deutsche Bank board member Alfred Herrhausen is killed by a terrorist's bomb (the Red Army Faction claimed responsibility of the murder)
- November 30 - A storeowner in Palm Harbor, Florida named Richard Mallory takes a ride with Aileen Wuornos and is seen for the last time. Mallory became the first of seven people killed by the female serial killer over the next year.

December


- December 1 - Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the Communist-dominated SED its monopoly on power. Egon Krenz, the Politburo and the Central Committee resign two days later.
- December 3 - Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, US President George Herbert Walker Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between their nations may be coming to an end.
- December 6 - The École Polytechnique Massacre (or Montreal Massacre): Marc Lépine, an anti-feminist gunman, murders fourteen young women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal.
- December 14 - Chile holds its first free election in 16 years.
- December 15 - Drug baron Jose Gonzalo Rodriquez Gacha is killed by Colombian police
- December 17 - Romania - Timişoara: The start of the uprising that toppled the communist regime in Romania.
- December 17 - Brazil holds its first free election in 29 years. Fernando Collor de Mello wins the election.
- December 20 - United States invades Panama (Operation Just Cause) to overthrow Manuel Noriega - he takes refuge in the Vatican mission until January 3 1990.
- December 22 - After a week of bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's communist dictatorship.
- December 22 - Two tourist coaches collide on the Pacific highway north of Kempsey, Australia, 35 killed and 39 injured.
- December 25 - Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena are executed.
- December 25 - Bank of Japan governors announce a major interest rate hike, eventually leading to the peak and fall of the "bubble economy".
- December 28 - A magnitude 5.6 earthquake hits Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, killing 13 people.
- December 29 - Václav Havel elected the president of Czechoslovakia - a big victory of the Velvet Revolution.
- December 29 - Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.

Unknown Dates


- Alan Bond's Bond Corporation goes into receivership with the largest debt in Australian history
- Homosexual Acts between consenting adults decriminalized in Western Australia
- Rice University celebrates the demisesquicentennial anniversary of its founding
- Kamchatka opened to Russian civilian visitors
- Retirement of the Alize propeller-driven anti-submarine planes from carrier service in the French Navy
- The first national park, in Schiermonnikoog, is established in The Netherlands
- Soviet submarine K-173, Chelyabinsk, commissioned
- The wreck of the Lady Elgin discovered off Highland Park, Illinois by Harry Zych
- Margaret Rey establishes the Curious George Foundation to help creative children and prevent cruelty to animals
- Veikko "Jammu" Siltavuori abducts and murders two 8 year old girls in Myllypuro suburb in Helsinki, Finland
- Richard C. Duncan introduces the Olduvai theory, about the collapse of the Industrial Civilization
- The Museum of Jurassic Technology, is founded in Culver City, California by David and Diana Wilson
- The unknown Swede Marcus Schenkenberg is discovered by a photographer when rollerskating on Venice Beach, California
- 1,000,000th Ford Taurus sold

Births


- Marina Golbahari, Afghani actress
- January 29 - Charlotte and Margaret Baughman, American twin actresses
- February 2 - Anna Sundstrand, Swedish singer
- February 5 - Jeremy Sumpter, American actor
- March 5 - Jake Lloyd, American actor
- March 25 - Alyson Michalka, American actress, singer, and songwriter
- April 23 - Nicole Vaidisova, Czech tennis player
- May 5 - Chris Brown, American R&B singer
- May 29 - Riley Keough, American model
- June 2 - Freddy Adu, Ghanaian-born footballer
- June 13 - Sayumi Michishige, Japanese singer
- July 5 - Ronald MacDonald, British musician and composer
- July 23 - Daniel Radcliffe, British actor
- August 9 - Stefano Okaka Chuka, Italian football player
- August 15 - Belinda Peregrin, Mexican entertainer
- August 19 - Percy Romeo Miller, American entertainer
- August 21 - Hayden Panettiere, American actress
- October 11 - Michelle Wie, American golf player
- November 11 - Reina Tanaka, Japanese singer
- December 18 - Ashley Benson, American actress
- December 27 - Kateryna Lahno, Ukrainian chess player
- December 30 - Ryan Sheckler, American skateboarder

Deaths

January to April


- January 3 - Robert Banks, American chemist (b. 1921)
- January 7 - Frank Adams, British mathematician (b. 1930)
- January 7 - Hirohito, Emperor of Japan (b. 1901)
- January 21 - Billy Tipton, American musician (b. 1914)
- January 23 - Salvador Dalí, Spanish artist (b. 1904)
- January 24 - Ted Bundy, American serial killer (executed) (b. 1946)
- February 1 - Elaine de Kooning, American artist (b. 1919)
- February 3 - John Cassavetes, American actor and author (b. 1929)
- February 6 - Roy Eldridge, American musician (b. 1911)
- February 6 - Barbara W. Tuchman, American historian (b. 1912)
- February 9 - Osamu Tezuka, Japanese artist (b. 1928)
- February 11 - George O'Hanlon, American actor and director (b. 1912)
- February 24 - Sparky Adams, American baseball player (b. 1894)
- February 27 - Paul Oswald Ahnert, German astronomer (b. 1897)
- February 27 - Konrad Lorenz, Austrian zoologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1903)
- March 6 - Harry Andrews, British actor (b. 1911)
- March 8 - Carl Stuart Hamblen, American musician (b. 1908)
- March 9 - Robert Mapplethorpe, American photographer (b. 1946)
- March 14 - Edward Abbey, American author and environmentalist (b. 1927)
- March 14 - Stephen D. Bechtel, Sr., American businessman (b. 1900)
- March 19 - Alan Civil, English French horn player (b. 1929)
- March 27 - Malcolm Cowley, American author (b. 1898)
- March 27 - Jack Starrett, American actor and director (b. 1936)
- April 1 - Ace Bailey, Canadian hockey player (b. 1903)
- April 12 - Gerald Flood, British actor (b. 1927)
- April 15 - Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (b. 1915)
- April 16 - Jocko Conlan, baseball player and umpire (b. 1899)
- April 21 - Princess Dukhye of Korea (b. 1912)
- April 22 - Emilio G. Segrè, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1905)
- April 26 - Lucille Ball, American entertainer (b. 1911)
- April 30 - Sergio Leone, Italian film director (b. 1929)
- April 30 - Yi, Bang-ja, Crown Princess of Korea (b. 1901)

May to August


- May 9 - Keith Whitley, American singer (b. 1955)
- May 14 - E.P. Taylor, Canadian business tycoon (b. 1901)
- May 19 - C.L.R. James, English writer and journalist (b. 1901)
- May 20 - John Hicks, English economist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)
- May 20 - Gilda Radner, American comedian and actress (b. 1946)
- May 29 - John Cipollina, American musician (Quicksilver Messenger Service) (b. 1943)
- June 3 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iranian political figure (b. 1900)
- June 4 - Dik Browne, American cartoonist (b. 1917)
- June 7 - Don the Beachcomber, American restaurateur (b. 1907)
- June 9 - George Wells Beadle, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1903)
- June 15 - Victor French, American actor and director (b. 1934)
- June 20 - Hilmar Baunsgaard, Danish politician (b. 1920)
- June 27 - Alfred Ayer, British philosopher (b. 1910)
- June 28 - Joris Ivens, Dutch filmmaker (b. 1898)
- July 3 - Jim Backus, American actor (b. 1913)
- July 10 - Mel Blanc, American voice actor (b. 1908)
- July 11 - Laurence

Ireland

:This page is about the island of Ireland. For the state also called Ireland, see Republic of Ireland. :For an explanation of terms like Ulster, Northern Ireland, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology) . British Isles (terminology)] Ireland (Irish: Éire) is the third-largest island in Europe. It lies in the Atlantic Ocean and it is composed of the Republic of Ireland (officially, Ireland), which covers five sixths of the island (south, east, west and north-west), and Northern Ireland; part of the United Kingdom, which covers the northeastern sixth of the island. The population of the island is approximately 5.8 million people; 4.1 million in the Republic of Ireland (1.6 million in Greater Dublin) and 1.7 million in Northern Ireland (0.6 million in Greater Belfast). Belfast 2003. Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales are visible to the east]]

Geography

Wales with more details).]] A ring of coastal mountains surrounds low central plains. The highest peak is Carrauntuohill (Irish: Corrán Tuathail), which is 1041 m (3414 feet). The island is bisected by the River Shannon, at 259 km (161 mi) the longest river in Ireland or Britain. The island's lush vegetation, a product of its mild climate and frequent but soft rainfall, earns it the sobriquet "Emerald Isle". The island's area is 84,079