January 21 in History

1749 — The Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, Italy, opened on January 6 1731, is destroyed by fire as a result of a torch left behind in the box of a nobleman after a performance. It is reopened in 1754. On the night of February 23 1945, the theatre collapses under Allied bombing. It is inaugurated again in 1975.

1854 — The RMS Tayleur sinks off Lambay Island, 4km off the coast of County Dublin in the Irish

Sea, on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Australia. Of the 652 people aboard, only an estimated 280 survive. The technically advanced iron clipper left Liverpool on January 19. However, her compasses didn’t work properly because of the iron hull. Instead of sailing south through the Irish Sea, as the crew believed, they were heading west towards Ireland. Within 48 hours of sailing, Tayleur finds herself in fog and a storm. Other technical defects make it impossible to prevent her from running aground. The wreck is found in 1959 at a depth of 17m some 30m off Lambay Island. She has been called the “Victorian Titanic”.

1911 — The first Monte Carlo Rally, organised at the behest of Prince Albert I, takes place with 23 drivers setting off from 11 different European cities.

1919 — A revolutionary Irish parliament (Dáil Éireann) is founded by 69 Sinn Féin MPs and declares the independence of the Irish Republic.

1919 — In one of the first engagements of the Irish War of Independence, two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers are killed in the Soloheadbeg ambush by Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers acting on their own initiative.

1942 — The Jewish resistance organisation Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye is established in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania (at the time part of the Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland). It takes the motto: “We will not allow them to take us like sheep to the slaughter.”

1951 — The catastrophic eruption of Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea, collapsing a lava dome and producing a lethal pyroclastic flow, claims 2,942 lives.

1971 — The Emley Moor transmitting station in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, the tallest (319m) free-standing structure in the UK, begins transmitting UHF broadcasts.

1976 — Commercial service of Concorde begins with simultaneous take-offs from London to Bahrain and Paris to Rio.

1981 — The first production DeLorean sports car is completed in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland.