Downing Street Mortar Attack
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Downing Street Mortar Attack
The Downing Street mortar attack was carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 7 February 1991. The IRA launched three homemade Mortar (weapon), mortar shell (projectile), shells at 10 Downing Street, London, the headquarters of the Government of the United Kingdom, British government, in an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister John Major and his War cabinet#Persian Gulf War, war cabinet, who were meeting to discuss the Gulf War. One of the mortar shells exploded in the back garden of Number 10, yards from the Cabinet Office. Due to the bomb-resistant windows, none of the cabinet of the United Kingdom, cabinet were hurt, though four other people received minor injuries, including two Metropolitan Police officers. The other two shells overshot Downing Street and landed on a green nearby. Background During the Troubles, as part of its Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign, armed campaign against British rule in Irel ...
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The Troubles
The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an "irregular war" or "Low-intensity conflict, low-level war". The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England and mainland Europe. The conflict was primarily political and nationalistic, fuelled by historical events. It also had an Ethnic group, ethnic or sectarian dimension but despite use of the terms 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' to refer to the two sides, it was not a Religious war, religious conflict. A key issue was the Partition of Ireland, status of Northern Ireland. Unionism in Ireland, Unionists and Ulster loyalism, loyalists, who for ...
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Downing Street
Downing Street is a street in Westminster in London that houses the official residences and offices of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Situated off Whitehall, it is long, and a few minutes' walk from the Houses of Parliament. Downing Street was built in the 1680s by Sir George Downing. For more than three hundred years, it has held the official residences of both the First Lord of the Treasury, the office now synonymous with that of the Prime Minister, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, the office held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Prime Minister's official residence is 10 Downing Street, and the Chancellor's official residence is Number 11. The government's Chief Whip has an official residence at Number 12. In practice, these office-holders may live in different flats; the current Chief Whip actually lives at Number 9. The houses on the south side of the street were demolished in the 19th century to make way for ...
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HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987—whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded in 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—together with Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded in 1819), acquired in 1989. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints. History Collins Harper Mergers and acquisitions Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corpora ...
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Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine, with funding from Grosset & Dunlap and Curtis Publishing Company. It has since been purchased several times by companies including National General, Carl Lindner's American Financial and, most recently, Bertelsmann; it became part of Random House in 1998, when Bertelsmann purchased it to form Bantam Doubleday Dell. It began as a mass market publisher, mostly of reprints of hardcover books, with some original paperbacks as well. It expanded into both trade paperback and hardcover books, including original works, often reprinted in house as mass-market editions. History The company was failing when Oscar Dystel, who had previously worked at Esquire and as editor on Coronet magazine was hired in 1954 t ...
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Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch
The Anti-Terrorist Branch (or SO13 by its designation) was a Specialist Operations (SO) branch of London's Metropolitan Police Service, formed to respond to terrorist activities within the capital and the surrounding areas. The Anti-Terrorist Branch (originally known as the Bomb Squad) was formed in January 1971 to deal with the Angry Brigade. During the 1970s it assisted in the campaign against the IRA, alongside Special Branch and the Security Service (MI5). In 2005, the branch had 345 officers attached to it, with funding for another 500 being sought. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ian Blair, announced later that year that some of the specialist operations units were to be "re-aligned". In 2006 the Anti-Terrorist Branch and the Special Branch were merged, creating a new unit, the Counter Terrorism Command Counter Terrorism Command (CTC) or SO15 is a Specialist Operations branch within London's Metropolitan Police Service. The Counter Terrorism Command was established ...
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South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, south of the River Thames. The region consists of the Districts of England, boroughs, in whole or in part, of London Borough of Bexley, Bexley, London Borough of Bromley, Bromley, London Borough of Croydon, Croydon, Royal Borough of Greenwich, Greenwich, Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Kingston, London Borough of Lambeth, Lambeth, London Borough of Lewisham, Lewisham, London Borough of Merton, Merton, London Borough of Richmond, Richmond, London Borough of Southwark, Southwark, London Borough of Sutton, Sutton and London Borough of Wandsworth, Wandsworth. South London originally emerged from Southwark, first recorded as ''Suthriganaweorc'',David J. Johnson. ''Southwark and the City''. Oxford University Press, 1969. p. 7. meaning 'fort of the men of Surrey'. From Southwark, London then extended further down into northern Surrey and western Kent. Emergence and growth South London began at Southwark at the southern end o ...
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Battersea
Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park. History Battersea is mentioned in the few surviving Anglo-Saxon geographical accounts as ''Badrices īeg'' meaning "Badric's Island" and later "Patrisey". As with many former parishes beside tidal flood plains the lowest land was reclaimed for agriculture by draining marshland and building culverts for streams. Alongside this was the Heathwall tide mill in the north-east with a very long mill pond regularly draining and filling to the south. The settlement appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ''Patricesy'', a vast manor held by St Peter's Abbey, Westminster. Its ''Domesday'' Assets were: 18 hides and 17 ploughlands of cultivated land; 7 mills worth £42 9s 8d per year, of meadow, woodland worth 50 hogs. It rendered (in total): £75 9s 8d. The p ...
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Royal Ulster Constabulary
The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 as a successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)Richard Doherty, ''The Thin Green Line – The History of the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC'', pp. 5, 17, 27, 93, 134, 271; Pen & Sword Books; following the partition of Ireland. At its peak the force had around 8,500 officers, with a further 4,500 who were members of the RUC Reserve. The RUC policed Northern Ireland from the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence until after the turn of the 21st century, and played a major role in the Troubles between the 1960s and the 1990s. Due to the threat from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who saw the RUC as enforcing British rule, the force was heavily armed and militarised. Officers routinely carried submachine guns and assault rifles, travelled in armoured vehicles, and were based in heavily-fortified police stations.Weitzer, Ronald. ''Policin ...
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1985 Newry Mortar Attack
On 28 February 1985, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched a heavy mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base at Corry Square in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland. The attack killed nine RUC officers and injured almost 40 others; the highest death toll ever suffered by the RUC. Afterwards, a major building scheme was begun to give police and military bases better protection from such attacks. Background In the early 1970s, after the onset of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA launched a campaign aimed at forcing the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The IRA—particularly its South Armagh Brigade—had repeatedly attacked the British Army and RUC with home-made mortars, but with limited success. Between 1973 and early 1978 a total of 71 mortar attacks were recorded, but none caused direct British Army or RUC deaths. There were only two deadly mortar attacks before 1985. The first was on 19 March 1979, when Private Peter Woolmore of th ...
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Bloomsbury Publishing
Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in New York City, an India publishing office in New Delhi, an Australia sales office in Sydney CBD and other publishing offices in the UK including in Oxford. The company's growth over the past two decades is primarily attributable to the ''Harry Potter'' series by J. K. Rowling and, from 2008, to the development of its academic and professional publishing division. The Bloomsbury Academic & Professional division won the Bookseller Industry Award for Academic, Educational & Professional Publisher of the Year in both 2013 and 2014. Divisions Bloomsbury Publishing group has two separate publishing divisions—the Consumer division and the Non-Consumer division—supported by group functions, namely Sales and Mar ...
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Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint (trade name), imprint of Hachette (publisher), Hachette. History Early history The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged 14, with Messrs Jackson and Walford, the official publisher for the Congregational church, Congregational Union. In 1861 the firm became Jackson, Walford and Hodder; but in 1868 Jackson and Walford retired, and Thomas Wilberforce Stoughton joined the firm, creating Hodder & Stoughton. Hodder & Stoughton published both religious and secular works, and its religious list contained some progressive titles. These included George Adam Smith, George Adam Smith's ''Isaiah'' for its ''Expositor’s Bible'' series, which was one of the earliest texts to identify multiple authorship in the Book of Isaiah. There was also a sympathetic ''Life of Francis of Assisi, St Francis'' by Paul Sabatier (theologian), Paul Sabatier, a French Protestant pastor. Matthew Hodder ma ...
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Barrack Buster
Barrack buster is the colloquial name given to several improvised mortar (weapon), mortars, developed in the 1990s by the engineering unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The improvised mortar properly called "barrack buster" - known to the British security forces as the Mark 15 mortar - fired a long metal propane cylinder with a diameter of , which contained around of home-made explosives and had a range of . The cylinder is an adaptation of a commercial gas cylinder produced by the Cobh company Kosangas for heating and cooking, and used in rural areas across Ireland.Geraghty 1998, p. 193 The Mark 15 was first used in an attack on 7 December 1992 against an RUC/British Army base in Ballygawley, County Tyrone, Ballygawley, County Tyrone,Geraghty 1998, p. 193Ryder 2005, p. 256 The projectile, fired from a tractor parked near the town's health center, was deflected by the branches of a tree besides the perimeter fence. A number of civilians had to be evacuated. It t ...
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