1939 in Northern Ireland

← 1938 1937 1936 1939 in Northern Ireland → 1940 1941 1942
Centuries:	20th 21st
Decades:	1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s
See also:	1939 in the United Kingdom 1939 in Ireland Other events of 1939 List of years in Northern Ireland

Events

• 7 March – Harland and Wolff's Belfast shipyard launched the ocean liner RMS Andes for Royal Mail Lines.^[1]
• 17 April – Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Lord Craigavon, dismissed the Republic of Ireland government's position of neutrality as "cowardly".
• 4 May – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland announced that conscription will not be extended to Northern Ireland.
• 17 August – Harland and Wolff's Belfast shipyard launched the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable for the Royal Navy.
• 3 September – The United Kingdom declared war on Germany following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September.

Arts and literature

• June – The Northern Ireland Players performed Joseph Tomelty's Barnum is Right as their first commercial stage play.
• Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal: a poem was published.^[2]

Sport

Football

• Irish League

Winners: Belfast Celtic

• Irish Cup

Winners: Linfield 2 – 0 Ballymena United

Births

• 1 January – Billy Reid, volunteer in Provisional Irish Republican Army, killed in gunfight with British Army (died 1971)
• 13 April – Seamus Heaney, poet, writer and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (died 2013)
• 17 May – Eddie Magill, footballer and football manager
• 6 July – Mary Peters, pentathlete and 1972 Summer Olympics gold medal winner
• 27 July – Michael Longley, poet
• 9 August – Vincent Hanna, television journalist (died 1997)
• 16 August – Seán Brady, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
• 11 October – Austin Currie, founder-member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and former Fine Gael TD
• 8 December – James Galway, flautist
• Undated – Éamonn O'Doherty, sculptor (died 2011)

Deaths

• 2 February – Amanda McKittrick Ros, novelist and poet (born 1860)
• 20 September – Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin, astronomer (born 1865)

References