Sunday, January 30th, 1972

So:

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain offered an extraordinary apology on Tuesday for the 1972 killings of unarmed demonstrators by British troops in Northern Ireland, saying that a long-awaited investigation into the violence had left no doubt that the shootings were "both unjustified and unjustifiable."

"On behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry," Mr. Cameron said in a speech to Parliament. "What happened should never, ever have happened."

The violent events on Jan. 30, 1972, in the Northern Irish city of Londonderry, known as Bloody Sunday, triggered three decades of bitter and sectarian strife in Northern Island and became one of the most notorious single events in the recent history of the Troubles, which claimed more than 3,600 lives.

"Too long a sacrifice

Makes a stone of the heart"

-- Yeats

I am surprised that this news brief from the New York Times somehow managed to omit the number of dead: thirteen men died instantly or shortly after the soldiers opened fire, of whom seven were teenagers. The future of Derry and Northern Ireland was transformed in a handful of minutes by what amounts to a lack of respect.