M62 coach bombing

1974 CE.

Shown on the map at 53.743°, -1.669°.

On 4 February 1974, a 25-pound (11 kg) bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in a coach on the M62 motorway in northern England exploded, killing twelve people (nine soldiers and three civilians) and injuring thirty-eight others aboard the vehicle. The IRA hid the bomb inside a luggage locker of the coach, which was carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members. Ten days after the bombing, 25-year-old Judith Ward was arrested in Liverpool while waiting to board a ferry to Ireland. She was later convicted of the M62 coach bombing and two other separate, non-fatal attacks and remained incarcerated until her conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1992, with the court hearing Government forensic scientists had deliberately withheld information from her defence counsel at her October 1974 trial which strongly indicated her innocence. As such, her conviction was declared unsafe. Ward was released from prison in May 1992, having served over 17 years of a sentence of life imprisonment plus thirty years.

Text from the Wikipedia article M62 coach bombing, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Everything else in 1974 CE

HistoryLayer draws the world as it was in any year from 123,000 BCE to 2026. Move the slider and the borders redraw for that year; the map carries 23,890 events, 12,790 people, 837 wars and 13,183 cities, each one readable in place. Signing in is optional and lets you keep what you find.

HistoryLayer
1914CE
World Wars
123,000 BCE2026 CE
54 stops — one per surviving map on file, evenly spaced drag the pin · ←→ steps one stop the same 54 stops by true elapsed time ↑
Map & filters
Show on the map
Filter
Colour by
Polity Empire