Story highlights Manchester Arena attack is third deadliest atrocity ever on British soil

But the UK is no stranger to terror attacks

London (CNN) The death toll in the Manchester Arena attack makes it the third deadliest terrorist atrocity on British soil, after the bombing of an airplane over Lockerbie in 1988 and the London bombings in 2005.

That the attacker went for the softest of soft targets -- children and teenagers packed into the enclosed space of a pop concert -- makes it all the more horrifying. As Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday morning, the attack "stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice."

Although Monday's atrocity was particularly shocking in nature, Manchester and the wider United Kingdom have a long memory of terror attacks. For more than 30 years from the early 1970s, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a paramilitary group, carried out multiple attacks across the UK.

The deadliest were the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974, when 21 were killed. In 1996, the IRA detonated a massive 1500-kilogram (3300-pound) bomb in a Manchester shopping center not far from Monday night's attack, injuring more than 200. The explosion destroyed buildings but a cast iron red postbox not far from the blast site remained unscathed; its image came to symbolize the resilience of the city.

This is the postbox in Corporation Street which survived the IRA bomb in 1996. A symbol that Manchester will not back down. pic.twitter.com/p4lOa6KBbV — 📻 Colin Paterson 📺 (@ColinGPaterson) May 23, 2017

Early on Tuesday morning, a picture of the same iconic postbox was shared hundreds of times on Twitter to represent how Manchester would once again remain steadfast in the face of terror.

Read More