Corrections

We get things wrong sometimes, and when we do, we fix them and say so here. This log lists substantive corrections to published articles: factual errors, date or attribution fixes, and updates to disputed figures when new sourcing changes the picture. Small copyediting fixes (typos, formatting) aren't logged here.

If you spot something that needs correcting, contact us at info@provenanceafrica.com.

September 2026: On This Day archive

A manual pass through the On This Day archive: wrong dates, wrong locations, misspelled names, a misstated UN vote outcome. Disputed death tolls tended to sit on the lowest figure in circulation, usually whatever the government responsible said first, with no mention of who did it or whether anyone was ever charged.

Cameron reached the coast on 7 November 1875, not the 28th. The entry sat on 28 November, a date that traces to the 1901 Dictionary of National Biography line repeated by reference works that mirror it. Britannica and Princeton both give 7 November 1875, when Cameron arrived at Katombela on the coast of what is now Angola. The entry now sits on the 7th, and its claim has been narrowed to what Princeton states: the first traverse of tropical Africa by a European from east to west. Read the article.

The Bamako hotel attack toll was the day-of figure. The entry gave at least 19 dead in the Radisson Blu attack of November 2015, which was the lowest number reported on the day. The settled count is 20, with some 170 guests and staff taken hostage. The entry now gives that, rather than the first figure to reach the wires. Read the article.

Cyril Ramaphosa was born in Johannesburg, not Soweto. The entry said he was born in Soweto. The Presidency says he was born in Johannesburg on 17 November 1952 and that the family was moved from Western Native Township to Soweto in 1962, when he was nine; South African History Online gives Johannesburg and has him growing up in the township. The entry now distinguishes the two. Read the article.

The Fashoda entry was on a date nothing happened, and in the wrong country. The entry sat on 3 November 1898 and said France withdrew its troops from Fashoda "in present-day Sudan" that day. The withdrawal was months off, and Fashoda is now Kodok, in South Sudan, not Sudan. Britannica dates the confrontation itself to 18 September 1898, which is where the entry now sits: British and French forces facing each other at Fashoda, with France withdrawing later in the crisis. Read the article.

Bokassa died on 3 November 1996, not the 2nd. The entry sat on 2 November. Britannica and Riccardo Orizio, who met him, both give 3 November 1996, at his home in Bangui, aged 75. The entry now sits on the 3rd and says where he died. Read the article.

Ibrahim Abboud was not Sudan's first president. The entry called him the first President of Sudan. The sources read for this pass describe the general who seized power in November 1958 as leading Sudan's first military government until 1964, and as head of state - not as a president, an office that came later. The claim now says what he did. Read the article.

The Ivorian transition ran the other way round. The entry put Robert Guei's fall from power on 26 October 2000. Guei fled on 25 October, after the army and police abandoned him; the 26th is the day Laurent Gbagbo was sworn in. The entry now describes the swearing-in and dates the flight to the day before, and states the near-ten-month period of military rule it ended. Read the article.

The Yom Kippur War ceasefire was Resolution 340, not 339. The entry credited Resolution 339, adopted on 23 October, with reinforcing the ceasefire that ended the fighting. The resolution adopted on 25 October was 340, and it is the one that held: it demanded an immediate and complete ceasefire and a return to the positions held at 1650 GMT on 22 October, and Israel accepted it. Corrected. Read the article.

An unattributed "first" over Marjorie Joyner's patent. The entry called her the first Black woman to patent a permanent hair-wave machine. The sources read describe her 1928 patent (U.S. 1,693,515) and the National Archives Foundation places her only among the first African American women to receive a patent at all. The superlative is gone and the patent is named. Read the article.

Ismail al-Azhari: the entry refiled as a death. The entry sat on 20 October as a birth, a day supported only by Wikipedia and its mirrors - Britannica gives 30 October 1900 and BlackPast 26 October. Rather than assert a disputed birthday, the entry now sits on 26 August 1969, the date Britannica gives for his death, and records that he led Sudan to independence as its first prime minister and later served as head of state. Read the article.

Maurice El Mediouni was an Algerian pianist, not a pied-noir one. The entry described him as a leading figure of chaabi and "pied-noir music". The Guardian's obituary credits him with playing a key role in the development of the Algerian styles chaabi and rai, and nothing read for this pass calls him a pied-noir musician. Rewritten to the Guardian's wording. Read the article.

The Sullivan Principles were a code of conduct, not a divestment campaign. The entry said Leon Sullivan authored the Principles "pressuring US companies to divest from apartheid South Africa". Launched in 1977 with twelve corporate signatories, they were a code of conduct for companies operating in South Africa - desegregating workplaces, equal pay, Black advancement. Sullivan called for full divestment years later, from 1987. The entry now describes the code. Read the article.

Mubarak was sworn in on 14 October 1981, not elected on it. The entry, filed on 14 October, said Mubarak was elected president a week after Sadat was shot. The confirmation referendum was on 13 October 1981; what happened on the 14th was his swearing-in. The entry now describes the oath, eight days after the assassination. Read the article.

An unsupported ordinal, and a chiefly title confused with it. The entry called Poure Puobe VII "eighth president of the National House of Chiefs". That ordinal traces only to reference works that mirror each other, and the sources read for this pass describe him differently: the National House of Chiefs' own list has him acting in the post for part of 1999, and Ghanaian reporting remembers him as the Paramount Chief of Nandom, which the entry now says. Read the article.

Armand Mouyal never won an Olympic title. The entry gave him Olympic and world epee titles. His Olympic medal was bronze, in the 1956 team event; the world-championship record for him could not be pinned down to a title in the sources read, so the claim now states only the medal that is documented. Read the article.

The El Asnam earthquake toll was understated. The entry gave about 2,500 dead in the October 1980 Algerian earthquake. The reconnaissance and engineering literature records more than 2,700 casualties and about 70 percent of the city destroyed, and the final toll was later put at around 3,500. The entry now gives both figures. Read the article.

The 1790 Oran earthquake: the toll, and whose city it was. The entry called Oran an Algerian coastal city and put the dead at an estimated 3,000. In 1790 Oran was a Spanish presidio, and the modern literature estimates more than 2,000 dead, about 22 percent of its population; contemporary despatches range from near 2,000 to a reasoned 3,000. The entry now says Spanish-held and gives the range instead of a single figure. Read the article.

Jakaya Kikwete was born in 1950, not 1952. The entry carried 1952. Tanzania's President's Office gives his birth as 7 October 1950 at Msoga, and the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre agrees. The year is corrected; the office and the day were right. Read the article.

A South African general election that did not happen on that day. The entry sat on 8 October 1966 and described South Africa's first general election since becoming a republic. No election was held that day: the 1966 election was on 30 March, and the first election after the republic was on 18 October 1961. The entry now sits on 30 March 1966 and describes the election that was actually held. Read the article.

Thabo Mbeki's resignation: the entry moved to the day it took effect. The entry sat on 24 September 2008 and said he resigned that day. Parliament's own procedural record shows he submitted his resignation to the National Assembly on 21 September after the ANC decided to recall him, and that the House agreed it would take effect on 25 September, when Kgalema Motlanthe was elected to succeed him. Nothing happened on the 24th beyond his last hours in office. The entry now sits on the 25th and describes the sequence. Read the article.

Modibo Keita's presidency: the entry moved to 22 September. The entry sat on 23 September 1960. The Malian and French-language accounts read for this pass put both the proclamation of independence and Keita's assumption of the presidency on 22 September 1960, the same day the Sudanese Republic became the Republic of Mali. The entry now sits on the 22nd. Read the article.

A contested air-crash toll was stated as settled fact. The entry gave 159 dead in the September 1992 Nigerian Air Force C-130 crash at Lagos. The aviation accident record gives 159 (8 crew and 151 passengers), ThisDay reports 158, and other Nigerian accounts give 160. The entry now says the toll was reported between 158 and 160 rather than picking one figure. Read the article.

Ferhat Abbas held the wrong office on 25 September 1962. The entry said he was elected president of the provisional government when the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria was proclaimed. He had headed the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic from 1958 until August 1961, when Benyoucef Ben Khedda succeeded him; in September 1962 he was president of the country's first National Constituent Assembly. The entry now says that. Read the article.

Ambrose Alli founded one university, not several. The entry credited him, as governor of Bendel State, with founding several universities. The sources read for this pass document one, Bendel State University at Ekpoma, alongside a wider expansion of colleges and secondary schooling. The claim now names the university. Read the article.

Shyima Hall was born outside Alexandria, not in it. The entry said she was born in Alexandria. Her memoir and the academic study of it place her birth in a small town near the city, and the reporting based on her book says the same. The entry now says near Alexandria, and the unattributed description of her as a prominent activist has been dropped. Read the article.

Dongola was occupied on 23 September 1896, not the 21st. The entry sat on 21 September. Kitchener's own despatch in the London Gazette puts his main force south of Sowarat on the night of 21-22 September, with the occupation on the morning of the 23rd when the Egyptian flag was raised over the Mudiria; Churchill's The River War has the gunboat flotilla reaching the town on the 19th and the Dervishes re-occupying it on the 20th, the day before. The entry now sits on the day the town was taken. Read the article.

Thirteen African states were admitted to the UN on 20 September 1960, not sixteen. The entry said sixteen newly independent African nations were admitted in a single session, and listed Mali and Senegal among them. The UN Yearbook's record of resolutions 1476-1489 (XV) shows fourteen states admitted by acclamation that day, thirteen of them African, plus Cyprus. Senegal and Mali followed on 28 September and Nigeria on 7 October - which is where a total of sixteen African states for the whole of 1960 comes from. Rewritten. Read the article.

A "first" that belonged to someone else: Fritz Pollard. The entry said Pollard became the first African American to play professional football for a major team. Charles Follis was paid to play for the Shelby Blues from 1902, and Bobby Marshall made his league debut on 26 September 1920, two weeks before Pollard's; the Pro Football Hall of Fame itself calls Pollard one of just two African Americans in the new league. The entry now says what he was - one of the first two - and dates his signing to 1919. Read the article.

Serge Ibaka was never an NBA All-Star. The entry described him as an NBA champion and All-Star. He was never selected to an All-Star team. The claim is dropped rather than replaced, and the entry now says only what the records support. Read the article.

Freeman Mbowe no longer chairs Chadema. The entry, written in the present tense, said he chairs the party. Tundu Lissu was elected national chairperson on 22 January 2025, ending Mbowe's two decades in the post. Rewritten in the past tense. Read the article.

The Cape capitulated on 16 September 1795, not the 15th. The entry sat on 15 September. The Dutch council agreed surrender terms late on the night of the 15th, but Scientia Militaria and the SA History Timeline both date the capitulation and the start of the British occupation to 16 September. The entry now sits on the 16th. Read the article.

The Meredith admission order came from a district court, not an appeals court. The entry credited "a U.S. federal appeals court". The Fifth Circuit's own opinion records that it entered its order on 28 July 1962 and that the District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi - Judge Sidney Mize's court, which heard the case first - entered the order requiring Meredith's admission on 13 September 1962. Corrected. Read the article.

An unsupported superlative over the 1989 Cape Town march. The entry called the march "the largest anti-apartheid march in South African history". The Apartheid Museum calls it the city's biggest protest in 30 years and estimates about 30,000 marchers; the South African government's Tutu biography gives the same figure. The superlative is gone and the march is described by what the sources actually say. Read the article.

Emir Abdelkader resisted for fifteen years, not seventeen. The entry gave 17 years of resistance. The sources read for this pass date his investiture to late 1832 and his surrender to December 1847, which is fifteen years; the one source using "seventeen" also uses fifteen and eighteen in the same piece. Changed to fifteen. Read the article.

A species count attached to the wrong Smith. The entry credited Margaret Mary Smith with co-discovering hundreds of fish species. The institute she directed credits her, with Phil Heemstra, with describing three, and the large species count belongs to the revision of "Sea Fishes of Southern Africa" she co-edited and to her husband, J.L.B. Smith. The clause now says what the sources support: that she illustrated the book and directed the institute named for him. Read the article.

Ruby Bridges desegregated her school six years after her birth, and not alone. The entry said she became the first Black child to desegregate an all-white New Orleans school "a year later". She was born in 1954 and entered William Frantz Elementary on 14 November 1960, aged six, and she was one of four six-year-old girls who desegregated New Orleans public elementary schools that morning. Rewritten to say both. Read the article.

The Little Rock call-out and the turn-away were two different days. The entry put the National Guard call-out on 4 September 1957. Governor Orval Faubus announced on television on 2 September that he had called the Guard out; 4 September is the day the troops, already deployed, turned the nine students away. Rewritten to describe both. Read the article.

Operation OAU was a Nigerian offensive, not an OAU peace initiative. The entry described Operation OAU as a peace initiative of the Organisation of African Unity. It was the Nigerian 3 Marine Commando Division offensive that began in September 1968, named after its objectives Owerri, Aba and Umuahia. The OAU did run a separate mediation effort that year, which the entry was not describing. Rewritten. Read the article.

The Tarasin landslide toll was attributed, not asserted. The entry gave more than 1,000 killed as settled fact. That figure is the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army's own, and it is the group that controlled the village; the reporting read for this pass says the area was largely inaccessible and the toll unverified. The entry now attributes the figure. Read the article.

John Kani was born in 1943, not 1942. The entry gave 1942. Stellenbosch University's ESAT and South African History Online both give 30 August 1943 in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, and ESAT notes one source giving 30 November 1942. The year is corrected. Read the article.

Reuben Kamanga's birth date: the entry moved to 2 August. The entry sat on 26 August, a date carried only by Wikipedia, whose own citation for it says it was imported from English Wikipedia. Zambia's National Road Fund Agency gives his birth as 2 August 1929 at Chitandika village, Chipata District, which is where the entry now sits. The two dates are three weeks apart and neither has a second independent source; the Zambian government publication is the stronger of the two. Read the article.

The "first political party" claim about Bankole-Bright was withdrawn. The entry said Bankole-Bright helped found "Sierra Leone's first political party". What he headed was the National Council of Sierra Leone, a Krio party formed around 1950; the Sierra Leone People's Party followed in 1951. The sources read do not settle which of the two counts as the first party, so the superlative was removed and the party named instead. Read the article.

An al-Qaeda founding entry gave a location no readable source supports. The entry placed the 1988 meeting that founded al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The 9/11 Commission Report supports an August 1988 founding but gives no location, and the accounts that do give one put the founding meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan. Rather than swap one unread location for another, the location has been dropped. Read the article.

Rhodesia was barred from the Munich Games in 1972, not expelled from the IOC. The entry said Rhodesia "was expelled from the International Olympic Committee". On 22 August 1972 the IOC voted 36 to 31, with three abstentions, to withdraw Rhodesia's invitation to the Munich Games after African nations threatened a boycott. The expulsion came in 1975. Rewritten to describe the vote that actually happened that day. Read the article.

Hassan II: the second attempt on his life came thirteen months after the first. The entry called the air-force attack of 16 August 1972 "one of two attempts on his life that year". The earlier attempt was the Skhirat attack of 10 July 1971, thirteen months before. Rewritten. Read the article.

The Pretoria summit on the Congo war was 23 August 1998, not the 21st. The entry sat on 21 August. The SADC summit that Nelson Mandela convened in Pretoria, which called for an immediate ceasefire and mandated him to organise it with the OAU, took place on 23 August 1998; on the 21st he had only publicly called for such a summit. Moved. Read the article.

Zimbabwe was outside the United Nations for four months, not five. The entry said Zimbabwe joined the UN "five months after gaining independence from Britain". Independence came on 18 April 1980 and admission to the UN on 25 August 1980, a gap of about four months. Fixed. Read the article.

Eugene Bullard's posthumous commission was 14 September 1994. The entry sat on 23 August 1994, the anniversary of the day the US Army Air Service rejected him in 1917. The Air Force's own record and the Smithsonian place his posthumous appointment to second lieutenant on 14 September 1994. Moved. Read the article.

Louis IX's successor was his son, not his brother Charles. The entry called Charles I of Naples Louis IX's "brother and successor". Charles was his brother; Louis was succeeded as king by his son Philip III. The claim that Charles was forced into peace talks went with it, because no readable source for it could be produced. Rewritten to record the death and the crusade. Read the article.

Fatima Meer's 1981 banning was a renewal, not a second ban. The entry said Meer "was banned for a second time" on this date. Her banning history runs back to the 1950s, and the order in force that July had been issued on 22 July 1976 for five years, which South African History Online's own list of banned people records as expiring on 31/7/1981. The 1981 order extended it by a further five years, as SAHO's general timeline, the O'Malley Archives chronology, a University of KwaZulu-Natal tribute and Amnesty International's 1982 annual report all describe it. Rewritten to say the order was renewed. The earlier wording had followed the title of a SAHO dated-event page reading "Fatima Meer is banned for a second time", which SAHO's own timeline and banned-people list both contradict. Read the article.

South Kasai's secession was declared 8 August, not 9. The entry sat on 9 August 1960. Three independent sources, none of them Wikipedia, date Albert Kalonji's declaration of South Kasai's secession to 8 August. Moved. Read the article.

Otema Allimadi was Uganda's prime minister once, not twice. The entry said he "twice served as prime minister." Both sources describe one term as prime minister, 1980 to 1985, preceded by a separate term as foreign minister. Fixed. Read the article.

Slavery at the Cape ended four months later than the rest of the Empire. The entry grouped the Cape Colony with colonies where the Slavery Abolition Act took effect 1 August 1834. Two South African sources say the Cape was a delayed exception, with abolition there taking effect 1 December 1834. Fixed. Read the article.

A Sinai withdrawal entry described the wrong milestone. The entry said Israel "began" its withdrawal from Sinai on this date. The withdrawal actually began months earlier, in April 1979; July 25 was the second stage, the handover of a 6,000-square-kilometre stretch of western Sinai including the Bir Naseb oasis. Rewritten to describe that handover specifically. (A JTA wire report reproduced two days later in a print newspaper names the ceremony as happening "Wednesday," which was July 25, not July 26 as the online JTA archive's own dateline suggests -- the date was correct all along, only the description was wrong.) Read the article.

A 1980 Johannesburg strike's "largest ever" claim was too broad. The entry said 10,000-plus municipal workers staged the largest strike in Johannesburg's history. The much larger 1946 African Mine Workers' Union strike, with over 60,000 workers, predates it in the same metro area. Narrowed to the largest municipal workers' strike specifically, which is what the sourcing actually supports. Read the article.

Abeid Karume's birthplace on Pemba Island isn't supported. The entry named Pemba Island as Karume's birthplace. Two independent sources instead point to Unguja, Zanzibar's main island, or possibly outside the archipelago entirely, and neither supports Pemba specifically. Narrowed to Zanzibar Sultanate, since the specific island is disputed. Read the article.

John Garang died six months after the peace deal, not weeks. The entry said Garang died "weeks after signing a peace deal" ending Sudan's civil war. That deal was signed 9 January 2005, more than six months before his 30 July 2005 death. What happened three weeks earlier was his swearing-in as Sudan's first vice president under that deal, on 9 July. Fixed to describe what actually happened three weeks out. Read the article.

The Slocum massacre toll was stated as settled fact. It isn't. The entry gave "more than 100" killed with no attribution. The only official count, the 1910 grand jury investigation, documented eight confirmed dead. Researchers who have since revisited the case believe the real toll was much higher, bodies were never fully recovered from the woods, and estimates run as high as 200, but there is no settled number. Rewritten to give the official count and note the higher estimates, rather than stating one figure as fact. Read the article.

Oliver Tambo left South Africa in March 1960, not July. The entry had Tambo leaving in July 1960. A British parliamentary debate from 31 March 1960 already had him arrived in the Bechuanaland Protectorate by then, and South African History Online dates his departure to 28 March, days after the Sharpeville massacre. Moved four months. Read the article.

French forces retook Bizerte on 23 July 1961, not the 20th. The entry had the siege ending 20 July. Three independent accounts place the ceasefire and French takeover on 23 July, with fighting still underway on the 20th. Moved. Read the article.

A South African advance in Namibia was filed a month late. The entry dated an outflanking advance toward Grootfontein and Tsumeb to 20 July 1915. The same sources place the German surrender at Khorab on 9 July, eleven days earlier, so an advance toward those towns in July is impossible. Moved to June. Read the article.

Alpha Condé survived an assassination attempt, not a coup. The entry called the 2011 attack on Condé's residence both an assassination attempt and a coup bid. Condé himself, in contemporary reporting, drew the line: "This was an assassination attempt," not a coup d'etat, and an analysis of the incident found no coordinated military effort to seize state institutions. Fixed. Read the article.

Zolani Mahola was born in Port Elizabeth, not Bhisho. The entry gave Bhisho as her birthplace. Two sources place her birth in Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha); Bhisho only enters her life story later, as a place she lived with her father as a teenager. Fixed. Read the article.

A French relief force broke the siege at Fort Médine, not Kayes. The entry had Faidherbe relieving French forces at Kayes, Senegal. The besieged post was Fort Médine, a separate fort about 12 km away on the Senegal River. Fixed. Read the article.

Painter Florence Fuller died near Sydney, not in Melbourne. The entry gave Melbourne, where she spent her early career. Both sources place her death at Gladesville, in the Sydney area, where she had been committed. Fixed. Read the article.

Stellaland's capital is in North West province, not Northern Cape. The entry placed the former Boer Republic of Stellaland in what is now South Africa's Northern Cape. Its capital, Vryburg, has sat in North West province since the 1994 provincial reorganization. Fixed. Read the article.

The Carver National Monument was dedicated in 1953, not 1955. The entry gave 1955. The National Park Service's own history and the State Historical Society of Missouri both date the dedication ceremony to 1953, a decade after Congress created the monument by law in 1943. No 1955 event exists in either source. Fixed, and "national park" corrected to "national monument," its actual designation. Read the article.

The Security Council did not admit South Sudan to the UN, it recommended admission. The entry said the Security Council's Resolution 1999 admitted South Sudan as a member state. Under the UN Charter only the General Assembly can admit a new member; the Council can only recommend it. The Assembly did that the next day, July 14, 2011, making South Sudan the 193rd member. Fixed to describe what the resolution actually did. Read the article.

Somalia never formally declared war on Ethiopia in 1977. The entry said Somalia "declared war" on Ethiopia to open the Ogaden War. No formal declaration occurred: Ethiopia's own foreign minister called it an "undeclared war" in a July 1977 cable, and Somalia spent months publicly denying its regular army, rather than WSLF guerrillas, was involved. Fixed to "invaded ... without a formal declaration of war." Read the article.

The AWB was founded in Heidelberg, not Ventersdorp, and probably on 3 July. The entry said the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging was founded in Ventersdorp on 7 July 1973. Two independent sources put the founding in a garage in Heidelberg, Transvaal, Ventersdorp was where the group later based itself and where founder Eugène Terre'Blanche farmed. One of those sources, South African History Online's biography of Terre'Blanche, also gives the date as 3 July, not 7 July. No source found gave a fully sourced day-level citation, but 3 July is the only dated claim tied to an institutional archive rather than an uncited encyclopedia line, so the entry is moved there. Location fixed either way. Read the article.

A church-council meeting with P.W. Botha was filed a month early. The entry sat on 7 July 1985. South African History Online dates the South African Council of Churches' meeting with Botha to 7 August 1985, and the timeline backs that up: the emergency regulations the meeting was called to discuss were not declared until 20 July 1985, so a 7 July meeting could not have addressed them. Moved. Read the article.

The Hamburg massacre death toll is disputed, not six exactly. The entry stated six African Americans were killed in the 1876 Hamburg massacre. Three independent accounts read this session do not agree with each other: one counts six, one counts seven, and the memorial to the black victims names seven. The entry now says "six or seven," rather than stating a single figure none of the sources fully support. Read the article.

Ntare V's birth name was misspelled. The entry named the prince who deposed King Mwambutsa IV of Burundi in 1966 "Charles Ndizi." Two independent sources give his name as Charles Ndizeye, the name he held before taking the throne as Ntare V. Fixed. Read the article.

Germany's 5 July 1884 treaty was with Togo, not Cameroon. The entry said Germany took possession of Cameroon that day. The protection treaty signed 5 July 1884 was with King Mlapa III's representatives at Baguida, establishing the Togoland protectorate. Germany's actual Cameroon treaty, with the Duala kings Bell and Akwa, was signed a week later, 12 July 1884, at Douala. Fixed to name Togo, the commissioner and the place. Read the article.

Diogo Cão reached the Congo River in 1482, not 1484. The entry gave 1484. Every source read places the discovery in 1482; 1484 is when Cão returned to Lisbon and was ennobled for the voyage, not when he reached the river. No source gives an exact day, so the entry now states the year only. Read the article.

Muizenberg was fought in August, not July. The entry sat on 7 July 1795. Two independent sources place the landing and battle at Muizenberg on 7 August 1795. Moved. Read the article.

The Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement: Zambia was never a signatory. The entry listed Zambia among the seven countries that signed the 1999 ceasefire. Contemporary reporting names six signatories: the DRC, Angola, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Zambia's President Frederick Chiluba hosted and witnessed the signing at Lusaka but did not sign as a party. Fixed. Read the article.

An EgyptAir crash was filed on the wrong date, with the wrong cause. The entry said a Tupolev Tu-154 crashed shortly after takeoff on 10 July 1974. The only readable accident record found dates it to 9 July, and describes a training flight that stalled during an overshoot after a low pass, not a takeoff crash. Moved, and the description corrected. Read the article.

A Neanderthal DNA report conflated two very different ages. The entry said the 1997 mitochondrial DNA study placed the African common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. That range is roughly when modern humans are thought to have arisen in Africa. Contemporary reporting on the study itself put the Neanderthal-modern human common ancestor far earlier, on the order of half a million years or more. Fixed. Read the article.

Neville Alexander's arrest was filed a day early. The entry sat on 11 July 1963. Both sources read give 12 July. Moved. Read the article.

Eden's resignation: the arithmetic was off by a month. The entry said Anthony Eden resigned three months after the failed Suez intervention. The ceasefire was 6-7 November 1956; his resignation was 9 January 1957. That is two months, not three, however the start of “failure” is dated. Fixed. Read the article.

Tete funeral poisoning: the casualty figures were added together twice. The entry said the 2015 poisoning “killed 75 people and sickened over 230 others,” which reads as roughly 305 total. The peer-reviewed investigation's 234 is the total sickened, including the 75 who died. The entry's own cited Al Jazeera source, read directly, only reported 56 dead as of its publication date, so it did not even support the 75 already in the text. The entry now gives 234 sickened, the early reported toll of 56, and the peer-reviewed study's final toll of 75. Read the article.

Elspeth Huxley was not Kenyan-born. The entry called her a “Kenyan-born” writer. She was born in London and moved to Kenya as a young child. Fixed. Read the article.

Biafra's surrender: the war lasted 30 months, not 32. The entry said the Nigerian Civil War ran 32 months before the January 1970 surrender. From the war's start on 6 July 1967, that is 30 months, confirmed by both date arithmetic and a peer-reviewed source that twice calls it a thirty-month war. Fixed. Read the article.

The Massacre of the Sixty cited a report that never mentions it. The entry's sole source was a 1994 Human Rights Watch PDF. Read in full, it contains no mention of Aklilu Habte-Wold and no reference to this event at all; it is the wrong document. HRW's actual 1991 report on the period, Evil Days, does cover it and puts the toll at 60, not the 58 the entry gave; a peer-reviewed study puts it at 59. Neither figure is 58. The citation now points to the report that actually discusses the massacre, and the toll gives both figures. Read the article.

Alexandria church bombing: the toll split between sources, and the entry took the higher one. The entry said 23 were killed in the 2011 New Year bombing outside a Coptic church in Alexandria. Al Jazeera's report the same day and the United Nations Secretary-General's statement two days later both give 21; 23 traces mainly to the entry's own source and pages that appear to draw on Wikipedia. No authoritative final Egyptian count settles it, so the entry now gives 21 as the better-corroborated figure and notes that some accounts put it at 23. Read the article.

Léopoldville 1959: the toll was the colonial government's first and lowest count. The entry gave the Congolese dead as mid-thirties to fifty. That is the Belgian administration's own initial count, 47. The same administration revised it upward during the crisis, to 71, then about 100, then 200, and a Congolese historian puts the toll at 250 to 300. The entry now gives that range. It also hedged between two or three days of unrest; no source found gives three, so it now says two to four, matching the two sources that do give a figure. Read the article.

The January 1961 Algeria referendum: 92 per cent turnout belonged to a different vote. The entry said the self-determination referendum passed on a 92 per cent turnout. The official results give about 74 per cent of registered voters nationally, 76 per cent in metropolitan France and only 59 per cent in Algeria, where the FLN had urged a boycott. Ninety-two per cent appears to belong to Algeria's own independence referendum the following year. The entry now gives the metropolitan and Algerian turnout figures separately, since the boycott made them diverge sharply. Read the article.

Baixa de Cassanje was filed a day early, and had no casualty figure at all. The entry sat on 3 January and said the revolt “escalated” that day, with 4 January only the day it “spread.” Two archive-based studies and the entry’s own Lisbon museum source all put the first open incidents on 4 January, not the 3rd. Moved, and rewritten to name the company and the district. It also gave no casualty figure, though the sources cited already contain one: the Portuguese count at the time was 243, which historian Aharon de Grassi calls a deliberately low partial figure, and missionary accounts put it at 5,000 to 10,000. Both are now in the entry, attributed. Read the article.

Abidjan stadium crush: the toll was the first number given, not the final one. The entry said the 2013 New Year stampede at Félix Houphouët-Boigny Stadium killed at least 60 and injured about 200. Sixty was the preliminary figure Ivorian officials gave on the day; by the following week they were giving 64, and reporting at the time put the injured above 200. Both are fixed. Read the article.

Tondibi: an unsourced detail was dropped, and the chronicle's own date noted. The entry said Judar Pasha’s force was about 4,000, half of them arquebusiers, with English cannon. Neither the UNESCO General History of Africa nor the Tarikh es-Soudan, the main contemporary chronicle, supports the arquebusier proportion or the English cannon; both give the force as 3,000 to 4,000 with no breakdown. That detail is gone. The entry also stated 13 March as though the date were settled. Modern historians do put the battle in March, but the Tarikh es-Soudan itself dates it a month later, and the entry now says so. Read the article.

17 October 1961: the entry's 1998 figure did not come from the 1998 report. The entry said France acknowledged 40 dead in 1998. The government's own 1998 archive review, the Mandelkern report, gives seven documented deaths plus 25 further bodies it could not rule out, and concludes only that the toll was in the tens; it does not state 40. That figure traces to an English Wikipedia footnote citing a 1991 book, which cannot be the source of a report written seven years later. The entry now gives the Mandelkern report's actual figures and cites historians House and MacMaster's estimate of well over 120 killed across the Paris region, rather than an unattributed 120 to 300. Read the article.

LRA Christmas attacks: two different periods were paired as one figure. The entry said Human Rights Watch documented more than 865 killed and about 476 children abducted over Christmas 2008. The 865 figure is HRW's count for the Christmas attacks alone; the 476 is HRW's cumulative count for September 2008 through January 2009, a longer period. The entry now pairs the Christmas toll with HRW's Christmas-period abduction figure, at least 160. It also overstated HRW's finding on civilian protection, which said planners lacked an adequate contingency plan rather than made no provision at all; reworded to match. Read the article.

Guinea stadium massacre: 156 was killed or disappeared, not killed. The entry said the UN inquiry found 156 people killed. The Commission’s report confirms 156 people killed or disappeared: 67 whose bodies were returned, 40 seen dead whose bodies vanished, and 49 last seen in the stadium. It adds that the true number is probably higher. The entry also said the junta acknowledged 57 dead; that was its first figure, and the tally it gave the inquiry was 63. Both are fixed. Read the article.

Mogadishu graduation bombing: three of the figures were the lowest available. The entry said two journalists died and more than 40 were wounded, and stated as fact that the bomber was dressed as a woman. The BBC and the Committee to Protect Journalists name three journalists among the dead, and the BBC puts the wounded at more than 60. The disguise was the information minister’s claim on the day and is now attributed to him. The death toll is given as reported that day, at least 22, and as later put, 25. Read the article.

Tana Delta: the toll and the displacement figure did not match the Kenyan inquiry. The entry said 54 died at Riketa in 2012 and 6,000 were displaced, and called the attack the start of the fighting. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, working from the Red Cross count, gives at least 52 dead at Riketa and nearly 20,000 displaced by September, and documents attacks from April onward, so Riketa was the deadliest attack rather than the first. The entry now gives both counts with their sources and drops the claim that it began the violence. Read the article.

Sidi Hamed: the entry carried the state’s floor. It said more than 100 civilians were killed. That is the interior ministry’s count of 103, which Human Rights Watch treated as a floor. Reuters reported at the time that El Watan and Liberté, citing survivors, put the dead at about 400, which the ministry denied. The entry now gives both, attributed. Worldcrunch, a translation aggregator, is dropped as a source. Read the article.

Macías Nguema: the toll figures were unattributed and did not match the cited source. The entry said more than 50,000 were killed and 125,000 fled under Macías. Its own cited source, BlackPast, gives nearly 80,000 killed and no exile figure; the International Commission of Jurists’ trial observer put the exiles at about 100,000. The entry now gives the range and attributes the population figure, and adds that the tribunal’s own list named 474 victims, which its president said was far from the true number. Read the article.

Lugard did not take office five days later. The entry said Frederick Lugard took office as high commissioner of Northern Nigeria five days after the 1 January 1900 handover. Lugard’s own report to the Colonial Office says he took over from the Royal Niger Company and hoisted the Union flag at Lokoja at 7.20 that morning. The 6 January date appears only in an uncited Wikipedia infobox. Fixed. Read the article.

Abu Inan Faris was filed ten months early. The Marinid sultan’s death sat on 10 January 1358. Ibn Khaldun, who was in Fez at the time, places the vizier’s coup on Wednesday 24 Dhu al-Hijja 759, which the Encyclopaedia of Islam converts to 27 November 1358, with the sultan’s death two days later. Dhu al-Hijja is the last month of the Islamic year, and 759 ended in early December 1358, so its final month cannot fall in January; the date looks like a calendar slip that New World Encyclopedia carried and we copied. The entry has moved to 27 November, names the vizier, and now says Ibn Khaldun recorded the strangling as a report rather than as something he saw. New World Encyclopedia is dropped as a source. Read the article.

Benin’s Vodun Day: wrong year, and the state never named a religion. The entry said Benin’s government recognised Vodun as a national religion on 10 January 1996. We read the statute. Law 97-031, promulgated on 20 August 1997, makes 10 January a paid holiday for the country’s traditional religions and names no religion; the constitution keeps the state secular. The day itself was first declared under President Soglo after the Ouidah 92 festival, and no source we could read puts anything on 10 January 1996. The entry now sits on the promulgation date, says what the law actually did, and notes that a 2024 law moved the holiday to the second Friday of January. GRIOT Magazine, which carried the 1996 claim, is dropped as a source. Read the article.

Coalbrook: two figures traced only to Wikipedia. The entry said some 900 pillars caved in about 180 metres underground. The refereed account in the Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, working from the Government Mining Engineer’s report, gives the depth of the collapsed seam as 137 metres and the collapse area as 324 hectares, with no pillar count. Neither 900 nor 180 could be traced to any primary or scholarly source. The entry now uses the refereed figures and gives both death tolls with their sources: 437 from the government inquiry, 435 from contemporary reports. Read the article.

Sierra Leone: the disarmament count was below every source. The entry said around 45,000 fighters were disarmed in the process that closed the war in January 2002. The UN Secretary-General’s report gives 47,076 for the final phase; PBS reported more than 47,500 and the Congressional Research Service 46,500. Nothing we read supports 45,000. The entry now gives the UN figure. Read the article.

Iva Valley: the toll was counted twice. The entry said police killed 21 miners and a bystander, which reads as 22 dead. The Colonial Office telegrams give 20 dead on the day and one of the wounded who died later, 21 in all, and Al Jazeera gives 20 miners plus one bystander, also 21. The bystander is inside the 21, not on top of it. Fixed. Read the article.

Simon Mann was on the tarmac, not on the plane. The entry said he was arrested aboard a plane bound for Equatorial Guinea. The Telegraph’s obituary has him already in Harare, having flown ahead to buy the weapons, when the Boeing 727 carrying the other men landed. Some wire accounts do put him on the aircraft, so the earlier wording was not invented, but the detailed accounts agree he met it. The entry now says so, and describes his cause of death as reported rather than confirmed. Read the article.

Yohannes IV was filed nine days early. The entry sat on 12 January. The chronicle date is 13 Terr 1864 in the Ethiopian calendar, which is 21 January 1872, and both an Aethiopica study of the coronation rite and Britannica give 21 January. The 12 January reading appears to come from taking the Ethiopian day number as a Gregorian one. The entry has moved. It also claimed this was the first coronation at Aksum since Fasilides in 1632; Iyasu I was crowned there in the 1690s, and 1632 is Fasilides’s accession, not his Aksum coronation. Both claims are gone. Read the article.

Sachangwan: both fire tolls were the lowest in circulation. The entry said the 2009 tanker fire killed at least 113 and the Nairobi supermarket fire three days earlier about 25. Both were early running counts. The Red Cross’s final report puts the tanker fire at 140 dead, and a review of hospital records by a visiting burn team at 131. For the supermarket fire the Red Cross says at least 29, and the same team counted 46 once hospital deaths were included. The entry now gives the figures with who produced them. Read the article.

Lagos armoury explosion: 1,100 was the number missing, not dead. The entry said at least 1,100 were killed and more than 20,000 displaced. In the contemporary record 1,100 is the number the Nigerian Red Cross listed as missing. The government confirmed more than 600 dead in the first week, Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu spoke of over 1,000 a year later, and Nigerian newspapers at the time put it above 2,000. The Red Cross registered about 12,000 people as displaced, not 20,000. The entry now gives that range, and names the two canals, Oke-Afa and Pako, rather than one. Read the article.

Philippeville: the casualty breakdown was wrong and a figure was misattributed. The entry said the August 1955 attacks killed 123 civilians, 71 of them French. Benjamin Stora’s study of the massacres gives the French government general’s definitive count as 123 dead in total: 71 European civilians, 21 Muslim civilians and 31 police and soldiers. So 123 was not a civilian figure, and the 21 Muslim dead were French nationals too. The entry also attributed the 12,000 figure for Algerian dead to the FLN and The Times. Stora traces it to the Algerian side alone; we could not find The Times giving it. And it said the FLN had until then confined itself to military and government targets, which no source we read supports. The entry now carries the official breakdown, the FLN figure, and Stora’s judgment that the truth sits roughly halfway between. Read the article.

El Adde: the toll was unattributed and below every well sourced figure. The entry gave an estimated 150 Kenyan soldiers killed at El Adde in 2016 with no attribution. Kenya never published a figure. Somalia’s president said 180 or close to 200, a community leader told the BBC he counted about 190 bodies, two officials familiar with the recovery told CNN at least 141, and al-Shabaab claimed about 100. The entry now gives all four with their sources. Read the article.

Guinea 2007: the unions did not demand that Conté resign. The entry said the general strike began with unions demanding President Lansana Conté’s resignation. Human Rights Watch, reading the strike notice, records the demands as a consensus prime minister with real power over the government, renegotiation of mining, fishing and forestry contracts, and prosecution of officials accused of embezzlement. They wanted him to hand over the running of government, not to leave office. The entry now states the actual demands and adds the health ministry’s count of 129 dead and 1,764 wounded, with Human Rights Watch’s caution that the real toll was probably higher. The Global Nonviolent Action Database, which carried the resignation claim, has been dropped as a source. Read the article.

Idi Amin: Obote was not at the summit, and Amin did not say “president”. The entry said the January 1971 coup deposed Milton Obote while he was at a Commonwealth summit in Singapore. The summit ran from 14 to 22 January; the coup came on the 25th, as he flew home. It also said Amin declared himself president. The Guardian’s dispatch from Kampala on the day has him proclaiming himself Supreme Commander and Head of State, dissolving parliament and taking the defence ministry; the oath of office came five days later. Both are fixed, and History.com, which carried the summit claim, has been dropped as a source. Read the article.

Sudan’s September Laws: “without a parliamentary vote” was too strong. The 1983 laws were promulgated as provisional orders under the president’s power to legislate when the People’s Assembly was not sitting, and took effect on promulgation, which supports the entry’s “overnight”. But a ratifying vote did follow. The Assembly could not amend a provisional order, only approve or reject it whole, and it approved. The entry now says so. Read the article.

Gatumba: the entry carried the lower of two published tolls. It said at least 152 Congolese refugees were killed at the Gatumba camp in Burundi in August 2004, which is Human Rights Watch’s count. Researchers at Clark University put the dead at 166. The entry now gives both figures and attributes each, and states the 106 wounded rather than “more than 100”. Read the article.

Three entries were in the present tense, and one had a broken word. We reported earlier in this pass that a scan for present-tense entries across the archive returned nothing. That was wrong: the pattern required the verb to follow “is” directly, so anything with an adverb between them slipped through. Rerunning it properly found three. Isaac Woodard “is severely beaten and blinded”. The Yekatit 12 entry “Ethiopian nationalists attempt to assassinate”, which also ended on the words “triggering brutal reprisal massacred”, a mangled word left by an earlier tense conversion. And the 1966 Ghana coup entry mixing tenses inside one sentence, “overthrew … while he is abroad”. All three are fixed.

Yekatit 12: the entry recorded the assassination attempt but not the massacre. It described Ethiopian nationalists attempting to kill the Italian viceroy Graziani and stopped there. Two Eritreans threw grenades at him, wounding him and killing seven. Italian forces and blackshirts then spent three days killing Ethiopians across Addis Ababa. Ethiopian sources put the dead at 30,000, Ian Campbell’s 2017 study at about 19,200 or a fifth of the city, and other estimates from 1,400. Read the article.

Isaac Woodard: the entry stopped at the beating. Police chief Lynwood Shull drove the end of a blackjack into Woodard’s eyes and blinded him for life. Shull was charged with violating Woodard’s civil rights, tried before an all-white jury, and acquitted. The case pushed President Truman toward the first federal civil rights measures. Read the article.

Idriss Déby: we gave the army’s account as fact. The entry said Déby died from wounds sustained while visiting troops fighting rebels on the front line, and called him one of the few sitting heads of state killed in combat. That is the Chadian army’s version. No details of his death were ever released, published accounts differ substantially, and rebels were later put on trial over the killing. The entry now attributes the account rather than asserting it, and the superlative, which rested on it, has been removed. Read the article.

Six colonial engagements were missing the casualty ratio. Arogee, Ulundi, Kambula, Tel el-Kebir, Abu Klea and Tondibi were all written as outcomes without figures. Arogee: 700 Ethiopian dead and 1,200 wounded against two British killed. Tel el-Kebir: about 2,000 Egyptians against 57 British. Ulundi: 473 Zulu against thirteen to eighteen. Kambula: between 758 and 2,000 against 29. Abu Klea: about 1,100 Mahdists against 74. None of the entries was wrong; each omitted the figure that describes what happened. Read the article.

A Rwanda entry has been removed as unverifiable. An entry dated 10 December 1994 said a UN military advisor had recommended that the UNAMIR peacekeeping force in Rwanda stand down, “months before the 1994 genocide began”. The genocide began in April 1994, eight months earlier, so the entry contradicted its own date, and nothing on 10 December in either 1993 or 1994 matches the claim. Human Rights Watch’s day-by-day chronology of the warnings to UNAMIR has entries for 1, 2, 3, 8 and 17 to 28 December 1993 and nothing resembling it. Rather than guess which event it garbled, we have removed it.

Sétif and Guelma: “hundreds” was below every published estimate. We wrote that French colonial forces killed hundreds of Algerian civilians. French authorities themselves first counted 1,020. Algerian nationalists said 45,000 and independent Algeria adopted that figure. Historians generally put it between 8,000 and 20,000, and American intelligence at the time reported 30,000. The entry now gives the range and says who produced each number. Read the article.

The Khartoum massacre: “scores”, and the state’s own denial. We had security forces killing scores of protesters. More than a hundred were killed by most counts, at least forty bodies were recovered from the Nile and doctors recorded more than seventy rapes. The committee appointed by the ruling military council said 87 had died and that no rapes had taken place, which the entry now records. Read the article.

Cassinga: the toll, and a description that took one side. We had several hundred killed at what the entry called a refugee camp. Angola’s count is 624 dead and 611 wounded, including 167 women and 298 children and teenagers. What the place was has never been settled: South Africa said a SWAPO military headquarters, SWAPO said a refugee camp, and a UN report described somewhere holding both. The entry now says so rather than choosing. Read the article.

The Shell House massacre: nineteen, and what followed. We had dozens of IFP marchers killed. Nineteen died at Shell House and 53 across Johannesburg that day. The Nugent commission found the shooting unjustified, Nelson Mandela said in 1995 that he had given the order to defend the building even if people had to be killed, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission granted amnesty to eleven of those involved. Read the article.

The Battle of Mogadishu: the Somali dead are disputed. We had eighteen US soldiers and hundreds of Somalis. The Somali figure runs from Aidid’s 315, which the Red Cross called plausible, through the US task force’s estimate of 300 to 500, to counts as high as 1,500. The entry now gives the range and attributes it. Read the article.

The Atlanta race massacre began on 22 September. The entry sat on 24 September. The mobs formed on the evening of the 22nd, after the papers ran unsubstantiated reports of Black men assaulting white women, and the violence ran over the following days. The entry has moved, and “dozens” has become the actual range: 25 to 40 Black people killed by most estimates, unofficial counts from 10 to 100, and two white people. Read the article.

The Pya-Hodo massacre: wrong force, and twenty rather than dozens. We wrote that Togolese colonial police killed dozens of demonstrators. It was the French colonial army, and twenty people were killed. The crowd had gathered at the Hoda market over the arrest of the nationalist Bouyo Moukpé. Read the article.

The Soweto uprising had no death toll in it. The entry described the shooting without saying how many died. The official figure for the uprising was 176. The government’s own Cillie Commission found 575 dead, 451 of them from police action, and 3,907 injured. Both figures have been disputed as too low. Read the article.

The Yelwa massacre was not two-sided. We described days of sectarian violence between Christian and Muslim communities that killed hundreds. About 630 Muslim residents were killed by armed fighters of the mainly Christian Tarok, in reprisal for earlier attacks on Tarok villagers, and reprisals against Christians followed in Kano. Human Rights Watch counted more than 700 dead across the cycle that began in February. Read the article.

The Vaal uprising: who was killed, and by whom. We had dozens killed as police clashed with residents. Between 26 and 31 people died within days and about 300 were injured. Three of the dead were town councillors killed by crowds, including the deputy mayor Kuzwayo Dlamini, and six people were later sentenced to death for that killing as the Sharpeville Six. Read the article.

The Kwara boat sank on 12 June, and the entry was thin on why. We had it on 13 June. The boat went down between three and four in the morning on the 12th. About 250 people were aboard, crowded on because heavy rain had stranded them after a wedding, and the hull broke in two on a submerged tree. At least 106 drowned and 144 were pulled out alive. The entry has moved. Read the article.

The Hwange elephant poisoning: 41 was the first count. We had at least 41 elephants. That figure was from the first days. It rose to 81, then 91, and a later assessment identified 105 carcasses inside the park and 30 outside. Read the article.

MV Le Joola: the recorded toll is 1,863. We had more than 1,800. The recorded figure is 1,863 dead with 65 survivors, and victims’ associations put it above 2,000. The entry now also carries what made it a disaster: licensed for 536 passengers and officially carrying 1,928. Senegal closed its inquiry by blaming the captain, who died in the sinking, a French investigation naming seven Senegalese officials was dropped for want of jurisdiction, nobody was prosecuted and the wreck was never raised. Read the article.

The Brazzaville arms depot explosion: at least 250 was low. Trial records put the dead at 282 and other counts at 300 or more, with about 2,300 injured and 17,000 people left without homes. Read the article.

The Okobie tanker explosion: 95 at the scene, 121 in the end. We had more than 100. Rescuers recovered 95 bodies at the site and the toll was later put at 121. The entry now also says why so many died: the tanker spilled into a ditch, hundreds came to collect the petrol, and it exploded about forty minutes later. Read the article.

The Mogadishu education ministry bombings: 121, not more than 100. The toll reached 121 with more than 300 wounded. The entry described “a busy junction”; the bombs went off outside the education ministry at the Zobe junction while secondary school students and their families were collecting graduation certificates. Al-Shabaab claimed the attack. Read the article.

Tropical Storm Domoina: 242 deaths, not 214. The toll across Madagascar, Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa was 242, with about $200 million in damage. Read the article.

Tropical Storm Irina: the deaths were not all in Madagascar. We wrote that Irina killed more than 75 people as it passed through Madagascar. The 77 dead were spread across Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa. Read the article.

Idi Amin: 300,000 was given as settled. The entry stated an estimated 300,000 killed as fact. The International Commission of Jurists put it at not fewer than 80,000 and probably around 300,000; a count compiled by exile groups with Amnesty International gave 500,000. The entry now gives both, and records that he died without ever being tried. Read the article.

The Second Congo War: the death toll is disputed. We called it the deadliest war in modern African history without saying that the claim rests on the International Rescue Committee’s estimate of 5.4 million excess deaths, which the Human Security Report Project disputed on method and baseline. Both are now in the entry, along with the fact that most of those deaths were from disease and hunger rather than fighting. Read the article.

The December 2013 Kinshasa attacks: who the attackers were. We described anti-government forces attacking government buildings and clashes that killed over 100 people. The attackers were followers of the preacher Paul Joseph Mukungubila, and the dead were overwhelmingly theirs: about 54 in Kinshasa and 47 more in clashes at Lubumbashi and Kolwezi. Read the article.

The Congo peacekeepers were not the UN’s first. The entry said the first United Nations peacekeeping troops arrived in Léopoldville in July 1960. UNEF I had gone to Sinai in 1956 and UNTSO to the Middle East in 1948. These were the first troops of the Congo operation, which the entry now says, along with what that operation was: the UN’s first large-scale peacekeeping mission, about 20,000 strong at its peak. Read the article.

The Haitian Revolution began on 22 August, not 21 August. The entry sat on 21 August and said enslaved people rose that night. The Bois Caïman ceremony is dated variously to 14 or 21 August; the rising itself began on the night of 22 to 23 August, when the estates of the northern plain behind Cap Français were burned, which is why UNESCO marks 23 August as the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. The entry has moved. We also loosened “the only successful slave revolt in modern history” to the claim that can actually be checked: the only slave uprising that ended in the founding of an independent state. Read the article.

Simon Muzenda: two posts had been folded into one. We described Muzenda as Zimbabwe’s first vice-president for 23 years. He was deputy prime minister from independence in 1980 until that post was abolished in 1987, and first vice-president from then until his death in 2003. The 23 years is the two offices together, not the vice-presidency. Read the article.

Muhsin Hendricks was killed in Gqeberha, not near Cape Town. We placed the shooting near Cape Town, where Hendricks was based. He was killed in Gqeberha, about 750km away, as he left to officiate an interfaith wedding. The entry now also carries the two masked men who fired into his car, the death threats his family says he had been receiving, and the deputy justice minister’s call for the killing to be investigated as a hate crime. Read the article.

The Gulf of Sidra shootdown: the American account was stated as fact. We wrote that US jets shot down two Libyan aircraft after being fired upon. That is the United States’ account, and it is now attributed as such, alongside Libya’s claim to have destroyed an F-14 and the American denial of it. This entry had been left deliberately unsourced in an earlier session for want of good references. Read the article.

Macías Nguema: “a large share of the population” has numbers. The entry said his regime killed or exiled a large share of Equatorial Guinea’s population. Of about 300,000 people, more than 50,000 were killed and 125,000 fled the country. The entry now gives those figures and the charges the military tribunal tried him on. Read the article.

Boughera El Ouafi: 1928 was not France’s first Olympic marathon gold. We credited El Ouafi with France’s first Olympic marathon gold. France had already been credited with the 1900 marathon, won by Michel Théato, whose nationality the IOC reassigned to Luxembourg in its own data only in 2021. Under the record as it stood, El Ouafi’s was France’s second. The claim has been removed. Read the article.

Mainza Chona: first prime minister of the republic, not of the country. The entry called Chona Zambia’s first prime minister without qualification. Kenneth Kaunda held that title in Northern Rhodesia in 1964. Chona was the first prime minister of the Republic of Zambia, when the office was revived in 1973. Read the article.

The Yaoundé tanker fire: we used the state radio figure. We had about 120 dead, which was the number state radio gave. Early wire reports counted about 100, the Irish Times reported 120 with 150 injured, and later accounts put the toll at 200 or more. The entry now gives the spread and says where each figure came from. Read the article.

The St James Church massacre: the amnesty was missing. The entry recorded eleven people killed and nothing else. Fifty-eight were wounded, four of the dead were Russian sailors attending as guests of the church, one of the four attackers was convicted of the murders and jailed for 23 years, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission granted all of them amnesty in 1998. Read the article.

The Farafra attack: 22 border guards, and a state of emergency we could not source. We had at least 21 soldiers killed and said Egypt declared a state of emergency on its border with Sudan. The military’s own account gives 22 border guards, most of them killed when a grenade set off the checkpoint’s ammunition store. Nothing found supports the state of emergency, so it has been removed; three days of national mourning is what the reporting records. Read the article.

The Igandu train disaster: not Africa’s deadliest. We called it the deadliest rail accident in African history. It killed 281. About 400 people died when an express train left the rails above the Awash ravine in Ethiopia in 1985, which is the worst rail disaster the continent has had. The entry now says so instead of claiming the record. Read the article.

The Rabaa massacre: “hundreds” was doing too much work. The entry said Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of Morsi supporters. Human Rights Watch documented at least 817 killed at the Rab’a sit-in in a single day and judges the real figure likely above 1,000, part of at least 1,150 protesters killed that summer. The interior ministry had planned for deaths in the thousands, the prime minister said afterwards that the government had expected far worse, and not one officer has been held to account. Read the article.

The Bentiu massacre: we folded the wounded into the dead. We had more than 400 civilians killed. The UN mission reported more than 200 killed and over 400 wounded at the Kali-Ballee mosque, and the later investigation put the toll across all the attacks at at least 353 killed and 250 wounded. The entry also did not say that opposition SPLA forces carried them out, that people were picked out by ethnicity and nationality, or that a local radio station was broadcasting calls to drive groups out and to rape women from rival communities. Read the article.

The Philippeville massacre: the numbers on both sides. We said dozens of French settlers were killed and that reprisals followed. 123 civilians died, 71 of them French. The French government said its sweeps killed 1,273 guerrillas; the FLN and The Times said 12,000 Algerians. The entry now carries both figures rather than the word “brutal”. Read the article.

The Plateau State massacres: the toll, and the wrong community. We had over 200 killed and described the victims as Berom. Amnesty International Nigeria counted 194 and the state information commissioner 195. Most of the deaths were in Bokkos and Mangu rather than Barkin Ladi, so the entry now names the areas attacked instead of an ethnicity that does not fit them. Read the article.

The Mogadishu truck bombing: nobody claimed it, and there were two bombs. The entry said the bombing was carried out by al-Shabab. No group claimed it. The government blamed al-Shabaab, which neither confirmed nor denied it, as it tends not to when an attack kills this many civilians. The government committee’s final figures are 512 killed, 312 wounded and 62 missing, and two truck bombs went off, not one. Read the article.

The Tana River violence: the toll and what was behind it. We described ethnic clashes over grazing and water rights leaving more than 52 dead. Fifty-four people were killed at Riketa alone, most of them women and children, and the violence had killed more than 110 by September. Human Rights Watch found politicians seeking seats in the following year’s elections involved on both sides, and police who had ignored six months of warnings from residents. Read the article.

The LRA Christmas massacres: the entry was a stub. It recorded only that attacks began. Human Rights Watch documented more than 865 Congolese civilians killed and about 476 children abducted, the killings carried out with clubs, axes and machetes, ten days after Ugandan, Congolese and southern Sudanese forces launched Operation Lightning Thunder with no provision made for protecting civilians from the reprisals that followed. Read the article.

The El Ayyat train fire: the count, and the conditions. We had over 370 dead. Officials counted 373. The entry left out what made it lethal: the third-class carriages were built for 150 passengers and held about twice that, bars across the windows blocked the way out, and the train ran two and a half miles before it stopped. Read the article.

The 2009 Boko Haram uprising: Mohammed Yusuf was missing from it. The entry recorded the fighting and the death toll but not the killing that followed it. Yusuf, the group’s founder, was captured by soldiers and handed to police in Maiduguri, where he was dead within hours, having been seen at the military barracks shortly before with no visible injuries. His death in custody is generally taken as the point at which the group turned to insurgency. Read the article.

Ali Kafi: he died in Geneva, not Algiers. We gave the place of death as Algiers. Kafi died in Geneva after an illness. The entry also called him acting president following the 1992 coup; he took over Algeria’s High Council of State in July 1992 after Mohamed Boudiaf was assassinated, and held it until January 1994. Read the article.

Chad, March 2006: wrong rebel group and, on the reporting, wrong number. The entry said more than 150 Chadian soldiers were killed by rebels of the United Front for Democratic Change. The fighting near Adé and Moudeina was against the Rally for Democracy and Liberty, with about a thousand men on each side, and the army’s losses were reported as dozens killed and about 60 wounded. Chad’s army chief of staff, General Abakar Youssouf Itno, was among the dead, which the entry did not mention. Read the article.

The Morocco earthquake: not the deadliest in over a century. We called it the country’s deadliest earthquake in over a century. Agadir in 1960 killed 12,000 to 15,000 people, sixty-three years earlier. It was the deadliest in more than 60 years, and it was the strongest recorded in Morocco, which is the superlative that holds. Read the article.

The Lake Victoria ferry disaster: the toll, and the warning beforehand. We had at least 224 dead. Tanzanian authorities settled on 228, with 41 rescued. The entry also left out what turned an accident into a disaster: the MV Nyerere was licensed for about 100 passengers and carrying perhaps twice that, nobody aboard wore a life jacket, and six days earlier the local member of parliament had told the National Assembly the ferry was malfunctioning and needed repair. Read the article.

Neil Aggett: the 1982 suicide finding was overturned in 2022. The entry said only that Aggett died in police detention after 70 days without trial. He was found hanged in his cell at John Vorster Square, a 1982 inquest ruled it suicide, and a reopened inquest in 2022 found that Security Branch officers had killed him, the judge calling the original finding a serious error of judgment. Nobody has been prosecuted. Read the article.

Shukri Ghanem: he was found in the Danube. We wrote that Gaddafi’s former prime minister and oil minister died in Vienna. He was found dead in the Danube. Police said the body showed no external signs of violence and a post-mortem found he had drowned. How a defected Gaddafi minister came to be found dead is the substance of the entry, and it was missing. Read the article.

Michael Brown and Ferguson: what the investigations found. The entry stopped at the protests. The officer who shot Brown is now named, and the entry records that the Justice Department closed its investigation into the shooting without federal charges while its parallel investigation found that Ferguson’s police and municipal court discriminated against Black residents deliberately, who were 67 percent of the population but more than 90 percent of arrests and traffic stops. Read the article.

The Monrovia rice riots: one number from a very wide range. We had more than 70 dead in clashes with police. More than 12,000 people marched against the agriculture minister’s plan to raise imported rice from $22 to $26 a hundredweight, soldiers and police fired on them and about 500 were wounded. Counts of the dead run from dozens to more than 70, and a Liberian history archive puts them in the hundreds. The entry now gives the range. Read the article.

The 1945 Tripolitania pogrom: who was killed, and who was governing. We wrote that riots killed more than 100 people across the region. More than 140 Jews were killed over three days, hundreds were injured and almost every synagogue in Tripoli was looted. The entry did not say that the victims were Jews being targeted, or that Libya was under British military administration at the time and the authorities were criticised for how slowly they moved. Read the article.

The Rwandan genocide: the toll was understated, and the peacekeepers were missing. We wrote that hundreds of thousands were killed over the following 100 days. The United Nations estimate is more than a million, along with 150,000 to 250,000 women raped. The entry also recorded the killing of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana without the ten Belgian peacekeepers assigned to protect her, who were killed with her. Read the article.

The Gujba college attack: the toll and what the attackers wore. We had at least 42 students and staff. A Nigerian military spokesman put the dead at as many as 50. The entry now carries that some of the gunmen were in Nigerian army uniforms, that the victims were mostly aged 18 to 22, and that the attackers went through four male hostels and left the female hostel alone. Read the article.

The Sharm el-Sheikh bombings: a number without the attack or the victims. The entry gave 88 dead and little else. There were three bombs, at the Old Market and in the Naama Bay hotel strip, the largest a truck bomb driven into the lobby of the Ghazala Gardens hotel. More than 200 people were wounded, and most of the dead were Egyptians rather than foreign tourists. Read the article.

The Baga massacre: soldiers, not clashes. We described clashes between Boko Haram and government soldiers that left as many as 200 civilians dead. Boko Haram killed one soldier at a patrol outside Baga; soldiers came back with reinforcements and ransacked the town. Community leaders counted 183 bodies and about 2,000 burned homes. The military said 30 houses had been destroyed and blamed Boko Haram for setting the fires, and satellite images analysed by Human Rights Watch found 2,275 buildings destroyed and 125 more badly damaged. Read the article.

The Accra Sports Stadium disaster: the toll was 126, and the story did not end with the tear gas. We had 129 dead. The figure is 126. The entry also stopped at the police firing tear gas. Many of the exit gates were locked, the commission of inquiry blamed the police for overreacting, and the six officers charged with manslaughter were all acquitted. Read the article.

Makala prison: the government’s figure was the whole entry. We gave the official 129 and left it there. The interior minister said 24 of the dead had been shot and that most of the rest died in a crush, a prison rights campaigner put the toll above 200, and Human Rights Watch documented rapes of women held at the prison that night. The prison was built in 1957 for 1,500 people and held between 12,000 and 14,000. Read the article.

Soweto, August 1986: it was council police, and it was an eviction. The entry said South African security forces killed at least 28 people in Soweto. The 28 died in White City, Jabavu, resisting council police who were evicting households that had joined the rent boycott. Read the article.

The Relizane massacres: three villages, not four, and two different counts. We had about 400 people killed across four villages. Three villages were attacked, Kherarba, Ouled Sahnine and Ouled Tayeb, on the first day of Ramadan. Hospital estimates put the dead at 386 and the press reported 412, with more than 120 wounded. More than 300 more people were killed in three other villages of the same region on 4 January 1998. Read the article.

The Thalit massacre: the attackers were never identified. We wrote that Islamist guerrillas killed all but one of the 53 inhabitants. More than 50 people were killed over the night of 3 to 4 April 1997 and the attackers were never identified, the same problem as at Guelb el-Kebir and Si Zerrouk. The single survivor is what reports at the time said, and is now attributed that way. Read the article.

The Guelb el-Kebir massacre: filed on the wrong day, and wrongly attributed. The entry sat on 19 September and said Islamist militants killed 53 people. The massacre near Beni Slimane happened on 20 September 1997, and the attackers were never identified. No group claimed it. The entry has moved to the 20th and now says who blamed whom, along with Human Rights Watch’s finding that allegations of security force collusion in that year’s massacres were persistent enough to require an independent investigation the government refused to hold. Read the article.

The Si Zerrouk massacre: no perpetrator, no place, one number. We had “about 50 people were killed” and nothing else. Counts run from 36 upward, the district sits at the edge of Larbaa south of Algiers, and the chronology compiled for the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal records that the power was cut that afternoon and that the killing happened less than a hundred metres from an army barracks and a gendarmerie post. Read the article.

Marikana: the wrong benchmark, and most of the story missing. We called it the deadliest use of force by security forces since the end of apartheid. The measure SERI uses is since the Soweto uprising of 1976. The entry now also carries the 78 wounded and roughly 250 arrested that day, the ten people killed earlier that week, the 270 miners charged with the murders of the men the police had shot under an apartheid-era common purpose doctrine, and the fact that by the fourteenth anniversary nobody had been prosecuted over 16 August while the nine officers charged over other deaths that week were all acquitted. Read the article.

The 2001 Angola train attack: UNITA’s account was left out. The entry blamed UNITA flatly for around 250 deaths. UNITA did admit the attack, three days later, while calling the train a military target carrying troops and munitions. The army denied any soldiers were aboard and survivors said the soldiers on board were guarding it. Early reports counted 150 dead against the later figure of more than 250. Read the article.

The Massacre of the Sixty: sixty is the name, not the count. We wrote that the Derg executed 60 former imperial officials. Human Rights Watch puts the number shot at 58. The round sixty takes in General Aman Andom, who had chaired the Derg until days earlier and was killed at his house the night before as soldiers came to arrest him. Read the article.

Samuel Doe: the rebels named, and where it happened. The entry said Doe was captured and killed by rebel forces. He was seized at Monrovia’s Freeport by fighters of Prince Johnson’s Independent National Patriotic Front and tortured to death. A witness told Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Johnson led him away in front of the commander of the West African peacekeeping force, who turned his back and walked into his office. Read the article.

Iva Valley: the cause of the strike, and an officer we could not name reliably. The entry gave the shooting without the dispute behind it. The miners had stopped work over back pay owed for a casual-labour system later ruled illegal and had occupied the mine. Three sources gave the officer who ordered the shooting three different ranks and two spellings, so the entry now says only that a British officer gave the order. Read the article.

The Rais massacre: we led with the first official figure. We had “at least 98 villagers”, which was the initial official count. The government later told the UN 238, and hospital staff and witnesses gave figures from 200 to 400 and above. The entry now gives the range and says who produced each number. Read the article.

The Gatumba massacre: unnamed gunmen, and a toll that was too high. We wrote that gunmen killed 156 Congolese Tutsi refugees. The attackers were largely from the Hutu rebel Forces for National Liberation, the toll Human Rights Watch and the UN give is at least 152 with more than 100 wounded, the dead were Banyamulenge targeted by ethnicity, and no one has been prosecuted. Read the article.

Ngarbuh: the perpetrator was missing and the toll was the government’s. The entry said at least 22 people including children were killed, without saying by whom. Cameroonian soldiers and armed ethnic Fulani carried out the raid, killing at least 21 civilians including 13 children and a pregnant woman. The government said five had died and called the reports fake before an inquiry acknowledged its troops were involved. Read the article.

The 1961 Paris massacre: one word covered a fifty-year dispute. We wrote that police killed scores of Algerian protesters. France put the toll at three for decades, acknowledged 40 in 1998, and historians now estimate 120 to 300. The entry gives all three and names Papon, whose curfew the demonstration was against. Read the article.

The 2009 Conakry stadium massacre: the mass rape was left out. We had at least 150 killed and stopped there. The UN-mandated inquiry found 156 killed and at least 109 women and girls raped, against the junta’s acknowledged 57. The entry now carries both, along with Moussa Dadis Camara’s 2024 conviction for crimes against humanity. Read the article.

September 2026

These came out of a deliberate check rather than a reader's report. We pulled twenty articles at random and re-verified every date, figure, quotation and absolute claim in them against the sources, then ran the same check across the articles carrying the thinnest sourcing. Seven of the twenty random articles needed a correction. Everything that check turned up is listed below.

Britain's transatlantic slave trade: Britain was not the largest carrier. The article called Britain "the single largest national carrier in the trade's history". Portuguese and Brazilian ships carried more than 5.8 million people against Britain's 3.1 to 3.4 million. Britain led the eighteenth century, which the article says separately and correctly. The same piece dated the Slavery Abolition Act as taking effect in 1838; it took effect on August 1, 1834, with the apprenticeship period running to 1838. Read the article.

Gorée Island: not every US president has visited. We wrote that every US president since Bill Clinton had made the trip. Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama did. Trump and Biden did not. The fact card also dated the Portuguese arrival on the island to 1536, which is when slave trading there is first documented. The Portuguese reached Gorée in 1444. Read the article.

Herodotus on the Ethiopians: wrong book, and a misread passage. The fact card cited Book 3 of the Histories. The passage is Book 7, chapter 70. The text says the two groups of Ethiopians differed "only in speech and hair", not in one respect, and the comparison with the woolliest-haired Libyans sits in that same sentence rather than elsewhere in the work. We also cut a claim that Herodotus attributed the difference to climate, which the passage does not say, and rewrote the paragraph on the Colchians: it presented skin and hair as his evidence for shared Egyptian ancestry when he discards that evidence in the next clause and rests his argument on circumcision instead. Read the article.

Zimbabwe's hyperinflation: first of the century, not the only one. Body and fact card both described it as the only hyperinflation of the 21st century. Venezuela's ran from late 2016 to early 2021. Zimbabwe's was the first. We also had the reconstruction method backwards: Hanke and Kwok derived their exchange rate from Old Mutual shares dual-listed in Harare and London and used the black-market rate as a cross-check, not the other way round. Prices doubled every 24.7 hours at the peak, which is more precise than the "every day or so" we had. Read the article.

The CIA's 1970 Nigeria report: wrong report number and wrong authorship. We gave the report number as "Special Report No. 668" and said four CIA offices prepared it jointly. The declassified record shows neither: the file reference is SR 0372/70A, and the source note states it was issued by the Office of Current Intelligence alone. The quotations from the report were accurate. Read the article.

Nelson Mandela walks free: the length of his imprisonment. We had 27 years, five months and six days. From the arrest on August 5, 1962 to his release on February 11, 1990 is six months, not five. The entry now uses the Nelson Mandela Foundation's own count. Read the article.

Great Zimbabwe: a word added to a quotation. Gertrude Caton-Thompson was quoted concluding that the site was the work of a "native African civilization". Her wording was "a native civilization", set against the "degenerate off shoot of a higher Oriental civilization" she was rejecting. The quotation now matches what she wrote. Read the article.

The Zanzibar Revolution: how long the sultanate lasted. We described Zanzibar as having been independent "a month short of a year" when the revolution came. Independence was December 10, 1963 and the uprising was January 12, 1964, so it had lasted barely a month. Read the article.

The Third Anglo-Ashanti War: the date of Ordashu. The engagement at Ordashu was placed two days after Amoaful. Amoaful was fought on January 31, 1874 and Ordashu on February 4, the same day British troops entered Kumasi. Read the article.

The 1897 sack of Benin City: the length of the expedition. Described as a three-day expedition. The Benin Expedition ran from February 9 to 18, 1897. Read the article.

Haile Selassie's coronation: Ethiopia was not the only independent African member of the League of Nations. Liberia had been a member since 1919 and was equally independent. Ethiopia was one of two. The third African member, the Union of South Africa, was a British dominion at the time. Read the article.

The Queen of Sheba and Menelik I: Josephus did not name her. We wrote that Josephus gives the queen the name Nicaule. He identifies Solomon's visitor with a queen he says Herodotus called Nicaule. We also dropped a claim that his was the earliest surviving reference tying her to Africa, which we could not confirm. Read the article.

Kofi Busia: the Oxford claim could not be confirmed. The article said Busia was the first African admitted to University College, Oxford. No source we could find supports that. Replaced with what the record does show: he read philosophy, politics and economics there from 1939 to 1941 and returned after the war for a doctorate at Nuffield College. Read the article.

African genome diversity: a rounded statistic replaced with the original. We used a news report's rounded figure of a 3 percent increase in African-ancestry samples. The underlying Nature paper by Popejoy and Fullerton gives 2.5 percent. The fact card also said fewer than 1 percent of studies included African participants; the 2009 finding was about the share of participants, not of studies. Read the article.

Che Guevara's Congo expedition: the size of the Cuban force. Given as roughly 100 to 130 volunteers. Published accounts put it between 120 and 150, so the lower bound was too low. Now stated as around 120 to 130, with the variation noted. Read the article.

Gowon's 1975 overthrow: an unverifiable claim removed. The article called him the only Nigerian head of state removed from office while abroad. We found no exception, but no source affirms it either, so it has been cut. The documented detail, that he learned of the coup from a note handed to him mid-summit, stands. Read the article.

Miriam Makeba's Grammy: attributed rather than asserted. That Makeba was the first African to win a Grammy is widely reported, but South African-born producer Phil Ramone won one a year earlier. The claim is now attributed to the reporting rather than stated flat. She remains the first African woman to win in any category. Read the article.

Egypt's Lake Moeris road: a comparison we could not source. We said the road predated the previous record-holder by an estimated 500 years. Nothing we found supports that figure, so it has been removed. That the road is the oldest confirmed paved road anywhere is verified and stands. Read the article.

July 2026

MLK Nobel Prize article: publish date corrected. The article's visible "published" date and structured data both incorrectly showed the original 2017 X post date rather than when this researched write-up actually went live. Fixed to show the real publish date, with the original post date kept separately as its own line.

More entries will be added here as corrections happen. This log starts July 2026, and isn't a complete history of every fix made before this page existed, only what's tracked going forward. An earlier internal audit in August 2026 corrected a larger batch of errors across the archive; those fixes predate this log's itemised entries and were not recorded individually at the time.