Ludwig Wegmann — CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, Wikimedia Commons 1963 Sylvanus Olympio, the first President of Togo, was assassinated in a military coup, one of the first violent overthrows of an independent African government.
PoliticsOn this day — January 13 in African history
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Ludwig Wegmann — CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, Wikimedia Commons 1963 A passenger train plunged into a ravine in Ethiopia's Awash Valley, killing 428 people in what remains the worst railroad disaster in African history.
TragedyGhanaian Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia and President Edward Akufo-Addo were ousted in a bloodless military coup led by Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong.
Politics
US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development — Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1966 Robert C. Weaver was appointed U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, becoming the first African American member of a presidential cabinet.
Politics
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1990 Douglas Wilder was inaugurated as Governor of Virginia, becoming the first elected African American governor in U.S. history.
Politics
OIST — CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons 1927 Sydney Brenner, South African biologist and Nobel Prize-winning pioneer of molecular biology, was born (died 2019).
Science
COP Paris — CC0, Wikimedia Commons 1959 Winnie Byanyima, Ugandan engineer, politician, and longtime executive director of Oxfam International, was born.
Birth