Ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie church, Gondar, Ethiopia. Photo: Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence · Source
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Niger77, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1996 Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara took power in Niger, removing Mahamane Ousmane, the country's first democratically elected president, after a run of political crises between the presidency and the government. Maïnassara ruled until he was assassinated in 1999.
Sources: US Department of State ; Britannica
PoliticsA fire at a street market beside the Ikeja Cantonment in Lagos spread to the army's main munitions store, setting off a chain of explosions. The blasts killed almost no one inside the barracks. Most of the dead were civilians who drowned in the Oke-Afa and Pako canals or were trampled while fleeing. The Nigerian government confirmed more than 600 dead in the first week; a year later Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu spoke of over 1,000; Nigerian newspapers at the time put the total above 2,000. The Red Cross listed more than 1,100 people as missing and registered about 12,000 as displaced.
Sources: World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa ; Reuters (John Chiahemen), archived on ReliefWeb ; IRIN, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, archived on ReliefWeb ; Reuters (Tume Ahemba), archived on ReliefWeb ; International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, archived on ReliefWeb
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
Tragedy
Abi Skipp, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons 1929 Mohamed Al-Fayed, Egyptian-born businessman who owned Harrods department store and the Hôtel Ritz Paris, was born (died 2023).
Sources: BBC News ; The Guardian
Birth
Harry Pot for Anefo, CC0, Wikimedia Commons 1967 Alphonse Juin, Algerian-born French Marshal who commanded Free French forces in North Africa and Italy during World War II, died at age 78.
Sources: Chemins de mémoire (French Ministry of the Armed Forces) ; Generals.dk (Steen Ammentorp)
DeathMassa Makan Diabaté, Malian historian, novelist, and playwright known for chronicling Mande oral tradition, died at age 49.
Sources: IdRef (Agence bibliographique de l'enseignement supérieur, France) ; Artcena, Dictionnaire des théâtres du monde
Death
Habib M'henni, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons 2020 Lina Ben Mhenni, Tunisian internet activist and blogger whose reporting helped fuel the 2011 revolution, died at age 36.
Sources: Deutsche Welle ; The Independent
Death