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.
CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons 1488 Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias landed at Mossel Bay, becoming the first known European to round the Cape of Good Hope.
Sources: South African History Online ; Bartolomeu Dias Museum, Mossel Bay
ExplorationThe 1716 Algiers earthquake struck Algeria, killing an estimated 20,000 people.
Sources: International Institute of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering (IISEE), Building Research Institute, Japan ; NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) ; IASPEI 2009 General Assembly (Abdessemed-Foufa and Benouar, abstract)
Disaster
CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons 1953 Portuguese colonial police, joined by white settlers and contract workers, attacked the forros, São Tomé's native creole population, on the orders of the governor, Carlos Gorgulho. The killings followed a rumour that the forros were to be forced into contract labour on the cocoa and coffee estates, work they had always refused as a form of slavery. Hundreds died and the number has never been established. Gorgulho left the colony in 1954 and Portugal awarded him the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Avis two years later. São Tomé and Príncipe now marks the day as the Day of the Martyrs of Liberty.
Sources: Museu do Aljube ; Working Class History
TragedyGunmen attacked the villages of Woro and Nuku in Kwara State, western Nigeria. Tolls given differ sharply: a federal lawmaker put the dead at 162, Amnesty International at more than 170, and the state government at 75. Responsibility is disputed between the Lakurawa group and a Boko Haram faction.
Source: NBC News
Tragedy
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1815 Edward James Roye, who became the 5th President of Liberia, was born.
Sources: Indiana University Liberian Collections ; Liberia: Past and Present
Birth
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1975 Umm Kulthum, celebrated Egyptian singer known as 'The Voice of Egypt', died.
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica ; University of Chicago Press ; AMAR Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research
Death
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1941 Allied forces launched the first assault in the Battle of Keren, opening a struggle to capture the strategic Eritrean town of Keren during the Second World War.
Sources: HyperWar Foundation (ibiblio), Official History of the Indian Armed Forces ; HMSO, History of the Second World War (via Internet Archive)
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
Battle