On this day: February 23 in African history

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Enslaved people at Plantation Magdalenenburg rose against their Dutch owners, and the revolt spread across Berbice under a leader known as Cuffy, who declared himself governor and tried to negotiate a partition of the colony. More than 2,500 joined it and they held most of Berbice for the better part of a year before Dutch forces, reinforced from Europe, put it down in 1764. It was the first major slave revolt in South America, and 23 February became Guyana's Republic Day in 1970.

Sources: Atlas Obscura ; Village Voice News

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

The official independence of the Orange Free State, a Boer republic in what is now South Africa, was declared.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian ; University of Cape Town Libraries, Emandulo archive (G. M. Theal, History of South Africa since September 1795, vol. 4)

CC BY 3.0 DE, Wikimedia Commons

Allan McLeod Cormack, South African-American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work underpinning CT scanning, was born.

Sources: Nobel Foundation (NobelPrize.org) ; South African History Online

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Parliamentary elections were held in Djibouti.

Sources: Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU Parline) ; Make Every Woman Count

Ahmaud Arbery was chased through a neighbourhood outside Brunswick, Georgia by two men in a pickup truck, joined by a third who filmed it, and shot dead by Travis McMichael. No one was arrested for 74 days, until the video reached the public. All three were convicted of murder in 2021 and of federal hate crimes the following year.

Sources: US Department of Justice ; CBS News

CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Mido, Egyptian international footballer, was born.

Sources: National Football Teams ; Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF)