The United Kingdom ended its protectorate over Egypt through a Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence.
Sources: UK Parliament (Historic Hansard) ; The Guardian ; U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian (FRUS)
Independence
Ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie church, Gondar, Ethiopia. Photo: Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence · Source
On this day: February 28 in African history
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1948 Colonial police killed three unarmed ex-servicemen marching to petition the governor in the Accra riots, a pivotal event that accelerated Ghana's independence movement.
Sources: Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Ghana ; BBC World Service ; University of California, Berkeley (eScholarship)
PoliticsThe magnitude 7.8 1969 Portugal earthquake struck off the Atlantic coast, killing 13 people in mainland Portugal and injuring about 80, with casualties also reported in Morocco.
Sources: Pure and Applied Geophysics (Springer) ; NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
Disaster
CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons 1970 Noureddine Morceli, Algerian middle-distance runner and 1500m world champion, was born.
Sources: World Athletics ; Olympedia
Birth