The South African apartheid government bombed the London headquarters of the African National Congress.
Sources: Anti-Apartheid Legacy: Centre of Memory and Learning ; The Guardian ; South African History Online
Politics
Ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie church, Gondar, Ethiopia. Photo: Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence · Source
On this day: March 14 in African history
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
MODIS image captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 2019 Cyclone Idai made landfall near Beira, Mozambique, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 1,000 deaths across the region.
Sources: Reuters ; Al Jazeera ; BBC News
Disaster
Office of the White House (Amanda Lucidon), Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 2006 An attempted coup against Chadian President Idriss Déby ended in failure.
Sources: ABC News (Australia) ; UPI ; The New Humanitarian
Politics
Adam Cuerden, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1977 Fannie Lou Hamer, American voting-rights activist and civil rights leader, died.
Sources: Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University ; Encyclopaedia Britannica ; National Women’s History Museum
Death
Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons 1851 Marie-Louise Coidavid, Queen of Haiti as consort to King Henri Christophe, died in exile in Pisa, Italy, on 14 March 1851.
Sources: Haiti Express ; Richesse Karayib
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
Death