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.
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1954 South African Airways Flight 201, a de Havilland Comet jetliner, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea en route to Cairo, killing all 21 aboard, one of the crashes that led to the Comet's grounding.
Sources: UK Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Court of Inquiry report, HMSO 1955) ; This Day in Aviation
Disaster
Al-Ahram, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1970 Israeli warplanes bombed a primary school in the Egyptian village of Bahr el-Baqar during the War of Attrition, killing 30 pupils.
Sources: The New York Times ; Daily News Egypt
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
History
Colin Weyer, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons 1919 Ian Smith, who led the white-minority government of Rhodesia and unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965, was born in Selukwe, Southern Rhodesia.
Sources: Mail & Guardian ; Encyclopaedia Britannica
Birth
US Mission Geneva, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1938 Kofi Annan, Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations and co-received the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, was born in Kumasi, Gold Coast.
Sources: Nobel Prize (NobelPrize.org) ; United Nations
Birth
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1905 Helen Joseph, English-born South African anti-apartheid activist and a key organizer of the 1956 Women's March on Pretoria, was born in Sussex, England.
Sources: South African History Online ; Deutsche Welle
Birth