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.
World Trade Organization, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons 1954 Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian economist who later became the first woman and first African to lead the World Trade Organization, was born.
Sources: World Trade Organization ; Africa Confidential
Birth
Ian Robertson, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons 1982 Kenenisa Bekele, the Ethiopian distance runner who won multiple Olympic gold medals and set world records, was born.
Sources: World Athletics ; Olympedia
BirthStudents in Soweto formed an action committee, later the Soweto Students' Representative Council, to organize the mass march that would erupt into the Soweto uprising three days later.
Sources: South African History Online ; International Viewpoint
PoliticsThe government of General Sani Abacha took the former head of state Olusegun Obasanjo into military custody over an alleged plot to overthrow it; he was convicted of treason in 1995 and released in 1998.
Sources: Amnesty International ; BBC News
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
Politics