On this day: August 10 in African history

Reginald Arthur, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Cleopatra VII, the last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt, died by suicide in Alexandria following her and Mark Antony's defeat by Octavian's forces (year is 30 BCE).

Sources: History.com ; Britannica

A passenger train on the scheduled Luanda to Dondo service struck an anti-tank mine near Zenza do Itombe in Cuanza Norte province and derailed, and gunmen fired on passengers as they climbed out of the wreckage. About 500 people were aboard. Early reports counted 150 dead, and later tallies gave more than 250 killed and about 160 wounded. UNITA admitted the attack three days later but said the train was a military target carrying troops and munitions. The army denied any soldiers were aboard, while survivors said the soldiers on the train were guarding it.

Sources: Action for Southern Africa ; IRIN

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

Rock drill operators at Lonmin's platinum mine near Marikana walked out over pay without their union's backing. Ten people were killed in the week that followed, among them two police officers and two Lonmin security guards, and on 16 August the police shot 34 miners dead.

Sources: Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa ; South African Department of Justice

Yekuno Amlak seized the Ethiopian imperial throne, restoring the Solomonic dynasty to power after a century of Zagwe rule; the dynasty would reign, with interruptions, until Haile Selassie's overthrow in 1974.

Sources: Library of Congress Country Studies (via countrystudies.us) ; World History Encyclopedia

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Showman P.T. Barnum began exhibiting Joice Heth, an elderly enslaved African American woman he falsely claimed had been George Washington's nursemaid, launching his career.

Sources: George Washington's Mount Vernon ; The Lost Museum Archive, CUNY Graduate Center