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).

UNITA rebels derailed a passenger train and opened fire on survivors during Angola's civil war, killing around 250 people in one of the conflict's deadliest single attacks.

Miners at the Lonmin platinum mine near Marikana, South Africa, began a wildcat strike for higher wages that would culminate less than a week later in the deadliest police action since the end of apartheid.

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.

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.