Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1960 Chad gained independence from France, with François Tombalbaye becoming its first president.
IndependenceOn this day — August 11 in African history
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1960 The Watts riots erupted in Los Angeles after the violent arrest of a young Black motorist, becoming one of the largest urban uprisings of the civil rights era.
HistoryLiberian President Charles Taylor resigned and went into exile in Nigeria amid civil war and international pressure, handing power to his vice president.
PoliticsJames Mancham, who became the first president of Seychelles upon its independence in 1976, was born.
BirthMax Theiler, the South African-American virologist who won the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing a vaccine against yellow fever, died.
Death
Hamid Mir, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons 1988 A meeting in Afghanistan between Osama bin Laden, Egyptian Islamic Jihad leaders, and other militants culminated in the formal founding of al-Qaeda.
History