On this day: August 23 in African history

Herbert Bankole-Bright, a physician and political activist who headed the National Council of Sierra Leone, was born in Okrika in the Niger Delta.

Sources: University of Edinburgh UncoverED ; Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

UNESCO's International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition was established for August 23, marking the anniversary of the 1791 Saint-Domingue slave uprising.

Sources: UNESCO ; United Nations ; University of Portsmouth

Napoleon Bonaparte secretly left Egypt for France, abandoning the army he had led there, en route to seizing power in a coup.

Sources: PBS ; Fondation Napoleon ; Napoleon & Empire

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Libyan rebel forces overran Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli, effectively ending his four-decade rule during the Libyan Civil War.

Sources: RTE ; Mail & Guardian ; Al Jazeera

Augusta Chiwy, born in the Belgian Congo to a Congolese mother and a Belgian father from Bastogne, died at 94. She had volunteered as a nurse at an American aid station in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, treating wounded men while the town was surrounded. Her part went unrecorded for decades. Belgium knighted her in 2011 and the United States Army gave her its Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service.

Sources: CBS News ; Airborne Museum

South African President Nelson Mandela convened regional leaders in Pretoria for a summit aimed at mediating an end to the escalating conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Sources: Institute for Security Studies (South Africa) ; UN OCHA / IRIN

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed