Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Moshood Abiola, the Nigerian businessman who won the widely regarded freest and fairest election in Nigerian history in 1993 only to have it annulled by the military, was born in Abeokuta.
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica ; Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (Nigeria) ; The Guardian (Nigeria)
Birth
Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons 394 The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom was carved at the Temple of Isis on Philae, the last known inscription written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Sources: University of Groningen (Jitse H. F. Dijkstra, Religious Encounters on the Southern Egyptian Frontier in Late Antiquity, AD 298-642) ; Egyptology Forum / Ancient Egyptian Language List (Michael Tilgner, quoting F. Ll. Griffith, Catalogue of the Demotic Graffiti of the Dodecaschoenus, Oxford 1935-37) ; historyofinformation.com (Jeremy M. Norman, quoting R. B. Parkinson, The Rosetta Stone, British Museum Press)
HistoryOttoman forces under Selim I decisively defeated the Cairo-based Mamluk Sultanate at the Battle of Marj Dabiq, opening the way for the Ottoman conquest of Egypt.
Sources: HistoryNet (World History Group) ; American University of Beirut (ScholarWorks, MA thesis by Badria Ghassan El Jilani, 2021)
HistorySiaka Stevens, who became the first president of Sierra Leone and ruled for nearly two decades, was born.
Sources: Sierra Leone Web (sierra-leone.org), 'Sierra Leonean Heroes: The APC Era' ; United Press International (UPI Archives, 30 May 1988)
Birth
Secretum Mundi, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons 2003 Wilfred Thesiger, the Ethiopian-born British explorer renowned for his journeys across the Horn of Africa and the Arabian deserts, died.
Sources: The Independent (London) ; Society for Arabian Studies, Bulletin 2009 (thebfsa.org)
Death