Ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie church, Gondar, Ethiopia. Photo: Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence · Source
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1848 Lewis Latimer, the son of formerly enslaved parents who became a pioneering inventor and improved the carbon filament for the electric lightbulb, was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Sources: Lemelson-MIT Program (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) ; National Inventors Hall of Fame
Birth.jpg)
Photo by Gordon Parks, U.S. Farm Security Administration, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1908 Novelist Richard Wright, author of "Native Son" and "Black Boy," who became a defining voice of 20th-century African American literature, was born near Natchez, Mississippi.
Sources: Mississippi Encyclopedia (Mississippi Humanities Council / University Press of Mississippi) ; Encyclopedia of Arkansas (Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System)
Birth
Photo by Gordon Parks, U.S. Office of War Information, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons A mob attacked people leaving a Paul Robeson concert at Lakeland Acres outside Peekskill, New York, stoning cars and beating concertgoers as they went. About 140 were hurt. It was the second attack in a week: the first concert, on 27 August, had been broken up before Robeson arrived, with a cross burned on the grounds and an effigy of him hanged. State troopers stood by.
Sources: BlackPast ; Smithsonian Magazine
History
Photo by Will Counts (1957), Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1957 Arkansas National Guard troops turned away nine Black students attempting to enter Little Rock Central High School, two days after Governor Orval Faubus had ordered them out to prevent disorder. The standoff opened the Little Rock Crisis over school desegregation.
Sources: Encyclopedia of Arkansas (Butler Center for Arkansas Studies) ; U.S. National Archives
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
History
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-D0116-0041-019, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, Wikimedia Commons 1965 Albert Schweitzer, the physician, theologian, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate renowned for founding a hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon, died there at age 90.
Sources: Nobel Prize (NobelPrize.org, Nobel Foundation) ; Singapore Medical Journal (hosted by PubMed Central, U.S. National Library of Medicine)
Death