On this day: September 8 in African history

CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Edna Adan Ismail, Somaliland's first female foreign minister and a pioneering nurse-midwife and anti-FGM activist, was born in Hargeisa.

Sources: European Parliament (ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly documents) ; Templeton Prize ; Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Georgetown University ; UN Country Team in Somalia via ReliefWeb

Public Domain (U.S. Department of Justice), Wikimedia Commons

Ruby Bridges, one of four six-year-old girls who desegregated New Orleans public elementary schools in November 1960, was born in Tylertown, Mississippi.

Sources: U.S. National Park Service ; The Historic New Orleans Collection

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

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A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Al Haouz province in the High Atlas Mountains, about 75 kilometres from Marrakesh, killing more than 2,900 people. It was the strongest recorded in Morocco, roughly ten times the force of the 1960 Agadir earthquake, and the country's deadliest in more than 60 years.

Sources: Al Jazeera ; U.S. Geological Survey ; Geosciences (MDPI), peer-reviewed

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

Collage by Barbudo Barbudo, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Spanish forces, including the Foreign Legion under Colonel Francisco Franco, launched an amphibious landing at Al Hoceima in the Rif region of Morocco during the Rif War.

Sources: Spanish Ministry of Defence (CESEDEN, Escuela Superior de las Fuerzas Armadas) ; El Debate ; Revista ARGO (Museu Maritim de Barcelona)

Photo via South African History Online, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

Margaret Mary Smith, the South African ichthyologist who illustrated the landmark "Sea Fishes of Southern Africa" and directed the institute named for her husband, died in Grahamstown.

Sources: South African History Online ; South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

An Egyptian court sentenced 75 people to death and hundreds more to prison terms in a mass trial over the 2013 Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in, a case rights groups condemned as deeply flawed.

Sources: The Guardian ; Amnesty International ; International Commission of Jurists

President Gaafar Nimeiry's September Laws took effect, making sharia the supreme law across Sudan overnight. They came as provisional orders under the president's power to legislate when the People's Assembly was not sitting, not as bills debated in parliament, and there was no referendum. The Assembly could only approve or reject them whole, and it approved them. The laws introduced hudud punishments including amputation and public flogging. Imposed on a south that was largely Christian and followed traditional religions, they helped reignite the civil war between north and south. The Criminal Act of 1991 later recodified them under Omar al-Bashir.

Sources: Harvard Law School Human Rights Program ; The International Lawyer (American Bar Association), via SMU Scholar ; REDRESS

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed