Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Miriam Benjamin, who became the second African American woman to receive a U.S. patent for her Gong and Signal Chair for hotels, was born.
Sources: The Lemelson Foundation ; Black America Web ; African American Registry ; United States Patent Office (patent US 386,289, via Google Patents)
BirthCape Verde, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe were admitted to the United Nations, months after gaining independence from Portugal.
Sources: United Nations (Yearbook of the United Nations 1975) ; Southern Africa (Southern Africa Committee, New York) ; Permanent Mission of the Republic of Mozambique to the United Nations
Independence
Public Domain (Italian colonial administration of Libya), Wikimedia Commons 1931 Omar Mukhtar, the Libyan resistance leader known as the 'Lion of the Desert' who led guerrilla warfare against Italian colonization for two decades, was captured and publicly executed by Italian forces.
Sources: Libyan Heritage House ; Middle East Monitor ; Daily Sabah
Death
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1929 Jamshid bin Abdullah, who became the last sultan of Zanzibar before being deposed in the 1964 revolution, was born.
Sources: BBC News Swahili ; The Citizen (Tanzania)
Birth
Photo by Fotopersbureau De Boer — CC0, Wikimedia Commons 1939 Breyten Breytenbach, the South African poet and painter whose imprisonment for anti-apartheid activities made him an internationally known symbol of resistance to the regime, was born in Bonnievale.
Sources: South African History Online ; Academy of American Poets (poets.org)
Birth
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1795 Britain seized the Dutch Cape Colony in southern Africa to prevent it falling under French-allied control.
Sources: Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies ; SA History Timeline (South African History Online)
History