On this day: September 16 in African history

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)

Cape 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

Public Domain (Italian colonial administration of Libya), Wikimedia Commons

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

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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)

Photo by Fotopersbureau De Boer, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

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)

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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)

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed