On this day: October 10 in African history

The El Asnam earthquake struck Algeria's Chelif valley, destroying about 70 percent of the city and killing more than 2,700 people; the final toll was later put at around 3,500.

Sources: BBC News ; Emergency Management Science and Technology

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

US President Dwight Eisenhower apologized to Ghana's finance minister Komla Agbeli Gbedemah after he was refused service at a segregated Delaware restaurant.

Sources: Smithsonian Magazine ; US Department of State, Office of the Historian (FRUS 1955-1957, Africa, vol. XVIII, doc. 130)

Library of Congress, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Paul Kruger, Boer military and political leader who served as President of the South African Republic, was born.

Sources: South African History Online ; DITSONG Museums of South Africa

Ken Saro-Wiwa was born at Bori, near Port Harcourt. He founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People in 1990 and led a protest of about 300,000 people against oil extraction in Ogoniland in 1993. A military tribunal convicted him and eight other Ogoni activists of murder in a trial condemned around the world, and Sani Abacha's government hanged all nine on 10 November 1995.

Sources: Center for Constitutional Rights ; Global Greengrants Fund

Ally Kleist Sykes, Tanzanian politician and founding member of the Tanganyika African National Union, was born in Dar es Salaam.

Sources: Business Daily Africa ; Tanzanian Affairs ; African Study Monographs, Kyoto University