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 1951 Libya became independent, with Idris I proclaimed King of Libya, making it the first country to achieve independence through the United Nations.
Sources: Yearbook of the United Nations (United Nations) ; TIME
IndependenceGiuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, commissioned for the Khedive of Egypt, premiered at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo.
Sources: Josef Weinberger Ltd ; WETA Classical
Culture
Godwin Alabi-Isama, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons 1969 Nigerian federal troops captured Umuahia, the capital of the breakaway Republic of Biafra, during the Nigerian Civil War.
Sources: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State (Foreign Relations of the United States) ; Information Nigeria
Politics
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1942 Vichy French Admiral François Darlan was assassinated in Algiers, Algeria, by a young monarchist.
Sources: Chemins de mémoire (Ministère des Armées, France) ; Le Maitron, Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier et social
PoliticsThe Lord's Resistance Army attacked villages across Haut-Uele in northern Congo over Christmas, ten days after Ugandan, Congolese and southern Sudanese forces launched Operation Lightning Thunder against its camps. Human Rights Watch documented more than 865 Congolese civilians killed and at least 160 children abducted between late December 2008 and January 2009. Fighters tied people up and killed them with clubs, axes and machetes. Human Rights Watch found that the operation's planners had made no adequate contingency plan and that their forces were unprepared for the reprisals that followed.
Sources: Human Rights Watch ; United Nations Security Council
Corrected twice in September 2026 · change 1 · change 2
TragedyM. I. Okpara, premier of Nigeria's Eastern Region, threatened in talks with President Nnamdi Azikiwe that the East would secede from the federation, days before the federal election. The date is from the State House diary of events, printed in the Lagos Morning Post on Jan. 13, 1965.
Sources: UCLA Library Digital Collections, Nnamdi Azikiwe Papers (Nigeria) ; The Journal of Modern African Studies
Read the full article: Regions, Census and Elections: Nigeria's Road to Crisis, 1945-1965
Politics