The candidate to lead English missionaries into Southern Africa who has been chosen by the London Missionary Society, sets sail from England for Cape Town. Doctor and theologian Johannes van der Kemp is instructed “to make the first serious inroads upon the territories of the Prince of Darkness (Satan), and to open the way for the deliverance of the wretched Caffres (pejorative for Africans) from their idolatry and barbarism.”
Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley arrives at Kindu (in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo). Kindu is the centre of the Arab-Swahili slave trade in Central Africa where enslaved Africans are sent east to Zanzibar. The “remarkably long” town impresses Stanley with its "broad street, thirty feet wide, and two miles in length. Behind the village are the banana and the palm groves.”
The era of the sailing cargo ship is indeed over in British Nigeria, where of the 503 cargo ships arriving at Lagos port this year, all but three are steam ships.
In its first full year of production, the Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, produces 1,446 motor vehicles. Popularly called “Pedal Fortjies” in South Africa, there will be 18,000 Ford Model-T cars on South African roads next year – three times as many as its nearest competitor's cars.
British authorities in Palestine deport 1,580 Jewish men, women and children fleeing certain death from the Nazis on two ships destined for Mauritius. When they arrive in Mauritius the people will be not be treated as refugees or migrants, but be imprisoned for five years, until the end of World War II.
Tunisian labour leader and independence activist Farhat Hachet is assassinated when he is gunned down while driving in Redѐs, Tunisia. He is murdered by La Main Rouge, a French terrorist organisation operated by French foreign intelligence. News of his death sparks riots throughout Northern Africa.
The opening of the Hilton Nairobi Hotel, Kenya’s tallest building. Dedicated last week by President Jomo Kenyatta, the iconic cylindrical tower becomes an instant landmark for Nairobi residents to use for giving directions.
Angry at their criticism about his visit to Jerusalem, Egypt President Anwar Sadat ends diplomatic relations with Algeria and Libya, and three non-African countries, and orders their diplomats out Egypt within 24 hours.
The South African Navy vessel SAS Isandlwana is launched at a shipyard in Kiel, Germany. The ship is named after Isandlwana Mountain where in 1879 Zulu warriors defeated invading British troops and their allies at the Battle of Isandlwana.
Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are all jolted by a powerful earthquake measuring 6.8. The quakes is centered 10-km below Lake Tankangyika. The large lake is turned brown from mudslides, and debris in the water is visible from space orbit (pic).
The Awash Bridge connecting Ethiopia and Djibouti opens, spanning the Awash River and replacing a smaller bridge from the 1970s. Construction was fully financed by the Japanese government’s aid agency, and was done by Japanese companies.
Prominent anti-apartheid activist and teacher, in Graaff-Reinet, Cape Province, South Africa. The editor of The Africanist newspaper in Johannesburg, he formed the political party the Pan-Africanist Congress in 1959 on a platform of Black Nationalism. His rejection of multi-racial governance went against the inclusive approach of the liberation party, the African National Congress. In 1960, he led an unarmed protest march to a police station in Orlando Township, Johannesburg. The police response was the Sharpeville Massacre, a defining moment in the anti-apartheid struggle.
Eritrean painter, in Asmara, Eritrea. Wounded as a boy by a bombing during Eritrea’s War for Independence, he grew into a fervent nationalists whose politics informed his early artwork. As he matured as an artist, he became influenced by the brightly-coloured traditional iconic Eritrean Coptic artwork.
Kenyan long-distance runner, in Kapsokwony, Mount Elgon District, Kenya. Although she set a world junior record at age 18 for her specialty, the 10,000 metres, at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, where she competed against an adult field, she placed fourth in the final. She won the world title in 2009 at age 19 at the World Championships in Athletics.
