Mpande is recognized as the undisputed King of the Zulus, after his military victory over his brother King Dingane. Fleeing to Swaziland, Dingane is murdered there. Mpande then steals 36,000 of Dingane’s cattle.

The U.S. ship Virginian is the first slave ship to be captured of a record 15 slave ships that will be captured this year by the U.S. Navy - the largest number of any single year. A special fleet has been tasked since 1844 to enforce a ban on Atlantic Ocean trafficking of enslaved Africans.

The International Committee of the Red Cross recognises Africa’s first national Red Cross organisation, The Congolese African Red Cross Society. The society has high praise for the country's coloniser: “An enlightened sovereign of a foreign race, who shirks no sacrifice in introducing civilisation to Africa - it is, to be precise, King Leopold to whom is owed the creation of the Congolese Red Cross.” A mass-murderer, Belgium’s King Leopold II will be responsible for atrocities that will kill ten million Congolese, according to 20th century historians.

Africa’s first aviation competition and display, the Grande Semaine d'Aviation d'Egypt, is held in Heliopolis near Cairo, Egypt. Fine Egyptian weather attracts aviators from all over Europe.

British aviator Jim Mollison leaves England in a de Havilland aircraft, flying via Senegal to Brazil. His four-day flight makes him the first person to fly solo across both the North and South Atlantic.

Construction is nearing completion on the Congo-Ocean Railway in French Equatorial Africa (Central African Republic). The work has seen the greatest loss of life of any railway project in history. More than 17,000 Congolese have died in accidents and from diseases like malaria. French colonial authorities throughout the 13 years of construction relied on forced labour, often raiding villages for workers. The Kongo-War Rebellion (1928-1931), the largest anti-colonial uprising in France’s African colonies, resulted from Congolese objections to forced labour.

Following the death of England’s King George VI, Princess Elizabeth, who has been touring Kenya and becomes Queen Elizabeth II this day, returns to London, flying aboard a new East African Airways’ DC-3 aircraft.

In Rwanda, the counter-revolution mounted by Tutsis forced into exile during the 1959 Hutu revolution ends with 14,000 Tutsi dead, as estimated by the World Council of Churches. The Hutu government has used the invasion as an excuse to orchestrate a countrywide killing, executing all prominent Tutsi after cordoning off all Tutsi communities. Writing in Le Monde today, Bertrand Russell describes the Rwanda situation as the most systematic extermination of a people since the Jewish holocaust under the Nazis during World War II.

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Yoweri Museveni’s Popular Resistance Army begins its insurgency in Uganda that will bring him to power in 1986, with an attack on an army installation in Mubende District.

The administration of U.S. President George Bush announces that a new command centre for U.S.' African military operations and for liaising with African militaries is to be created, to be called AFRICOM.

Distinguished Somali judge Abdulqawi A. Yusuf is appointed President of the International Court of Justice.

For the first time, Senegal wins the Africa Cup of Nations, after defeating Egypt in penalty kicks in today’s final. Hosted by Cameroon, what is officially AFCON 2021 has seen the tournament’s dates change twice, once because of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021.