One million French francs (the equivalent of US$13 billion in 2023) is spent on a celebration to inaugurate the Suez Canal. Egypt’s ruler Isma’il Pasha and France’s Empress Eugénie lead a flotilla of 60 ships from Port Said south to Suez.

Perhaps the world’s most beautiful interurban tram route is opened in Cape Town, Cape Colony, South Africa.  Electric-powered trolleys begin service to the suburbs Camps Bay and Sea Point. The Kloof Road section (pic) set against Table Mountain is exceptionally scenic.

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Beira, the port that will one day become Mozambique’s second largest city, is described in Leo Weinthal’s Guide Book Round Africa as the “one of the bleakest places on the whole East Coast (of Africa).” The town is a narrow strip of sand, with streets of sand that make walking difficult, and a few iron-roofed houses, drinking saloons and a hotel where visits are “of pure misery.”

The British Governor-General of Sudan Lee Stack is assassinated by Sudanese nationalists, after months of popular demonstrations demanding an end to British colonial rule of the country.

The swimming pool is opened at Victoria Falls Hotel overlooking the Zambezi River’s Mosi-oa-Tunya waterfall in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). At the request of a visiting Indian maharajah who wants his wives to be isolated, men and women are not permitted to use the pool at the same time. The rule will not be dropped until the 1930s. However, black Africans will still not be allowed to use the pool until the 1960s.

The first Africans to fight in the Korean War see action as South African Air Force Commandant Theron and Captain G.B. Lipawsky flying with U.S. pilots take off on a combat mission near Pyongyang.

Paul McCartney of the British band The Beatles returns to London from Kenya, where he toured animal reserves that somehow inspired him to conceive the groundbreaking rock album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Moussa Traoré stages a military coup d’état, overthrowing the first president of Mali, Modibo Keïta. He installs himself as Mail’s ruler. He will be overthrown in a military coup d’état in 1991.

Tanzania mounts a counter-offensive against Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s army that has invaded and occupied the northwest of the country. The Ugandan invasion had the element of surprise. That has now passed, and undisciplined Ugandan forces dissolve into chaos, putting up minimal resistance.

Seychelles leading newspaper, The Nation, begins publishing as a morning newspaper: eight pages Monday through Friday and 12 pages on Saturdays, reporting on political and other developments in the country.

Zimbabwe’s only president since Independence in 1980, Robert Mugabe (pic: right), is dismissed as head of the ZANU-PF party, which he has led since 1975. He is replaced by Emmerson Mnangangwa, who will become Zimbabwe’s second president (pic: left).