Africans enslaved aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad revolt near Cuba, and manage to take over the ship. The Amistad will eventually arrive in the U.S., where the Africans will be arrested. The U.S. government will want to return them to Cuba to honour a treaty with Spain, but former U.S. President John Quincy Adams will successfully argue for their release before the U.S. Supreme Court. The 35 survivors will return to Sierra Leone in 1842.

Egypt’s ruler Ibrahim Pasha (pic) receives a telegraphed greeting from England’s Prince of Wales in London on the first telegraph line linking Great Britain with India via Suez, Egypt.

Failed Kenyan landowner Karen Blixen publishes her memoirs Out of Africa. Her superb prose and candid accounts of her love affairs will make the book a global best-seller that will be considered a “classic.” However, Blixen sees Africa as merely a stage for the drama of her life, and Africans as minor supporting players. Unmentioned is that her 6,000 acre estate was carved from Maasai lands seized by the British. Writing about the book from an African perspective, Kenya’s literary master Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o will say, “As if in compensation for unfulfilled desires and longings, the baroness turned Kenya into a vast erotic dreamland in which her several white lovers appeared as young gods and her Kenyan servants as usable curs and other animals.”

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In an interview with the New York Times, U.S. Senator John Kennedy voices support for Algeria’s independence. As President of the U.S. in 1962, Kennedy will be among the first world leaders to congratulate Algeria when the country achieves independence from France. (pic: President Kennedy in 1962 with Algeria’s Independence leader and first Prime Minister Ahmed Ben Bella)

The first conference of the South African Student Organisation (SASO) begins at the University of the North near Pietersburg (Polokwane). Black South African students established SASO last year to break with the National Union of South African Students, a liberal group but dominated by white students. The first president is elected: Steve Biko (pic), a medical student at Natal University who founded the Black Consciousness Movement that dismisses any role that whites might play in the liberation of black South Africans.

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Three million South African workers observe a strike called to protest ongoing black on black violence in the Natal Province. The violence has killed hundreds, and is widely believed to be provoked by secret powers fighting against the end of apartheid by exploiting tribal rivalries.

After its three-decade banning by the apartheid government is lifted, South Africa’s liberation party the African National Conference holds its first annual convention in 30 years, in Durban.

Tanzania’s iconic Rock Restaurant opens in a converted former fishing post off Michanvi Pingwe beach on the south-east coast of Zanzibar island. At high tide customers are rowed out by boat.

The 30th June Stadium opens in Cairo. Built by the Egyptian National Air Force for its team, it will be used for club football games and the 2021 Africa World Cup.

U.S. President Barack Obama on his first presidential trip to Africa makes a stop in Senegal. He is met by Senegalese President Macky Sall to discuss West African affairs.