What will become Seychelles is at present a giant island, as the current Ice Age converts the oceans’ waters into glacial ice, resulting in historically low ocean levels. The island will be flooded and then submerged when the Ice Age ends about 19,000 BC, leaving only the highest mountain peaks remaining above sea level. The archipelago in the 21st century will face further submergence from global warming.
Rickshaw pullers who transport white passengers around Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), as if commenting on their role as beasts of burden, dress in animal pelts and wear horns. The costumes delight foreign visitors, and the rickshaw business increases.
Regularly-scheduled passenger air travel begins in Takoradi, Gold Coast (Ghana), as Elder Colonial Airways begins operating flights to and from Lagos, British Nigeria, using Short Scion Senior flying boats.
The Mali Federation is formed to join Mali and Senegal in a self-governing territory within French West Africa, with Dakar as the capital. The federation will gain independence in 1960, but will last only two months before Mali and Senegal separate as independent countries.
Senegal achieves national independence, from France. The capital city is Dakar. The national population is 3.2 million.
The Thalit Massacre represents a chilling turning point in the Algerian Civil War, when whole villages are massacred. Men, women, children and the elderly – none are spared by Islamic jihadists. At Thalit, 70km south of Algiers, 52 of 53 residents die after their throats are cut by insurgents, and their homes are burned.
The U.S. is operating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) out of Seychelles to monitor Somali piracy off Africa’s east coast. One of the drones crashes at the international airport in Victoria, today, without casualties. It is the second drone to crash there in four months.
Kizito Mihigo, popular Rwandan gospel singer and peace activist who has been a favourite of government, is kidnapped by police after the release of a song implicating the ruling party, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. News of his arrest will not made public for the next 10 days. International human rights groups will denounce the arrest, which is one of several arrests made of political activists.
Faced with critical water shortages and close to being the first major world city to run out of water, Cape Town, South Africa, raises property rates by 7% and water/sanitation rates by 27% to obtain revenue for a water treatment plant and other emergency measures.
Mozambique state television, TVM, now broadcasts the news in all 15 local languages.
Independence leader who would have been first president of Central African Republic if he had not died in a plane crash months before independence, in Bobangui, French Equatorial Africa. Born in poverty, he was ordained as the first Catholic priest from Oubangui-Chari. He was the first Oubanguian elected to the French National Assembly, where he fought against racism and French colonialism in Africa.
South African jazz trumpeter, songwriter and activist, in Emalahleni Local Municipality, South Africa. The “father of South African jazz,” he was married to and was a lifelong collaborator of Miriam Makeba. His Grazing in the Grass was a #1 hit in 1968. His songs from the 1980s, including Soweto Blues and Bring Him Back (about imprisoned Nelson Mandela) and the musical show Sarafina!, constituted the soundtrack of the anti-apartheid movement.
