Black Bart (Bartholomew Roberts), a feared Welsh pirate, is shot as his ship tries to avoid capture by a British Royal Navy ship, and dies off the coast of Cape Lopez (Gabon). For three years, he has terrorized the coast of West Africa and the Americas, and taken 400 ships. He flew one of the first Skull and Crossbones flags, and was considered a mythical person for his exploits. However, he murdered 80 enslaved Africans when the caption of the ship transporting them refused to surrender, and he burned the vessel.

The mass media that will challenge Africans' self-esteem in the 20th century with years of racist imagery has begun its mischief in the U.S. This advert shows a black child bleached white by a soap. She is delighted when shown the results by a white child.

Horror and disgust register on the faces of these Congolese men forced to display the severed hands of a man and a child who paid the penalty for failing to meet their daily quota at the rubber plantations of the Belgian Congo Free State company. Company officials look on sternly. The population of Congo decreases at least 15% as the company’s mercenaries carry out company policy against under-performing men, women and children.

A new type of business is emerging in Africa’s major cities: the motor garage. Automobile mechanics serve a growing population of cars and trucks, operating from converted horse stables but now from buildings built to house and maintain motor vehicles, like the Transvaal Motor Garage in Johannesburg (pic).

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Africa’s largest cinema theatre ever opens in Cairo, Egypt. The Rivoli Cinema seats 2,150 people. Owned by the Rank Organisation of Britain and showing British movies, the cinema will be badly damaged in the anti-British Cairo Uprising in 1952.

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The First Africa Cup of Nations continental football tournament begins. Africa’s main international men’s association football competition, sanctioned by the Confederation of African Football, is held in Khartoum, Sudan. Only three teams compete - Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan - after South Africa is disqualified because of that country’s apartheid policies. Egypt’s team wins the first Cup.

A coup d’état in South Africa’s “homeland” Bophuthatswana installs Rocky Malebane-Metsing (pic) as president. He will be in power for one day before the South African military restores the South African apartheid government's puppet president Lucas Mangope.

For the first time, Mali hosts the Africa Cup of Nations (23rd edition). Cameroon wins its fourth title, with Cameroonian Rigobert Song named Best Player.

The Court of The Hague rules against a Dutch man who tries to patent the production of teff, an ancient grain used for Ethiopia's staple food injera. The Court rules that the grain belongs to Ethiopia, and is an "Ethiopian asset." The decision is a victory for the right of Africans to own their indigenous agricultural products.

As East Africa’s worst locust plague in generations advances at a rate of 144 kilometres a day, Somalia declares the invasion a National Emergency. Climate change worsened the region’s 2019 storms, whose flooding allowed billions of locusts to breed.