The last of 1,400 settlers of free blacks, including formerly enslaved African-Americans, who have departed the U.S. arrive in the Liberia colony in West Africa. Among them is former slave Alfred Francis Russell, who will become Liberia’s president in 1883.

Telegraph communication between Europe and Asia is cut for two months as the Anglo-Egyptian War interrupts service in Egypt. (pic: an Egyptian artist's impression of the telegraph lines)

The Anglo-Egyptian War (also known as The British Conquest of Egypt 1882) begins with a bombardment of the port city of Alexandria by British warships.

Brazzaville is named the capital of Congo Français (French Congo, the future Republic of Congo/Congo Brazzaville). The town is now 24 years-old. (pic: the main market)

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The German Warship SMS Königsberg, the victor of the World War I naval Battle of Zanzibar in September 1914, is trapped by British warships at the Rufiji River delta, and is sunk.

Djamila Bouhired, nationalist and militant in the War for Algerian Independence that is now being waged against the French colonial government, appears before a French military court. She and her co-defendants are charged with the bombing of an Algiers café that killed 11 people. Since her arrest, her police interrogators have raped and tortured her on three occasions to extract information, requiring that she be hospitalised.

Congolese businessman turned politician Moïse Tshombe declares that the Katanga region is seceding from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The new country of DRC is thrown into chaos, which will lead to U.N. peacekeeping intervention. The crisis will expand with the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the death of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskhöld, which will be linked to the Katanga Gendarmerie.

Tanganyika President Julius Nyerere meets with U.S. President John Kennedy at the White House in Washington. The leaders get along well, but Nyerere fails to convince Kennedy to take stronger measures against South Africa’s apartheid government.

South African police raid a private farm in the Johannesburg suburb Rivonia, and arrest leaders of the liberation party the African National Congress. Police seize documents that will be used in the so-called Rivonia Trial, which will result in death sentences (later changed to life imprisonments) for Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other anti-apartheid movement leaders.

A Trans-African Highway – in fact a network of highways girding the continent north to south, east to west – becomes a formalised goal with the signing by African Union heads of state of an Intergovernmental Agreement on the Trans-African Highways Network.

Moroccan forces occupy Perejil Island, a small (the length of 15 football fields) uninhabited island 250-metres off Morocco's coast. The island is claimed by Spain, which will respond with a full naval and air invasion of the rock on 18 July. Moroccan troops will surrender without resistance, and will be helicoptered back to Morocco.

U.S. President George Bush becomes the first U.S. president to visit Uganda. He meets with Uganda President Yoweri Museveni to discuss security and trade matters in East Africa.

The FIFA World Cup championship's final game is played at Soccer City in Johannesburg, South Africa. This ends the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the first World Cup to be held on African soil. In the final, Spain defeats The Netherlands.

During South Africa’s annual rites of manhood observed by some traditionalists, 17 boys die after circumcisions made with crude tools cause fatal infections. The tragedy would be worse if Eastern Province authorities had not previously removed 100 boys from illegal traditional initiation camps.