The Dutch governor of Cape Colony (South Africa) intends to burn the entire village of Simon’s Town on False Bay to prevent it from falling into British hands during the Battle of Muizenberg. The town’s residents have been evacuated. Before the burning can begin, 800 British soldiers of the Royal Marines land, and occupy the town.
The Rosetta Stone is discovered in the Egyptian village Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard during Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt. The granite stone was inscribed with a royal decree in 196 BC in three languages: Egyptian Demotic, hieroglyphics and ancient Greek. Through cross-referencing languages, a way is now available to decipher hieroglyphics. The stone will be on continuous display from 1802 as the most visited item at the British Museum in London.
With 8,000 residents, Britain’s Indian Ocean Natal settlement in South Africa can no longer function under administrative control by the Cape Colony on the Atlantic coast. Natal is declared an independent colony, with a 16-member legislature.
France is connected to Africa via a submarine telegraph line that is laid from Marseilles. The cable will land in Bona (Annaba), Algeria in 21 July 1877, traveling by way of Malta. A second telegraph line will be laid in October.
The Israeli Air Force bombs residential neighborhoods in Cairo, Egypt, killing many civilians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Retaliation against Jews in Cairo, in the form of bombings in the Jewish Quarter, will start on 19 July, and continue through November.
After being raped and tortured by the French military while in their custody, Djamila Bouhired, a militant in the War for Algerian Independence, is found guilty by a military tribunal of bombing a café that killed 11. She is sentenced to death by the guillotine. Her lawyer, the famous attorney activist Jacques Vergès, mounts a publicity campaign in France and Algeria against the verdict. Princess Laila Ayesha of Morocco, which is another French colony, will plead for Bouhired's life to the President of France, René Coty. Coty will commute the death sentence to life imprisonment. Bouhired will be freed at the end of the war, when Algeria achieves independence, in 1962.
The first troops of the U.N. Operations in the Congo (ONUC) arrive in Léopoldville (Kinshasa) to restore law and order. The U.N. force will move out Belgian troops whose presence has worsened the chaos in the two week-old Democratic Republic of Congo.
The U.S. Air Force Satellite Control Facility for Africa is opened in Mahé, Seychelles, as a part of a global network of satellite tracking facilities.
Tanzanian performance poet Zuhura Seng’enge’s launches her first collection of poetry, Warrior Unleashed, with digital sound and light background at Soma Book Café, a literary centre in Dar es Salaam. She is among African poets pioneering digital effects in her live performances and on-line platforms.
Cameroonian musician and composer, in Douala, French Cameroon. Starting his career as a broadcaster in Ghana at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah, he chose to pursue the arts in Paris. He worked with UNESCO to research traditional African music. In his own music, he combined African and Western instruments when he recorded his first album in 1969.
Nigerian business executive, in Ikorodu, Lagos State, Nigeria. She has ascended to the top of the real estate, fashion, oil and publishing industries to become Nigeria’s wealthiest woman (US$1 billion in 2020). Forbes business magazine in 2015 ranked her as Africa’s second most powerful woman and the world’s 87th most powerful woman.
