Luptis Magna, a Roman colony on the Mediterranean Coast of North Africa in what will become Libya, is the world’s olive oil capital. The colony uses 3 million tons of olive oil alone to pay tax to Emperor Julius Caesar in Rome. In the 21st century, Luptis will be the best-preserved site from Roman antiquity.
France will use Algeria as a location to test nuclear weapons and launch rockets with today’s opening of the Special Weapons Test Centre at Colomb-Bechar. Launch operations will be moved to Hammaguira in 1952, where France’s will launch its first spacecraft into orbit in 1965.
In a massive wave of arrests against suspected Mau Mau militants who are fighting a guerilla war against colonial occupation of Kenya, British authorities jail at least 10,000 Kenyan men. They are sent to detention camps for interrogation that includes torture. The operation is carried out by 4,000 police, who have orders to shoot to kill if they meet armed resistance.
In order to lessen the possibility of coups d’état that have plagued other West African countries, Cote d’Ivoire President Félix Houphouët-Boigny reduces military and police personnel from 5,300 to 3,500 and gives the French army stationed at Port-Bouët responsibility for national defense.
The first World Festival of Black Arts closes in Dakar, Senegal. The event has proved an historic gathering of African and African diaspora artists, musicians and writers, including historian Cheikh Anta Diop; dancers Arthur Mitchell and Alvin Ailey; musicians Duke Ellington and Marion Williams; singers Julie Akofa Akoussah and Bella Bellow; and writers Aimé Césaire, Langston Hughes, and Wole Soyinka.
Seeking to appease popular discontent with his dictatorship, Mobuto Sese Seko announces the end of one-party rule in Zaire (the Democratic Republic of Congo), and a transition toward multi-party democracy.
The U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara is established to provide security for a vote by the Saharawi people on the political fate of Western Sahara. Because of objections from Morocco, which claims the territory of Western Sahara as its own and calls it the province of Western Morocco, the referendum will take place (as of 2022). A Spanish possession until 1976, Western Sahara is the last major location on the U.N.’s list of non-decolonised territories.
One of the founders of democratic South Africa, Oliver R. Tambo, dies. The anti-apartheid activist was president of South Africa’s political party the African National Congress from 1967 to 1991. The Johannesburg International Airport will be renamed in his honor. (pic: as a young black lawyer appearing to be symbolically fenced off from white-run Johannesburg)
The largest terrorist bombing in South African history occurs at a taxi station in Germiston, targeting black commuters. Right-wing radicals opposed to the end of white minority rule bomb other sites from today until 27 April, killing 21 and injuring 100 people.
The Ethiopian government’s brutal crackdown on the Oromo people begins when police beat and shoot peaceful protestors demonstrating against plans to expand Addis Ababa over Oromo lands. In all, 140 Oromo protestors will be killed before the capital city expansion plan is discarded in 2016.
Nigerian poet and novelist, in Bumoundi, Bayelsa State, British Nigeria. Anglophone Africa’s first Modernist poet drew upon African folklore and thought. He was called "the Nigerian Negritudist" for his devotion to the Negritude school that honours black consciousness.
Film actor and model, in Cotonou, Benin. He rose to movie fame with his first cinema role as Cinqué, the leader of a slave revolt in the 1997 movie Amistad, and he features regularly in major hit Hollywood films.
