Sahle Selassie, the Negus (King) of the Shewa people of Ethiopia, fires the government officials he has put in charge of the nation’s monasteries. He is being threatened with excommunication if he does not take this action – a threat that comes from the very church leaders he seeks to control. The Ethiopian Church is split by a theological dispute, and Selassie’s action angers one of the rival faction, which then excommunicates him. Ailing and aging, Selassie is talked out of abdicating by his advisors.

The École normale supérieure William Ponty is established, originally named École William Ponty, as a government teaching school in Dakar, French Equatorial Africa (Senegal).  A remarkable number of African independence leaders and future heads of Francophone African nations’ governments will study at the school. These will include Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the first president of Côte d’Ivoire; Hubert Maga of Dahomey (Benin); Modibo Keîta, the first president of Mali; Hamani Diori, the first president of Niger; Mamadou Dia, the first Prime Minister of Senegal; and Maurice Yaméogo, the first president of Upper Volta (Burkina Faso).

The British movie 40^th Parallel is release in the U.S. but with the deletion of a line said by a German Nazi commander: “. . . sub-apes like Negroes, one step above the Jews.” The line is censored not to avoid offending black people or Jews but to avoid offending white racists in America’s South who share the opinion but don’t want to hear it said by a Nazi, with whom the U.S. is now at war.

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In its first major troop deployment of the Algerian War, France sends 20,000 troops to Algeria to counter the Algerian National Liberation Front’s rebellion to achieve national independence.

The U.N. General Assembly establishes the World Food Programme. The WFP becomes the world’s largest humanitarian organisation and the world’s largest provider of school meals. With its mandate to end hunger by providing food security, the WHO will create partnerships with all African states.

Answering the Democratic Republic of Congo Prime Minister Moïse Tshombe’s appeals for assistance, Belgium and the U.S. send troops into the country, and rescue 2,000 European hostages held by rebel leader Christophe Gbenye (pic). The rebels have threatened to execute their hostages if government did not cut its ties with the West.

Mobuto Sese Seko becomes ruler of the Democratic Republic of Congo, after leading a coup d’état against President Joseph Kasa- Vubu. The coup d’état is seen by the military as a means to end the factionalism that has been the cause of the ongoing civil war, which began at independence and has brought mass killings.

Television comes to the Democratic Republic of Congo as Radio-Television Nationale Congolaise begins broadcasts in Kinshasa.

Lucy, the most complete early human skeleton discovered, is unearthed in Ethiopia at Hadar. Anthropologists determine that she is a female who lived 3.2 million years ago.

A multi-party agreement ends the Rwandan Civil War. The treaty establishes a Transitional Legislature that excludes all political parties implicated in the genocide against the Tutsi people.

U.S. President Barack Obama asks the U.S. Congress, which has passed the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, for funding to implement the law. The act seeks to end the terror attacks of Joseph Kony’s LRA, and to restore areas devastated by his army.

Zimbabwe Vice President Emmerson Mngangwa is sworn in as President to replace Robert Mugabe, who has been deposed by the military after 37 years of increasingly unpopular rule.