Greetings and shalom, everyone! On this day of the Gregorian calendar, February 6, we remember the following events in global African history:
| Year | Territory | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 1778 | USA | American Revolutionary War: In Paris, the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce were signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic. |
| 1788 | USA | Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution. |
| 1806 | Hispaniola | Battle of San Domingo: British naval victory against the French in the Caribbean. |
| 1820 | USA; Liberia | The American Colonization Society sent its 1st organized emigration of blacks back to Africa from NY to Sierra Leone. |
| 1838 | South Africa | The Boer leader Piet Retief was executed as a witch after having failed to obtain land by trickery from the Zulus of South Africa, . |
| 1861 | USA | The first meeting of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America. |
| 1862 | USA | American Civil War: Forces under the command of Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew H. Foote give the Union its first victory of the war, capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee in the Battle of Fort Henry. |
| 1900 | South Africa | Battle at Vaalkrans, South Africa (Boers vs. British army). |
| 1945 | Jamaica | Birth of reggae superstar and activist Robert Nesta Marley, a/k/a “Bob Marley,” (1945-1981) in Nine Mile, Saint Ann, Jamaica. |
| 1950 | USA | Birth of jazz/soul singer Natalie Cole (1950-2016), daughter of singer/pianist Nat King Cole, in Los Angeles, California. |
| 1956 | USA | The University of Alabama board of trustees voted to suspend Autherine Lucy, the 1st black admitted to the school, on the grounds that the campus was no longer safe for her. |
| 1981 | Uganda | The National Resistance Army of Uganda launches an attack on a Ugandan Army installation in the central Mubende District to begin the Ugandan Bush War. |
| 1982 | USA | Civil rights workers began a march from Carrolton to Montgomery, Alabama. |
| 1993 | USA | Tennis Hall-of-Famer and human rights advocate Arthur Ashe died of AIDS in New York at age 49. He was the first black man to win the Wimbledon tennis match. |
| 1995 | Haiti | Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide disbanded the Haitian army and replaced it with a civilian police force. |
| 1998 | Rwanda | Hutu rebels hacked to death 48 civilians in the village of Biyahe in the Gisenyi region. |
| 1999 | Ethiopia; Eritrea | Ethiopia and Eritrea resumed their clash after an 8-month lull. Heavy casualties were reported. |
| 2001 | Ethiopia; Eritrea | Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to set up a 16-mile wide UN-patrolled security zone effective Feb 12. |
| 2001 | Haiti | The 15-party opposition alliance Convergence named Gerard Gourgue as the country’s provisional president. |
| 2003 | Africa | An inter-African committee on female genital cutting called for an annual observance of Feb. 6 as an international day of zero tolerance of the practice. |
| 2004 | Liberia | International donors pledged $520 million to start the long process of turning Liberia from a failed war-ravaged state into a democracy with a thriving economy. |
| 2004 | Nigeria | Nigeria ordered an investigation into allegations that a Halliburton Co. subsidiary paid $180 million in bribes to land a natural gas project (1995-2002), while US Vice President Dick Cheney was head of Halliburton. |
| 2005 | African Union; Togo | The African Union accused military commanders in Togo of taking advantage of the death of the country’s longtime leader to stage a coup and raised the possibility that its 53 members will not recognize the West African nation’s new government. |
| 2007 | Africa | Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced to the Senate Armed Services Committee that President George W. Bush had given authority to create the new African Command. US Navy Rear Admiral Robert Moeller was named as Executive Director, head of the transition team for AFRICOM, with initial quarters in Germany. |
| 2008 | DR Congo | Congo arrested and turned over for trial Mathieu Ngudjolo, an army colonel and former rebel leader accused of leading a deadly 2003 attack on a village in the country’s lawless east. Ngudjolo was expected to arrive at the International Criminal Court in the Hague the next day. |
| 2009 | Nigeria | Nigeria’s government reported that 84 infants and children have died after swallowing My Pikin Baby Teething Mixture, a teething syrup laced with diethylene glycol. |
| 2009 | Niger; Nigeria | A failed bid to smuggle a bus filled with rice into Nigeria from Niger left seven people dead including two customs officers set ablaze with petrol. |
| 2010 | Ethiopia | Ethiopia’s official news agency said US software giant Microsoft has launched Windows Vista in Amharic, the first operating system in its national language. 40 scholars from the Addis Ababa University had taken part in the translation of the software for the country of over 80 million people. |
| 2010 | Rwanda | Joseph Ntawangundi, an aide to the leader of the Unified Democratic Party (FDU), was arrested on a 2007 arrest warrant. He had been convicted in absentia for genocide by one of the grassroots courts known as gacaca in eastern Ngoma province. The FDU protested that Ntawangundi, sentence to 19 years in prison, was not in the country during the 1994 genocide that left some 800,000 dead. In March he sentenced to 17 years in prison for genocide in a retrial by a local court. |
| 2011 | Zimbabwe | Zimbabwe state media reported that the nation’s ivory stockpile has rocketed to 42,000 kilos up from a previous record of 29,000, but the country cannot sell it due to a ban. It reportedly costs Zimbabwe $13 million annually to secure the stockpile, valued at $10 million. |
| 2012 | USA; Liberia | A US immigration judge ordered George Boley (62), the former leader of the Liberian Peace Council, out of the country in upstate New York, the first-ever removal under a 2008 law to combat the use of child soldiers. The judge cited “credible reports” that Boley authorized the executions of seven of his soldiers on November 14, 1995. |
| 2012 | Burkina Faso | A Burkina Faso security official said more than 1,500 Malians, fleeing a Tuareg rebellion in the north and reprisal attacks in Bamako, have found refuge in Burkina Faso. |
| 2012 | Chad | The Chadian National Electoral Commission, CENI, announced that the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement, MPS, party of President Idriss Deby Itno and its allies had won majority of towns in the first local elections to be organized in the country. |
| 2012 | Chad | Chad announced it was reopening a major oil refinery it had earlier ordered shut because of a price dispute with its Chinese part-o |
| 2014 | Nigeria | Nigeria’s secret police said that it was holding Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, leader of the outlawed Niger Delta Volunteer Force, in the latest crackdown on potential trouble before elections next year. |
| 2014 | South Sudan | South Sudan rebels fighting government troops said that 700 men from the government side have defected with all their equipment and were heading to join the rebels. |
| 2015 | Niger | 109 Boko Haram fighters were killed by soldiers responding to attacks in fighting in the towns of Bosso and Diffa near the border with Nigeria. 4 soldiers were killed and 17 wounded. |
| 2015 | South Africa | South African author, Andre Brink (b.1935), died aboard a KLM flight travelling from the Netherlands to Cape Town. He used his work to question the policies of South Africa’s apartheid regime. His 1975 book, “Looking on Darkness,” the first of Brink’s books distributed to the United States, was banned by the South African government until 1982. |
| 2016 | Haiti | Top Haitian leaders negotiated an agreement to install a short-term provisional government less than 24 hours before President Michel Martelly was scheduled to step down. |
| 2016 | Tunisia | Tunisia said it has completed a 200-km (125 mile) barrier along its frontier with Libya to try to keep out Islamist militants, and will soon install electronic monitoring systems. |
| 2017 | Nigeria | Hundreds of Nigerians marched to protest poverty and corruption as President Muhammadu Buhari’s prolonged absence abroad for medical tests raised political and economic tensions. |
| 2017 | South Sudan | South Sudan’s Pres. Salva Kiir said that soldiers who rape civilians should be shot, trying to mollify citizens outraged by abuses by security forces and quell growing international anger over attacks. |
| 2017 | Tanzania | Tanzania’s President John Magufuli told security forces to crack down on the drugs trade and said no one should be spared, even if they are top politicians or their relatives. |
Source(s):
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Categories: Today in African History
