21st April,

On this day April 21, 2010 in;

1619, the man considered as the founding father of the Afrikaner nation in South Africa, Jan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck, was born in the Netherland’s city of Culemborg. Van Riebeeck built the first fort in South Africa, and later died in Batavia near modern day Jakarta in 1677.



1859, Scottish explorer, adventurer and missionary, David Livingstone lands in Cape Town, in his bid to find the source of the Niger river, and also to win converts to the Christian religion. He later died of malaria and some complications due to dysentery in 1873 near Lake Bangweulu in modern day Zambia.

1906, Ms Mary Thelma Washington was born in Vicksburg, Miss. She would later become the first black woman to be certified as a public accountant in the US.

1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson awards the presidential medal of honor posthumously to private first class Milton Lee Olive III, for the sacrificing his life in other to save his colleagues when a hand grenade was thrown at them by rebels in the Vietnam war. The award was received by Olive’s father and step mother at the step of the White house, making him the first African American service man to be given such an award.

1994, 10 Belgian soldiers are massacred by Hutu militias in Rwanda, thus bringing to the international front, news of the ongoing genocide of the minority Tutsis which had started a few weeks earlier. In the three months that the genocide took place-April to July- approximately 800,000-1000000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutu politicians lost their lives, many of the leading conspirators of this crime have been jailed by the International Court of Justice.