Today In History: APRIL 27

APRIL 27 1961:
SIERRA LEONE BECAME AN INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC

On this day in April 1961, Sierra Leone became politically independent of Great Britain. It retained a parliamentary system of government and was a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), led by Sir Milton Margai were victorious in the first general election under universal adult franchise in May 1962. Upon Sir Milton's death in 1964, his half-brother, Sir Albert Margai, succeeded him as Prime Minister. Sir Albert attempted to establish a single-party state had the ready cooperation of the opposition All People' Congress but met fierce resistance from some cadre within his party Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) and ultimately abandoned the idea.

The first years of independence were prosperous. Mineral resources (iron ore and diamonds) brought in substantial revenue, much of which was used for development, particularly education. Njala University College was founded in the early 1960s and amalgamated in 1967 with Fourah Bay College as the University of Sierra Leone.

The Sierra Leone river, with a natural harbour at its mouth where Freetown now stands, is one of the places where slaving ships of the European nations regularly put in to trade with local rulers for their transatlantic cargo. But it is also the site selected by a British abolitionist, Granville Sharp, for a practical experiment in philanthropy.

APRIL 27 1822:
PRESIDENT GRANT IS BORN: On this day in 1822, the Civil War Leader and 18th President of United States was born.The son of a tanner, Grant showed little enthusiasm for joining his father’s business, so the elder Grant enrolled his son at West Point in 1839. Though Grant later admitted in his memoirs he had no interest in the military apart from honing his equestrian skills, he graduated in 1843 and went on to serve in the Mexican-American War, though he opposed it on moral grounds. He then left his beloved wife and children again to fulfill a tour of duty in California and Oregon. The loneliness and sheer boredom of duty in the West drove Grant to binge drinking. By 1854, Grant’s alcohol consumption so alarmed his superiors that he was asked to resign from the army. He did, and returned to Ohio to try his hand at farming and land speculation. Although he kicked the alcohol habit, he failed miserably at both vocations and was forced to take a job as a clerk in his father’s tanning business.

Grant’s talent as a political leader paled woefully in comparison to his military prowess. He was unable to stem the rampant corruption of his administration and failed to combat a severe economic depression in 1873. There were bright spots in Grant’s tenure, however, including the passage of the Enforcement Act in 1870, which temporarily curtailed the political influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the post-Civil War South, and the 1875 Civil Rights Act, which attempted to desegregate public places such as restrooms, inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement. Grant spent the last few years of his life writing a detailed account of the Civil War and, after he died of throat cancer in 1885, Julia managed to scrape by on the royalties earned from his memoirs.


APRIL 27 1978:
AFGHANISTAN PRESIDENT SARDAR MOHAMMED IS OVERTHROWN
President Sardar Mohammed Daoud was overthrown and murdered in a coup led by procommunist rebels. The brutal action marked the beginning of political upheaval in Afghanistan that resulted in intervention by Soviet troops less than two years later.

Daoud had ruled Afghanistan since coming to power in a coup in 1973. His relations with the neighboring Soviet Union had grown progressively worse since that time as he pursued a campaign against Afghan communists. The murder of a leading Afghan Communist Party leader in early April 1978 may have encouraged the communists to launch their successful campaign against the Daoud regime later that month. In the political chaos that followed the death of Daoud, Nur Mohammed Taraki, head of the Afghan Communist Party, took over the presidency. In December 1978, Afghanistan signed a 20-year “friendship treaty” with the Soviet Union, by which increasing amounts of Russian military and economic assistance flowed into the country. None of this, however, could stabilize the Taraki government. His dictatorial style and his decision to turn Afghanistan into a one-party state alienated many people in the heavily Moslem country. In September 1979, Taraki was himself overthrown and murdered. Three months later, Soviet troops crossed into Afghanistan and installed a government acceptable to the Russians, and a war between Afghan rebels and Soviet troops erupted. The conflict lasted until Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew the Soviet forces in 1988.


Content: history.com