On this day, 56 years ago, Tanganyika now Tanzania gained her independence from Britain, with Mwalimu Julius Nyerere as Prime Minister.
1976.
On this day, 41 years ago, an express Mombasa-Nairobi passenger train, carrying 600 passengers plunged from a washed out bridge into a flooding river at Kathekani.
12 people were killed and 70 injured in what railroad officials described as the worst passenger train disaster in East African history at that time.
Scores of people were trapped for hours in one car which got stuck in the mud of the rain-swollen river.
The derailment occured at 2.00 am when most people were asleep, as the train roared through a thunderstorm across a river bridge near Kathekani station.
The water level had risen 20 feet in the hours before the train arrived and swept away part of the concrete support of the bridge and the rails.
"The noise of the crash was incredible like God coming to visit us," said Onyango Ohulu who was a passenger, " Then there was nothing but silence."
"I couldn't feel or see anything i was trapped in my compartment for nine hours. I was submerged into water upto my neck."
Among those on the train were 17 American students, Peace Corp volunteers and UNESCO delegates.
16/11/1972
On this day, 45 years ago, NASA launched its explorer satellite to study gamma rays from a launching site off the coast of kenya.
The satellite was launched from the italian operated San Marco range near malindi.
Two hundred American and Italian scientists led by project manager Mrs Marjorie Townsend of the Goddard Space Flight Centre were on hand for the launch.
Today marks 61 years since Dedan Kimathi was captured in a forest at Tetu, 120 miles North of Nairobi.
Dedan was dressed in a leopard skin headdress and cloak , when spotted moving through the forest.
The police at first thought he was a leopard, but when they realised that the figure was a man they fired, hitting him in the thigh.
Later Kimathi was operated on in Nyeri Hospital.
