1961 — The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba

On January 17, 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, was flown to the secessionist province of Katanga, tortured, and executed by firing squad alongside two companions. Six months earlier, he had led the Congo to independence from Belgium, in a moment filled with promise.

His blistering independence speech made him a hero across Africa and a marked man in the West. When Katanga seceded with Belgian mining backing and the United Nations refused to intervene, his turn to the Soviet Union for help sealed his fate at the height of the Cold War. Six decades later, Belgium returned his only surviving relic, a single gold-crowned tooth, to his family.