Riobamba years later away from its original location (near a village named Cajabamba on the plains of San Antonio de Aguíscate). The city still retains much architecture from the Spanish period. In the Ecuadorian War of Independence Riobamba first declared independence on November 11, 1820 but was soon retaken. The city finally became part of an independent Gran Colombia in 1822, and then a separate Republic of Ecuador in 1830. On 20 November 2002, 7 people were killed and hundreds wounded when an explosion in the munitions depot at the Galapagos Brigade arsenal in Riobamba set off a series of blasts.
Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall went to court, challenging anyone to show his daughter was not white. He and his wife eventually changed their names and moved to other neighborhoods in order to pass into the white community. Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall, known as O.S.B. Wall (1825-1891), was an American attorney and politician who was born into slavery but, during the American Civil War, became the first black man to be commissioned as captain in the Regular U.S. Army. One of several mixed-race children of a white planter, Wall and others were freed by their father, given a bequest and guardian,