On this day, after two years of searching, the Welsh-American explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley, finally found the Scottish doctor, missionary and explorer David Livingstone in the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Eastern Africa. Since January 1866, Livingstone had been seeking the source of the Nile and had lost all contact with the outside world. He was also suffering from ill health. Although Stanley’s famous greeting on reaching Livingstone’s village, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” has gone down in history as a rather clumsy attempt at appearing dignified in the bush of Africa, it may have been a fabrication. The same applies to Livingstone’s reported answer, “Yes, I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.” Determined to complete his mission, Livingstone refused to return to England with Stanley, but two years later he died from malaria and dysentery in Chief Chitambo’s village at Chipundu, in present-day Zambia.
