Industrial Age · Africa · Exploration

1855

Livingstone Sees Mosi-oa-Tunya

November 17, 1855

David Livingstone, paddling down the Zambezi in a dugout canoe, became the first European to see the falls the Kololo called Mosi-oa-Tunya - 'the smoke that thunders.' He named them for his queen. The spray rose four hundred meters into the air. Livingstone wept. Africa's interior was being drawn onto European maps, one waterfall at a time.