59 Fun Facts About David Livingstone

Livingstone's famous motto for Africa was 'Christianity, Commerce and' what?

Civilization. He believed the three together would open up Africa, with honest trade along the Zambezi giving chiefs an alternative to selling captives.

From the age of ten, David Livingstone worked 14-hour days in what kind of mill?

Cotton. He spent part of his first week's wages on a Latin grammar and propped his books on the spinning jenny, reading a sentence each time he passed.

In 1864 Livingstone sailed his small river steamer 2,500 miles across the Indian Ocean to sell it in which city?

Bombay. His engineer had quit, so with a scanty, untrained crew and little fuel he served as his own captain and engineer.

Which organisation sent Livingstone out to Africa in 1840?

The London Missionary Society. He chose it for its 'perfectly unsectarian character': it sent out, he wrote, no single church but simply the Gospel.

Livingstone first wanted to be a missionary in which country before Africa?

China. An appeal for medical missionaries there set him studying medicine, but the First Opium War shut the door before he could sail.

Which veteran missionary inspired Livingstone with talk of 'the smoke of a thousand villages'?

Robert Moffat. Home on leave from his Kuruman mission, he urged the young Scot to push north to unoccupied ground, and Livingstone later married his daughter Mary.

Livingstone's 1857 appeal to students at which university led to the Universities' Mission to Central Africa?

Cambridge. He ended his Senate House lecture by saying he would soon be cut off in Africa and urging the students to take up his work: 'I leave it with you!'

Which animal attacked Livingstone at Mabotsa in 1844, crushing his left arm?

A lion. His companion Mebalwe drew the animal off and was bitten too, and the badly set bone later identified Livingstone's body in London.

Who was the only African Livingstone is recorded as converting to Christianity?

Sechele, chief of the Kwena. Livingstone wrote him off as a backslider within months, yet Sechele kept preaching and, one historian says, spread Christianity more than almost any European missionary.

Which desert did Livingstone cross in 1849 with the hunter William Oswell to reach Lake Ngami?

The Kalahari. Oswell paid for the guides, and the first European sighting of Lake Ngami gave the unknown missionary his first taste of fame at home.

Livingstone's 1840 voyage out to Africa put in at which South American port?

Rio de Janeiro. He called it the finest place he had ever seen, where 'everything delighted me except man', and was dismayed by the drunkenness of visiting Europeans.

On his 1854 crossing to the Atlantic, Livingstone reached which Portuguese port?

Luanda. He turned down a passage home to keep his promise to walk his Kololo companions back, and the mail ship he would have sailed on sank off Madeira with his papers.

Which Kololo chief lent Livingstone the men who accompanied him to both coasts?

Sekeletu. Eager for direct trade with the coast, the young chief supplied 27 men for the march west and 114 for the journey east.

Which local name, meaning 'the smoke that thunders', did Livingstone record for the falls he named after Queen Victoria?

Mosi-oa-Tunya. It was the name his Kololo companions used, and as he paddled towards the falls he saw columns of spray rising like smoke from five or six miles off.

Victoria Falls lies on the border between which two countries?

Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Zambezi marks the border there, and the island on the lip from which he first peered into the chasm is now called Livingstone Island.

Which insect's bite did Livingstone call 'certain death' to some domestic animals?

Tsetse fly. He judged its bite perfectly harmless to man; it was later found to spread sleeping sickness.

Livingstone's 1856 arrival at which Mozambican port completed the first European crossing of south-central Africa?

Quelimane. A letter was waiting there from his own society, coolly declining to fund plans 'connected only remotely with the spread of the Gospel', and he soon resigned.

Livingstone's 1857 bestseller was titled Missionary Travels and Researches in which region?

South Africa. The bestseller lifted his family out of near poverty and gave him the money and fame to leave his mission society and return as an explorer.

What government post did Livingstone take up after resigning as a missionary?

British consul. The roving post, covering Africa's eastern coast and the independent interior, came with command of a government expedition to explore the Zambezi.

In what position did Livingstone's attendants find him when he died in 1873?

Kneeling at his bedside. Too weak to walk, he had been brought to the hut on a litter; by a candle still burning they saw his head in his hands on the pillow, as if in prayer.

Which steamer did Livingstone's Zambezi expedition nickname 'the Asthmatic' for its snorting, feeble engine?

Ma Robert. Named after his wife's African nickname, 'mother of Robert', it burned so much wood and crawled so slowly that canoes overtook it, and it finally sank on a sandbank.

Which rapids on the Zambezi proved impassable and wrecked Livingstone's plan of a river highway?

Cahora Bassa. On his earlier journey to the coast he had heard of the rapids without ever seeing them, and his single-engined steamer had no power to climb them.

Which artist was dismissed from the Zambezi expedition after disagreements?

Thomas Baines. The expedition's artist and storekeeper, he later reached Victoria Falls with the hunter James Chapman, and his paintings of them were published as an album of colour prints.

Which great lake, called Nyasa by Livingstone, did his Zambezi expedition reach in 1859?

Lake Malawi. He reached it in September 1859, and the British interest he stirred in the country around it led to a protectorate, later named Nyasaland, that is today's Malawi.

Which relative joined Livingstone's Zambezi expedition and co-wrote his book about it?

His brother Charles. He left a pastorate in New England to join as general assistant, and back in Britain in 1864 the two wrote up the expedition together.

Of what did Mary Livingstone die in April 1862 on the Zambezi?

Malaria. Determined to rejoin him after years apart, she fell ill at Shupanga less than three months after they were reunited and died within a week.

What geographical mystery obsessed Livingstone's final expedition?

The source of the Nile. Burton, Speke and Baker had pointed to the great lakes further north, but Livingstone was sure it lay to the south and searched there until he died.

The Lualaba, which Livingstone explored in his last years, becomes which great river downstream?

The Congo. Livingstone never followed it far enough to be sure, and Stanley settled the question by riding it downstream all the way to the Atlantic.

At which Lualaba market town did Livingstone watch Arab slavers massacre hundreds of people in 1871?

Nyangwe. It was the furthest point of his last journey, and the slaughter in the crowded market left him too shattered to go on, so he turned back east.

Which newspaper sent Henry Morton Stanley to find Livingstone?

Stanley, born John Rowlands in Wales, had earlier bribed a telegraph operator to file his Magdala report ahead of the army's.

In which settlement on Lake Tanganyika did Stanley find Livingstone in 1871?

Ujiji. Livingstone had limped in shortly before to find his stores sold off, so Stanley's caravan of food and medicine reached a man who was close to destitute.

By Stanley's account, how did Livingstone reply to the greeting 'Dr Livingstone, I presume'?

Yes, said with a smile and a lift of his cap. Stanley wrote that he longed to embrace him but, out of 'moral cowardice and false pride', raised his hat instead; his diary pages for that day are missing.

On his trek to the Atlantic coast, Livingstone rode which animal, an ill-tempered beast he named Sinbad?

An ox. Sinbad had a soft back but a foul temper: he bolted under low creepers to drag his rider off, then tried to kick him once he was down.

Henry Morton Stanley, the reporter who found Livingstone, was born John Rowlands in which country?

Wales. Born to unmarried parents in Denbigh and raised in a workhouse, he sailed to New Orleans at 18 and took the name of a merchant there.

After finding Livingstone, Stanley went on to carve out a central African colony for which European king?

Leopold II of Belgium. Britain showed no interest, so Stanley spent five years building a road and launching steamers for the king, earning the nickname Bula Matari, 'Breaker of Rocks'.

Where did Livingstone die on 1 May 1873?

Chief Chitambo's village, near Lake Bangweulu. Refusing Stanley's pleas to come home, he had gone back to search the lake's swamps and arrived too weak to walk, borne on a litter.

What did Livingstone's attendants remove and bury under a tree at the place he died?

His heart. They removed it with his other organs so the body could be embalmed, then sealed the remains in a cylinder of bark wrapped in sailcloth for the long journey home.

Which two African companions led the carrying of Livingstone's body to the coast?

Chuma and Susi. Both had served him since the Zambezi years, and in 1874 they came to Britain and helped Horace Waller edit his Last Journals from their own memories.

Livingstone told his mission's directors he was ready 'to go anywhere, provided it be' what?

Forward. He wrote it in 1843 while building his first mission station, and within a decade he had given up settled stations to walk across the continent.

Where is Livingstone buried?

Westminster Abbey. He lies in the centre of the nave under a stone that begins 'Brought by faithful hands over land and sea', a tribute to the Africans who brought him home.

Which Scottish bank put Livingstone's portrait on its £10 notes in the 1980s and 1990s?

Clydesdale. A later issue set his portrait against a map of his Zambezi expedition, and in 1997 the note passed to Mary Slessor, who had volunteered for Africa on the news of his death.

Which Scottish mill town, Livingstone's birthplace, gave its name to an African city founded by missionaries?

Blantyre. A Scottish trading company set up beside the mission station, and the settlement grew into the commercial capital of its country.

Who wrecked Livingstone's mission house at Kolobeng in 1852 while he was away?

Boer raiders. They tore up his books and smashed his medicines, which he said only set him free: they 'resolved to shut up the interior, and I determined to open the country'.

What did Livingstone take on his travels to show Bible scenes to village audiences?

A magic lantern. At one show he slid away the picture of Abraham raising his knife over Isaac, and the women fled, sure the moving blade was coming for them.

Livingstone's father Neil, a strict teetotaller, travelled door to door selling what?

Tea. He handed out religious tracts on his rounds and, fearing science would undermine faith, at first tried to keep his son to books of theology.

Livingstone's eldest son died after enlisting as a soldier in which conflict?

The American Civil War. Sent out to join his father, he never reached him, went to the United States instead and joined the Union army; he died in a prison hospital at Salisbury, North Carolina.

Livingstone's son William Oswell was nicknamed Zouga after what?

The river he was born beside. Mary gave birth on the trail in 1851 as the family trekked back from the far north, and his father's letters home call the baby 'little Zouga'.

Livingstone vowed in 1853: 'I shall open up a path into the interior, or' what?

Perish. He wrote it with his family safely shipped to Britain, and within three years he had walked out at the Indian Ocean, the continent crossed.

What did Livingstone call 'the strangest disease' he saw among captured free men in Africa?

Broken-heartedness. Captives endured their chains, he wrote, until the broad Lualaba rolled between them and home; then they gave up, and many died within three days of crossing.

Livingstone liked to hum lines from 'A Man's a Man for A' That' by which Scottish poet?

Robert Burns. Years at the mill gave him a lasting sympathy with working people, and far from home he hummed the song's hope that 'man to man, the world o'er, shall brothers be'.

Livingstone wrote that the scenes near Victoria Falls 'must have been gazed upon by' whom 'in their flight'?

Angels. On an island at the lip of the falls he planted a garden and cut his initials and the year in a tree, the only time, he wrote, that he indulged that vanity.

Which star played Stanley opposite Cedric Hardwicke's Livingstone in the 1939 film Stanley and Livingstone?

Spencer Tracy. MGM lent him back to Fox, the studio where his film career began, and a second unit filmed the safari scenes on location in East Africa.

Petina Gappah's 2019 novel Out of Darkness, Shining Light fictionalises which journey?

The carrying of his body across Africa. Gappah gives the story to the people history left out, among them Jacob Wainwright, who escorted the coffin all the way to London.

Gutzon Borglum, designer of the Livingstone Centenary Medal, later sculpted which monument?

Mount Rushmore. The Hispanic Society of America founded the medal for Livingstone's centenary, and in 1917 it went to Theodore Roosevelt, whose face Borglum later carved into the mountain.

In 1871 one of Livingstone's servants startled the approaching Stanley with a greeting in which language?

English. 'Good morning, sir!' came a voice from the crowd, and the startled Stanley demanded 'Who the mischief are you?' before learning that Livingstone was a few hundred yards away.

Out of paper in 1871, Livingstone wrote his field diary across the pages of what?

An old newspaper. He wrote across a copy of The Standard in improvised ink that faded until the diary was almost invisible; spectral imaging recovered the text in 2011.

The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, founded in Northern Rhodesia in 1937, pioneered research in which field?

Anthropology. It sent researchers such as its director Max Gluckman to live among the Lozi, Tonga and Lamba and study their law and politics at first hand.

Which Scottish university, whose forerunner taught Livingstone medicine, has a Livingstone Tower on its campus?

Strathclyde. It grew out of Anderson's University, where he paid for his medical classes by going back to his old job at the mill between terms.

Who privately wrote in 1862 that Livingstone was 'out of his mind' and an unsafe leader?

The expedition's doctor. John Kirk, also its botanist, wrote it as Livingstone turned aside to probe yet another river, yet Kirk went on to run British affairs in Zanzibar for years.