Henry Morton Stanley
November 10, 1871: Henry Morton Stanley, a 30-year-old Welshman living in America, and working as a reporter for the New York Herald, achieves the goal he was hired to achieve, 2 years earlier: Find Dr. David Livingstone (the E was silent), the 58-year-old Scottish missionary and physician who had tended to the tribes of Britain’s colonies in Africa, but hadn’t been heard from since he had last left Britain in 1866.
The meeting happened in Ujiji, in what is now Tanzania. As they came face to face, Stanley tipped his hat, and asked, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Livingstone's less-remembered response was, "Yes. I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you."
David Livingstone
But Livingstone was already ill, and didn’t want to leave the people he had come to accept as friends. He died 2 years later, from a combination of malaria and dysentery, and was hailed as one of the most revered Britons of the Victoria Era. Stanley lived on until 1904. Both men left writings that were complimentary toward Africans, but also heavily pro-colonization. So their legacies are mixed.
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November 10, 1871 was a Friday. Baseball season was over. Basketball, and hockey as we know it, had yet to be invented. And 1871 is the only year since 1868 when no college football games recognized by the NCAA as official were played. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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