1871 — Stanley Finds Livingstone

On November 10, 1871, journalist Henry Morton Stanley reached Ujiji, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, and found Dr. David Livingstone, the famed Scottish explorer who had vanished years earlier while searching for the source of the Nile. Livingstone was sick and destitute. Stanley had come at the end of an eight-month, 700-mile expedition from Zanzibar, commissioned by the New York Herald, and his arrival was, in effect, a rescue.

The meeting produced the greeting history would remember — "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" — though the exact wording is disputed. Certain or not, the words have outlived the journey, carrying that lakeside encounter around the world ever since.