Missionary and African explorer Dr. David Livingstone (1813–1873) was born on this day in Blantyre, Scotland. With a passion for faith, hard work, and education, he earned a medical degree, joined the London Missionary Society in 1838, and arrived in Cape Town in 1841.

Through travels that carried him across nearly one-third of Africa’s interior, the courageous explorer became the first European to cross the continent from west to east coast between 1853 and 1856.

“I will go anywhere as long as it is forward,” he said. Crossing the difficult Kalahari Desert, he discovered Lake Ngami in 1849 and reached the Zambezi River in 1851.

In 1855 he discovered the great Victoria Falls, which local people called “Smoke that Thunders.” With characteristic patriotism, Livingstone named the landmark for his queen. “I shall open up a path into the interior or perish,” he said.

Livingstone documented his experiences in Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857). By that time he had become a hero in England, and the book sold more than 70,000 copies.

“God had an only Son, and he was a missionary and a physician,” he said.

Livingstone returned to Africa in 1866 to spread the Gospel and search for the sources of the Nile and Congo Rivers. Despite illness and great challenges, he reached Lake Tanganyika in 1869 and the northwestern point of Nyangwe in 1871, the furthest west any European had yet traveled.

That same year, reporter Henry M. Stanley found the good doctor and spoke the famous words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”

For more than thirty years Livingstone traveled, treated the sick, mapped rivers and trade routes, and spoke against the slave trade. He believed deeply in the power of African communities to flourish through learning, commerce, and self-determination, a belief that later helped inspire movements toward independence.