Livingstone reaches Victoria Falls
A European first sees the great falls of the Zambezi
In November 1855 the Scottish missionary David Livingstone, crossing Africa along the Zambezi, became the first European to see the falls locally called Mosi-oa-Tunya and named them after Queen Victoria. His journeys spurred European interest in the African interior.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 10 years earlier
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 7 years earlier
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — 7 years earlier
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — 4 years later
- 1861 Unification of Italy — 6 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 2 years earlier
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 6 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 12 years later
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 14 years later
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — 22 years later
Middle East
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 16 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 16 years earlier
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — 21 years later
Asia
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 24 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 16 years earlier
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 2 years earlier
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — 13 years later
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — 21 years later
Americas
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — 9 years earlier
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — 6 years later
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — 8 years later
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 21 years later
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — 24 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 4 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 46)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 46)
- Karl Marx (aged 37)
- Queen Victoria (aged 36)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 34)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 27)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 21)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 15)
- Thomas Edison (aged 8)
- Vincent van Gogh (aged 2)