David_Livingstone_-1

May 16, 2018 by Alexander Meldrum

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Famouse Scots David livingstone David Livingstone (/'l?v??st?n/; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish Christian Congregationalist, pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Soc...

Famouse Scots David livingstone David Livingstone (/'l?v??st?n/; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish Christian Congregationalist, pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of the late-19th-century Victorian era. He had a mythical status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of commercial and colonial expansion. His fame as an explorer and his obsession with learning the sources of the Nile River was founded on the belief that if he could solve that age-old mystery, his fame would give him the influence to end the East African Arab-Swahili slave trade. The Nile sources," he told a friend, "are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power which I hope to remedy an immense evil. His subsequent exploration of the central African watershed was the culmination of the classic period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of Africa. At the same time, his missionary travels, "disappearance", and eventual death in Africa?—?and subsequent glorification as a posthumous national hero in 1874.? This? led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives carried forward in the era of the European "Scramble for Africa". His meeting with Henry Morton Stanley on 10 November 1871 gave rise to the popular quotation "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" Livingstone was born on 19 March 1813 in the mill town of Blantyre, Scotland in a tenement building for the workers of a cotton factory on the banks of the River Clyde under the bridge crossing into Bothwell. He was the second of seven children born to Neil Livingstone (1788–1856) and his wife Agnes (née Hunter; 1782–1865). David was employed at the age of ten in the cotton mill of Henry Monteith & Co. in Blantyre Works. He and his brother John worked twelve-hour days as piecers, tying broken cotton threads on the spinning machines. He was a student at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in 1838–40, with his courses covering medical practice, midwifery, and botany. Livingstone attended Blantyre village school along with the few other mill children with the endurance to do so despite their 14-hour workday (6 am–8 pm), but having a family with a strong, ongoing commitment to study also reinforced his education. After reading the appeal by Gutzlaff for medical missionaries for China in 1834, he began saving money and entered Anderson's College, Glasgow in 1836 (now University of Strathclyde), founded to bring science and technology to ordinary folk, and attended Greek and theology lectures at the University of Glasgow. To enter medical school, he required some knowledge of Latin. David Livingstone died in 1873 at the age of 60 in Chief Chitambo's village at Ilala, southeast of Lake Bangweulu, in present-day Zambia, from malaria and internal bleeding due to dysentery. His loyal attendants Chuma and Susi removed his heart and buried it under a tree near the spot where he died, which has been identified variously as a Mvula tree or a Baobab tree. That site, now known as the Livingstone Memorial, lists his date of death as 4 May, the date reported (and carved into the tree's trunk) by Chuma and Susi; but most sources consider 1 May—the date of Livingstone's final journal entry—as the correct one. The rest of his remains were carried, together with his journal, over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) by Chuma and Susi to the coastal town of Bagamoyo, where they were returned by ship to Britain for burial. In London, his body lay in repose at No.1 Savile Row, then the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society, prior to interment at Westminster Abbey. For more facts go to Wikipedia.

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Mariea Livingston

My father-in-law looks almost exactly like him!

June 24, 2018
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