Under Victoria Falls, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language reads: "A waterfall on the Zambezi river in southeastern Africa, extending over a mile between Zambia and Rhodesia and having a drop of about 400 feet; discovered by Livingston (1855)".
This is an old dictionary obviously, since it still refers to Zimbabwe as Rhodesia. But it was on November 16, 1855 when the Scottish missionary-explorer Dr. David Livingstone "discovered" the falls. Most other entries would read "first sees and names Victoria Falls" rather than "discovered".
Chances are, though, that most sources contemporary or prior to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language claim – or state, if you like – that Livingstone actually discovered the falls. History books taught many generations – including mine – that Johannes Rebmann "discovered Mount Kilimanjaro in 1848
The Ndebele and the Shona of southeastern Africa saw the falls everyday. They knew them as "The Gorge of Roaring Thunder". What Livingstone did was to name them after his queen and almost succeeded in creating in the minds of the outside world a new entity with a new name accompanied with wonders of hitherto unheard of splendor.
Rebmann did the same thing with Kilimanjaro. Although the Wachagga have lived on the slopes of the mountain for centuries, and knew it as a mountain of God, Rebmann's description of the splendor of year-round snow only five degrees from the equator created a picture of a mountain that could not have been there before (at least in the minds of his European audience).
All this is good. It shows humankind's limitations before the eternal God. Every day there should be something new to amaze us; but God had it all planned and never changes, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
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