Henry Morton Stanley

Stanley was born out of wedlock as John Rowlands and spent much of his childhood in the St Asaph workhouse.

At 18 he sailed to New Orleans, where he took the name Henry Stanley from a local merchant and later fought on both sides of the American Civil War.

Stanley established himself as a roving journalist, covering the British expedition to Abyssinia in 1868 before being assigned to find Livingstone.

Stanley located the missing explorer on Lake Tanganyika, an encounter immortalized by the greeting 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?', and published the bestseller How I Found Livingstone.

In a 999-day journey from Zanzibar to the Atlantic, Stanley circumnavigated Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and followed the Congo River to the sea, resolving major questions of African geography.

Stanley built stations and roads along the Congo River for Leopold II's International Africa Association, work that laid the foundations of the Congo Free State and earned him the nickname Bula Matari, 'Breaker of Rocks'.

Stanley commanded a costly expedition through the Ituri rainforest to relieve Emin Pasha, governor of Equatoria; the journey brought heavy loss of life and later controversy.

Stanley married the Welsh artist Dorothy Tennant in Westminster Abbey; the couple later adopted a son, Denzil.

Having resumed British citizenship, Stanley sat in the House of Commons as a Liberal Unionist and was knighted with the Grand Cross of the Bath in 1899.

Stanley died at his home in London at age 63; he was denied burial beside Livingstone in Westminster Abbey and was interred at Pirbright, Surrey.