1877 | Exploration, Colonization
Exploration, Colonization
The city of Tombstone is founded in southeastern Arizona territory by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who has found silver in the area after being told that all he would find would be his own tombstone. Within 4 years the town will have an estimated 7,000 people, including adventurers and outlaws as well as prospectors (see crime, 1881).
Portuguese explorer Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto, 31, leads an expedition from Benguela, Angola, into the basins of the Congo and Zambezi rivers. Having gone to East Africa 8 years ago on an expedition to explore the Zambezi, he now explores the terrain between Angola on Africa's west coast and Mozambique on the east coast.
Journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley reaches the port of Boma in August, exactly 1,000 days after leaving Zanzibar (see 1875). He has charted the course of the Congo River and confirmed the theory that Lake Victoria is the source of the Nile, but all three of his European aides have died, as have half his Africans, his weight has fallen to 120 pounds, his hair has turned white, and when he reaches Zanzibar he learns that his fiancée has married another man (see Nonfiction, 1878).
English explorer Lady Ann Blunt (née King), 40, travels across the desert from Aleppo to Baghdad; daughter of Ada Byron, Countess Lovelace, she skirts the Bedouin tribes that inhabit the region.
Sea captain-polar explorer Nathaniel B. Palmer dies at San Francisco June 21 at age 77 after returning from a voyage to China undertaken without success to restore a nephew's health.