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60 free David Livingstone trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
David Livingstone trivia covers one of the strangest careers of the Victorian age. A boy who tied threads in a Scottish cotton mill from the age of ten taught himself Latin, qualified as a doctor, and spent thirty years walking across Africa: mauled by a lion, first European to see the falls he named for his queen, leader of a disastrous government steamer expedition, and finally a sick old man hunting the source of the Nile until Henry Morton Stanley walked into Ujiji with the most famous greeting in exploration. This quiz follows him from Blantyre to the London Missionary Society, the Kalahari crossing to Lake Ngami, the coast-to-coast trek from Luanda to Quelimane, the Zambezi expedition and its rusting steamer Ma Robert, the slave-trade massacre at Nyangwe, his death at Chitambo's village and the 1,000-mile journey his companions Chuma and Susi made with his body. It also covers Stanley, Victoria Falls itself, and the memorials from Clydesdale banknotes to the city of Blantyre, Malawi. Easy questions suit anyone who knows the famous line; the expert tier assumes you have read the journals. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Livingstone, Stanley and Victoria Falls, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
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Q 01In which Scottish mill town was David Livingstone born in 1813?
Blantyre
He was born in a tenement for cotton-factory workers on the Clyde; the city of Blantyre in Malawi is named after it.
Q 02At what age did Livingstone start work in a cotton mill?
10
He and his brother John worked 14-hour days as piecers, tying broken threads on the spinning machines.
Q 03What was Livingstone's profession, alongside being a missionary?
Doctor
He studied medicine at Anderson's University in Glasgow while still working at the mill outside term time.
Q 04Which organisation sent Livingstone out to Africa in 1840?
The London Missionary Society
He had originally answered a call for medical missionaries to China, but the looming First Opium War changed the plan.
Q 05Livingstone first wanted to be a missionary in which country before Africa?
China
The London Missionary Society instead suggested the West Indies, and he replied that it was already well served by doctors.
Q 06Which veteran missionary inspired Livingstone with talk of 'the smoke of a thousand villages'?
Robert Moffat
Livingstone later married his daughter Mary.
Q 07What was the maiden name of Livingstone's wife Mary?
Moffat
She came from a prominent missionary family and died of malaria on the Zambezi in 1862.
Q 08Which animal attacked Livingstone at Mabotsa in 1844, crushing his left arm?
A lion
His companion Mebalwe saved him by drawing the animal's attention; the badly-set bone later helped identify his body.
Q 09Livingstone is recorded as converting only one African to Christianity. Who was he?
Sechele, chief of the Kwena
He lapsed within months and kept his five wives and his rainmaking, but went on preaching Christianity himself.
Q 10Which desert did Livingstone cross in 1849 with William Cotton Oswell to reach Lake Ngami?
The Kalahari
The Royal Geographical Society rewarded the journey with a chronometer watch.
Q 11In which port did Livingstone hand out tracts to drunken sailors on his 1840 voyage to Africa?
Rio de Janeiro
He was impressed by the cathedral and scenery but not by the British and American sailors; his fellow missionaries stayed aboard.
Q 12On his 1854 crossing to the Atlantic, Livingstone reached which Portuguese port?
Luanda
He decided the route was too hard for traders and turned round to walk the whole way back and on to the Indian Ocean.
Q 13Which Kololo chief lent Livingstone the men who accompanied him to both coasts?
Sekeletu
Twenty-seven warriors went west to Luanda; 114 went east down the Zambezi.
Q 21How much did the British government grant toward Livingstone's Zambezi expedition?
£5,000
The rest was raised by public subscription; the Foreign Office then turned his planned solo trip into a six-officer expedition.
Q 22What was the name of the prefabricated iron steamer used on the Zambezi expedition?
Ma Robert
It was named for the Tswana nickname of Livingstone's wife, mother of Robert, and had to be repeatedly hauled across shoals.
Q 23Which rapids on the Zambezi proved impassable and wrecked the expedition's plan of a river highway?
Cahora Bassa
Livingstone had failed to explore them on his earlier journey down the river.
Q 14What is the local Lozi name for the falls Livingstone named after Queen Victoria?
Mosi-oa-Tunya
It means 'the smoke that thunders'; he saw them in 1855 with a party of Kololo men.
Q 15Victoria Falls lies on the border between which two countries?
Zambia and Zimbabwe
Both countries have national parks at the site, and the town on the Zimbabwean side is also called Victoria Falls.
Q 16How wide is Victoria Falls?
About 1,700 m
Combined with its 108-metre drop, that makes it the largest single sheet of falling water in the world.
Q 17Livingstone's 1856 arrival at which port completed the first European crossing of south-central Africa?
Quelimane
There he received a letter from the London Missionary Society coolly declining to fund plans 'connected only remotely with the spread of the Gospel'.
Q 18Livingstone's 1857 bestseller was titled Missionary Travels and Researches in which region?
South Africa
John Murray published it, and it turned him into a celebrity in demand as a public speaker.
Q 19Which honour did the Royal Geographical Society give Livingstone in 1855?
The Patron's Medal
His body later lay in state at the Society's Savile Row headquarters before his Westminster Abbey funeral.
Q 20What government post did Livingstone take up in 1857 after resigning as a missionary?
British consul
His roving commission covered 'the Eastern Coast of Africa and the independent districts in the interior'.
Q 24Which artist was dismissed from the Zambezi expedition after disagreements?
Thomas Baines
His paintings of Victoria Falls, made on a later trip, were among the first images Europeans saw of the falls.
Q 25Livingstone's Zambezi expedition were the first Europeans to reach which body of water?
Lake Nyasa
Livingstone later had a steamer, Lady Nyasa, built specially to sail on it; today the lake is usually called Lake Malawi.
Q 26Which bishop led the Universities' Mission to Central Africa up the Shire River in 1861, dying within months?
Charles Mackenzie
The mission had been founded in 1860 at Livingstone's own request.
Q 27Of what did Mary Livingstone die in April 1862 on the Zambezi?
Malaria
The expedition physician John Kirk soon wrote that Livingstone was 'out of his mind and a most unsafe leader'.
Q 28What geographical mystery obsessed Livingstone's final expedition?
The source of the Nile
He said solving it was valuable only as a means of 'opening my mouth with power' against the slave trade.
Q 29Livingstone thought the Lualaba River might be the upper Nile. Into which river does it actually flow?
The Congo
He was wrong about the Nile, but he identified Lake Ngami, Lake Malawi and Lake Bangweulu for Western science.
Q 30At which Lualaba market town did Livingstone see Arab slavers massacre around 400 Africans in 1871?
Nyangwe
The scene shattered him and his published account helped push Britain to close the Zanzibar slave market.