section_path: History
section_name: History
paragraph_text: History
  
  Mbandaka was founded in 1883 by British explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who named it "Équateurville". (At the time the territory was under the personal rule of King Leopold II, king of the Belgians and the official language was French.)
  
  The town hall is about 4 km (2.5 miles) north of the equator. Mbandaka is one of the closest to the equator of any substantial city in the world. Stanley placed a large "Equator Stone" near the riverbank south of the city to mark the point where he believed the equator crossed the river. It remains there today. Due to its symbolic location close to the equator and the Congo River, there were early plans to locate the capital of the Congo Free State in Coquilhatville, as the city was then called, but they never came off the drawing board. These plans included infrastructure for an estimated population of 100,000 people, a train station, a Catholic cathedral, a governor's residence, and a palace for future visits of King Leopold II of the Belgians.
  
  In 1886, at the beginning of colonial rule, the Belgians changed the city's name to "Coquilhatville" naming it after Camille-Aimé Coquilhat.
  
  In 1938, work began on a bridge over the Congo River connecting Coquilhatville with the French Congo (now the Republic of Congo). Work was abandoned on the outbreak of the Second World War, and only the foundations of the bridge pillars remain. In the 1930s, the Government of the Belgian Congo began several projects, including factories and a new city hall.
  
  The city hall was completed in 1947, just after the end of the Second World War. At that time, with a height of 39 m (128 feet), it was the tallest building in the Belgian Congo. A statue of Leopold II was installed on its roof. The city hall was destroyed by a fire in 1963.
  
  After the Belgian Congo gained its independence as the Republic of the Congo, the new government changed the name of this city in 1966 to "Mbandaka" to honour a prominent local leader.