Ripon Falls Ripon Falls Ripon Falls at the northern end of Lake Victoria in Uganda was formerly considered the source of the river Nile. In 1862–3 John Hanning Speke was the first European to follow the course of the Nile downstream after discovering the falls that his intuition had marked as the source of the Nile. The water from Ripon Falls falls into a narrow opening and that is where some people believe the River Nile starts. He named the falls after George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon. The Falls functioned as a natural outlet for Lake Victoria, until in 1954 the
Burton and Speke (novel) gunshot wound shortly before he and Burton were due to take part in a public debate regarding the controversy. "Mountains of the Moon" (1992) was directed by Bob Rafelson and starred Patrick Bergin and Iain Glen. Burton and Speke (novel) Burton and Speke is a 1982 historical novel by William Harrison recounting the 1857 expedition of the search for the source of the Nile by the famous Victorian explorer, linguist and anthropologist Sir Richard Burton and English aristocrat and amateur hunter John Hanning Speke. The book was adapted for film in 1990 by Harrison and director Bob Rafelson. Although both