John Hanning Speke John Hanning Speke John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15 September 1864) was an English explorer and officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and was the first European to reach Lake Victoria. He is also known for propounding the Hamitic hypothesis in 1863, in which he supposed that the Tutsi ethnic group were descendants of the biblical figure Ham, and had lighter skin and more Hamitic features than the Bantu-featured Hutu over whom they ruled. Speke was born on
Bob Rafelson "Black Widow" are the joys of a film well made--the cinematography of Conrad Hall, the production design of Gene Callahan, and a fabulous cast," which also featured Dennis Hopper, Nicol Williamson, and Diane Ladd. In 1990 Rafelson directed "Mountains of the Moon", a film about the 1857–58 journey of Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke in their expedition to central Africa — the project that culminated in Speke's discovery of the source of the Nile River. It starred Patrick Bergin as Burton and Iain Glen as Speke, and was hailed by critic Roger Ebert as "completely absorbing." Ebert continued,