Today was my last official academic day! The clock is ticking as well--I have less than one week left in London. It's crazy to believe it. We visited the Royal Geographical Society of London, which was a wonderful way to end it!
The Geographical Society of London was formed in 1830 and later transformed into the Royal Geographical Society as it is known today. It was founded with a few main goals in mind. First, they wanted to collect geographical data--travel, make maps, draw pictures, etc. & disseminate it. In order to do this, they published a journal. Another goal was to communicate and exchange information with other geographical societies internationally. Around this time, many of them were forming in other countries. Finally, the Royal Geographical Society also wanted to train people how to carry out the work necessary to achieve the first goal. This mean they trained people how to use the scientific instruments such as compasses as well as lent them out to people who they believed had a worthy expedition in mind.
We learned a lot some of the big quests of the world. The search for a Northwest Passage was one of them. In 1824, Matthew Perry made a journey to find out, and he made contact with land and people--the Inuits from northern Canada and brought back a pair of their snow boots and a sunvisor to not go blind from the brightness of the snow. These were located at the Royal Geographical Society.
The next mission after this was to find the source of the Nile River. In the 1860s, David Livingston went out to find it. He became lost and wasn't heard of for awhile, so journalist Henry Morton Stanley went to find him and become the most famous journalist of his time. When he found him in 1871, he said, "Dr. Livingston, I presume?" which became a popular Victorian phrase of the time (I can't blame them, it's great). Both men were wearing hats and tipped them to each other--and both those hats are stored at the Royal Geographical Society.
I had a lot of fun learning about the greatest expeditions done by the British and I am very grateful for the opportunity!
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