John Hanning Speke was a distinguished British Army officer and explorer of Eastern Africa. He is most famously credited with being the first European to reach Lake Victoria, which he correctly identified as a source of the Nile River. Speke made three exploratory expeditions to Africa, often alongside fellow explorer Richard Francis Burton, with whom he had a famous public dispute over the Nile's true source. His contributions significantly advanced European geographical knowledge of the African Great Lakes region, though his life was cut short by a fatal shooting accident.