Anyone who knows anything about African exploration has heard the strange story of the lost David Livingstone and the man who found him, Henry Stanley. But the vanished doctor was not Stanley's only rescue mission.

Sometime after finding Livingstone, Stanley embarked on a trip to rescue Emin Pasha, the Egyptian governor of Equatoria (which sounds like a made-up country from a James Bond movie, but in reality was a region of what is now South Sudan). Emin had lived quite a life. He started out as a doctor, spent time exploring Africa, and rose to governor. He is credited with a number of anthropological findings... and also with bringing sleeping sickness to Uganda.

In any case, a holy war broke out (things might have changed in Africa in the past century, but not that much), and Emin was stranded in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa.

Stanley did succeed in finding Emin. The two arrived in Tanzania in 1890, where, during celebrations, the governor stepped through a window, seriously injuring himself.

Those injuries prevented Stanley from bringing Emin back to Europe and his hometown of Opole, Silesia, where the future Egyptian politician was born as Isaak Eduard Schnitzer, Jew.

Talk about strange stories...