Ripon Falls at the northern end of Lake Victoria in Uganda is often considered the source of the river Nile. In 1862 John Hanning Speke, the first European to follow the Nile far enough upstream to claim to have found its source, named the falls after George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon.
The Falls functioned as a natural outlet for Lake Victoria, until in 1954 the construction of Owen Falls Dam was completed, effectively extending Lake Victoria and submerging Ripon Falls.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition', a publication now in the public domain.
