Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara in 1965 used the
western shores of Lake Tanganyika as a training camp for guerrilla forces in
the Congo. From his camp, Che and his forces attempted to overthrow the
government, but ended up pulling out in less than a year since the National
Security Agency (NSA) had been monitoring him the entire time and aided
government forces in ambushing his guerrillas.
The Lake was the scene of two famous battles during World
War One.
The first known Westerners to find the lake were the Great
British explorers Richard Burton and John Speke, in 1858. They located it while
searching for the source of the River Nile. Speke continued and found the
actual source, Lake Victoria. Later David Livingstone passed by the lake. He
noted the name "Liemba" for its southern part, a word probably from
the Fipa language which in 1927 was chosen as name for the conquered German
ship which is serving the lake up to the present time.
