Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa with a surface of twenty six thousand square miles. It is also the world’s second largest fresh water lake behind Lake Superior in North America. The lake is shared by two other countries, Uganda and Tanzania.
The name Victoria came from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Lake Victoria has an average depth of forty meters with the deepest point being eighty four meters deep. The main sources of water in this lake are rain and other smaller streams that flow into the lake. Rain accounts for eighty percent of the water in the lake while the other percentage is accounted for by the latter sources of water.
Lake Victoria is about four thousand years old. The lake has dried up completely several times in the past, with the last time being seventeen thousand, three hundred years ago. The largest river that flows into the lake is river Kagera. The famous White Nile is the only river that flows out from the lake making Lake victoria the source of River Nile.
The lake was first discovered by Arab traders around eleven sixty before Christ. They also generated a map of the lake at about the same time. John Hanning Speke was the first European to travel to the lake and was also the man who sited the lake as being the source of the White Nile.
The worst recorded accident on Lake Victoria was in May twenty first nineteen ninety six when the ferry MV Bukoba sank. About one thousand people lost their lives during this incident. The accident went down in the books of history as the worst maritime disasters in the history of Africa.
Pollution, water hyacinth and excessive fishing in this lake are the main health hazards on this lake. The excessive fishing owing to the booming fish export has resulted to low population in the fish. The hyacinths reduce the amounts of oxygen flowing in the lake thereby killing some lake animals. Similarly, oil and other pollutants from industries reduce the amounts of oxygen in the lake.
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