Nairobi

Nairobi is the capital of Kenya. Nairobi's name comes from the Maasai Ewaso Nyirobi, meaning "cool waters".

The city is located at latitude is 1° 16' South and longitude 30°53’ East and occupies around 150 square km. It has a population of around 2 million. The main languages spoken are Swahili and English.

Nairobi was founded in 1899 as a supply depot for the Uganda Railway which was being constructed between Mombasa and Uganda. It was totally rebuilt in the early 1900s after an outbreak of plague and the burning of the original town. Thereafter the settlement continued to grow, becoming the capital of the British East African Protectorate in 1907 and the capital of the newly independent Kenya in 1963.

Nairobi is served by Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Wilson Airport was the original landing strip in the pre-jet airline era. It was used in a landing point on the 1930s and 1940s British passenger and mail route from Southampton to Cape Town. This route was served by flying boats between Britain and Kisumu and then by land-based aircraft on the routes to the south.

The US Embassy in Nairobi was bombed in August 1998 by Osama Bin Laden's terrorist group Al-Qaida. See: 1998 U.S. embassy bombings