WHEN was the komodo dragon first discovered?

There is a story that the Komodo dragon was only discovered after WW1, when an aircraft came down in the waters around the islands, and the surviving pilot swam to Komodo Island. This is not quite true.

It is unknown when, exactly, the Komodo dragon was discovered, but the earliest reports seem to be from around 1910-1912, and they came from pearlers and fishermen. The existence of the Komodo dragon was not actually verified until 1926, when W. Douglas Burden, representing the American Museum of Natural history, led an expedition to Komodo, and returned with 12 preserved specimens and 2 living komodo dragons.