diff --git a/AUTHORS.rst b/AUTHORS.rst
index e61f8d99..bf7a8436 100644
--- a/AUTHORS.rst
+++ b/AUTHORS.rst
@@ -69,3 +69,5 @@ Patches and Suggestions
 - Ori Livneh
 - Jason Emerick
 - Bryan Helmig
+- Jonas Obrist
+
diff --git a/docs/user/advanced.rst b/docs/user/advanced.rst
index 216367a0..d1c2cd0c 100644
--- a/docs/user/advanced.rst
+++ b/docs/user/advanced.rst
@@ -53,9 +53,9 @@ Requests can verify SSL certificates for HTTPS requests, just like a web browser
     >>> requests.get('https://kennethreitz.com', verify=True)
     requests.exceptions.SSLError: hostname 'kennethreitz.com' doesn't match either of '*.herokuapp.com', 'herokuapp.com'
 
-I don't have SSL setup on this domain, so it fails. Excellent. I do have certs for httpbin.org though::
+I don't have SSL setup on this domain, so it fails. Excellent. Github does though::
 
-    >>> requests.get('https://httpbin.org', verify=True)
+    >>> requests.get('https://github.com', verify=True)
     <Response [200]>
 
 You can also pass ``verify`` the path to a CA_BUNDLE file for private certs. You can also set the ``REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE`` environment variable.
diff --git a/requests/models.py b/requests/models.py
index a16bcf23..6cb9aebb 100644
--- a/requests/models.py
+++ b/requests/models.py
@@ -298,7 +298,7 @@ class Request(object):
         scheme, netloc, path, params, query, fragment = urlparse(self.url)
 
         if not scheme:
-            raise ValueError()
+            raise ValueError("Invalid URL %r: No schema supplied" %self.url)
 
         netloc = netloc.encode('idna')