In 1861, in present-day South Sudan, Victorian explorer and naturalist Samuel Baker found himself in a bit of a pickle. He was in the middle of an expedition up the Nile and deep in dispute with his ...

The golden city of Timbuktu, like the lost city of Atlantis, occupies a large place in the world's mythology, but resemblances pretty much end there. Atlantis was Plato's metaphor for the ideal ...