Alexander Gordon Laing had that confident swagger of every European colonialist who went stomping into some new land to civilize and bleed it. So why shouldn’t he cross the entire Sahara Desert to find a lost city in the middle of Africa?
Sources:
The Mammoth Book of Losers by Karl Shaw
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Alexander_Gordon_Laing
http://greatbritishnutters.blogspot.com/2008/08/alexander-gordon-laing-mission-to.html
https://www.thenational.scot/news/17316509.a-scottish-explorer-who-made-his-mark-on-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Timbuktu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gordon_Laing