How Could I Forget?

It's easy to get carried away by someone like Fridtjof Nansen, but that's no excuse to forget to cite a couple of others, like Sir Richard Burton.  That's the Victorian explorer, not the dissolute Welsh film actor.  A friend's blog reminded me of my error.  Burton was a classic example of going somewhere because ... well, because it was there, and no one had done it before.  He also brought us the stories of 1001 Arabian Nights, one of which is Alladin.

When Wendell Phillips (again, there is confusion: not the 19th Century abolitionist, but a 20th Century archeologist) set out in the 1950s to find the cities of the Queen of Sheba, the closest comparable figure he had for his adventures was the legendary Sinbad.  Now, we have Indiana Jones.  I hope someday to made a documentary about Phillips, who I had the pleasure of meeting as a child in the 1970s when he spoke at the Smithsonian, showing film and photos of his adventures.  He died only a couple years later, a wealthy man as he arrived in Arabia about the same time they figured out there was oil there.  The organization he founded still stumbles on, though without his monumental personality at its center.

Where are these people today?