The Friday Digest 06/03/15

This week's update features unusual libraries, a brief history of pin-ups and the Napoleonic Dad's Army.

* Why the anniversary of Napoleon's escape from Elba is a bigger deal than Waterloo.

* 'Dad's Army' in the Napoleonic Wars.

* Why doesn't Russia make a big deal about its role in liberating the Nazi Holocaust death camps? 

* A 94-year-old man has been charged with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder after serving in the Auschwitz death camp during the Second World War.

* My life as a Jew in wartime Berlin and how I outwitted the Gestapo. 

* Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has claimed that he has found the wreckage of one of Japan's largest battleships in the Sibuyan Sea after an eight-year-long search for the vessel.

* Did films reflect or shape gender roles in the Second World War?  

* How the Second World War finally let women wear the trousers. 

* Wolf Hall was intelligent, subtle and artistic but it was the meticulous costumes which stole the show. 

* How World Heritage status can be a poisoned chalice for cities ... 

* Thoughts on Magna Carta, inspired by Horrible Histories.

* Of rats, gerbils, and men ...  

* The lost city discovered in the Honduran rainforest.  

* A fossilised jawbone found poking out of the ground in Ethiopia pushes the birth of humanity back by 400,000 years, to a time when early man shared the vast grassland plains of eastern Africa with a rich variety of prehistoric animals.

* Why early humans reshaped their children’s skulls.

* Dreamliner: man’s fascination with flight. 

* A brief history of pin-ups. 

* Why Iceland banned beer until 1 March 1989.  

* The 'pretender' Lambert Simnel was in fact Richard III’s heir who 'had a stronger claim to the throne than Henry VII' according to historian John Ashdown-Hill. 

* Eleven famous Britons who British people don't know anything about ... 

* Jack the Ripper and our obsession with serial killers.  
 

* Author E.B. White on how to write for children and the writer’s responsibility to all readers.

* The fifty books every child should read. 

* Celebrate a love of reading and get 15 per cent off any book from The History Press with code HPBOOKDAY.

* Penguin celebrates its eightieth birthday – and cashes in on its past. 

* Which Brontë are you?

* Where do these literary titles come from?  

* The words and phrases that have just been added to the dictionary.

* Ten very unusual libraries.