FASCINATING FOOTNOTES FROM HISTORY

Did you know that Hitler took cocaine or that Stalin robbed a bank, or that Charlie Chaplin's corpse was filched and held to ransom? There is Hiroo Onoda, the lone Japanese soldier fighting the Second World War in 1974, Agatha Christie who mysteriously disappeared for 11 days in 1926, and Werner Franz, a cabin boy on the Hindenburg who lived to tell the tale when it was engulfed in flames in 1937. Peopled with a gallery of spies, rogues, cannibals, adventurers and slaves and spanning 20 centuries and six continents, this impeccably researched footnote to history sheds light on infamous stories, and also answers who ate the last dodo, who really killed Rasputin, and why Sergeant Stubby had four legs? Things you never knew about Hitler include that he had an English girlfriend and an American nephew. Read about an escape from Auschwitz, how to survive an SS massacre, the African cannibal and the Mad Baron of Mongolia, the Emperor of the United States, the worst banker in history, and a hundred more quirky historical nuggets. 380 browseworthy pages, paperback.