Iron Maiden, Bonnie Prince Charlie, NASA, the Pavement Bookworm, William Morris, and more… I hope you’re intrigued by this week’s historical highlights!

Kudos to Iron Maiden for aiming for authenticity; they hired a University of Pennsylvania scholar to translate their song titles into Mayan hieroglyphics.

Some recently digitized manuscripts from the British Library contain the handwriting of famous historical figures, including Shakespeare. Read about them here.

Coming to the National Museum of Scotland in June, 2017: An exhibition on Bonnie Prince Charlie. “It’s the first major exhibition on the Jacobites and the Stuarts for than 70 years. It will be very much based on our own collections, there will be new acquisitions and we’re speaking to other major collections in Scotland, UK-wide and in the continent, as well as key private collectors whose families are intimately connected to the Jacobites.”

Read an interview with the author of Rise of the Rocket Girls, a new book about the forgotten women who worked for NASA in the 1940s and 1950s. (I love that the author first heard of these women when she Googled a name she and her husband were considering for their baby!)

What does the Poet Laureate actually do? (This list of 10 facts focuses on the U.S. Poet Laureate, but mentions the U.K. too.)

Make Way for Ducklings turns 75! Here are five things you might not know (such as Robert McCloskey bringing home some ducklings to help get the illustrations right and giving them sips of red wine to slow them down!).

South Africa’s Pavement Bookworm: “The homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews instead of begging.”

To close, here’s a video about an ambitious art project planned by the William Morris Gallery. (I’m intrigued because I want to incorporate connections to William Morris into my next novel, but I need to do a lot of research first.)

Have a lovely weekend!