The diaries of Josef Mengele, the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’, are expected to fetch over $60,000 at auction.

Known as the ‘Angel of Death’, he consigned arrivals to the gas chambers and carried out appalling medical experiments on Jews, most of whom died in agony without anaesthetic.

He escaped to Brazil at the end of the war and began his memoir in May 1960, musing on eugenics, art, religion, women’s rights and predictions for the future of mankind.

Auctioneer Alexander Autographs of Connecticut refused to identify the seller who acquired the diary after Mengele died in 1979 but said the source was ‘close’ to the Mengele family, and still lives in Germany.

Auction house president Bill Panagopulos said: ‘Make no mistake about it – I have no sympathy for these monsters. My father’s home town was wiped out by the Nazis in a reprisal action.

‘But it is of vital importance that such documents remain available as tangible evidence of the evil deeds of the past, as well as to provide further pieces of history’s puzzle.’

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Going on public display for the first time is a painting of Edgar Allen Poe that shows the man, known for his morbidity, actually smiling.

Edgar Allan Poe’s fertile imagination has endured for more than 150 years — and so has his pale, death-haunted image, with his sunken eyes, a trim mustache and unruly mop of curly hair.

However, scholars say Poe looked far more vigorous, perhaps even dashing, in his earlier years than he does in the well-known series of daguerreotypes taken in the final years of his life.

The more robust Poe is captured in a small watercolor by A.C. Smith, one of just three surviving portraits of the author, which will be shown publicly for the first time Saturday and is expected to fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction.

Poe sits at a desk with pen and paper in hand, seemingly at the height of his creative powers. His upper lip is clean-shaven, though he sports long, bushy sideburns. And there’s the slightest hint of a smile on his face.

“It actually represents Poe as he appeared to his contemporaries — a handsome, sophisticated young man on the rise,” said Cliff Krainik, the owner of the portrait and a Poe scholar. “The daguerreotypes show him in his rather dissipated state, where he has gone through the difficulties of his life.”

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A cigar butt which Winston Churchill stubbed out in 1941 is expected to fetch nearly $500 at auction.

The 4in long stub was left by the Prime Minister before he dashed off for a Cabinet meeting on August 22, 1941 – the day German troops reached Leningrad.

Whitehall valet Nellie Goble found it when cleaning and sent it to a friend, with a note on No10 paper reading: ‘Just a small souvenir to remind you at some future date of one of the greatest men that ever lived in England.’

The friend gave it to her daughter – now a pensioner – who kept it at her home in Norfolk and is now selling it.

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A toothpick which picked the food from between Charles Dickens’ teeth has been sold at auction for over $9,000.

An ivory and gold toothpick once owned by Charles Dickens today sold at a U.S. auction for nearly £7,000.

The item was used by the legendary English author ‘on his last visit to America’ and up to his death in 1870, according to a letter by his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth.

The toothpick, which is engraved with the Victorian writer’s initials and has a retracting mechanism, was put up for sale by the heirs to the U.S. book retail giant Barnes & Noble.

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Documents which suggest that Baden-Powell, better known for founding the Boy Scouts, illegally executed a prisoner of war have been sold at auction.

Papers relating to the Second Matabele War in 1896 say Baden-Powell, then a Colonel in the British Army, ordered the shooting of an African chief.

The chief, Uwini, had been promised his life would be spared if he surrendered.

The papers reached double their expected price at auction in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.

An inquiry at the time of the conflict into the affair exonerated Baden-Powell.

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