Who said, “We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glowworm”?

Fleeing from Holland in the early 1900s, a Dutch officer’s wife named Margaretha Geertruida Zelle changed her name to Mata Hari. At first she became a licentious dancer and later the most notorious spy of World War I. Arrested in her Paris hotel in February 1917, she was shot by a firing squad on October…

By the time of his death in 323 B.C., Alexander III, king of Macedonia, had conquered Persia, Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Bactria, Bukhara, and the Punjab. His armies marched as far as India. He was thirty-three when he died.

Although there are many likely candidates, the source for the phrase is Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977). He former president and chancellor of the University of Chicago, dean of the Yale Law School, and chairman of the board for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Henry Morton Stanley, a journalist, was commissioned by the New York Herald in 1871 to find the explorer David Livingstone, who had been missing for two years. Stanley trekked through Africa for six months before meeting Livingstone, the only other white man within 1,000 miles.

Shigechiyo Izumi of Japan was 120 years old when he died on February 21, 1986, making him the oldest person in the world. He was born on June 29, 1865. Unproven claims have been made for other people, but Izumi is the oldest for whom there is verification.

Henri Philippe Main (1856-1951) was a military hero in World War I and premier of France in 1940. In June of that year, he called for an armistice with Germany and became the “chief of state” of the puppet government at Vichy. After the war, he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted…