Short, humorous stories about people
in politics, history, and the arts.
Paw Prints Anecdotes
Nathan Hale
(1756–76)
Anecdote...
In September 1776 Hale volunteered for a spying mission behind the British lines in New York. He was disguised as a Dutch schoolteacher, but was betrayed, arrested, and hanged on the following day. On the scaffold he is reported to have said, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
[This inspiring utterance, known to every American schoolchild, may be apocryphal.]
Biographical Note...
U.S. Revolutionary patriot.
More Information...
Read more about Nathan Hale and other people of the American Revolution.
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Aaron, Hank
Acheson, Dean
Adams, Abigail
Adams, John
Adams, Ansel
Alcott, Louisa May
Alfonso X
Aquinas, Saint Thomas
Armstrong, Neil
Asimov, Isaac
Astaire, Fred
Auerbach, Red
B...
Barnum, P.T.
Barton, Clara
Baylor, Elgin
Beecham, Sir Thomas
Beecher, Henry Ward
Begin, Menachem
Belloc, Hilaire
Benchley, Robert
Bernhardt, Sarah
Bernstein, Leonard
Berra, Yogi
Bing, Rudolf
Boone, Daniel
Booth, Junius Brutus
Brahms, Johannes
Brandt, Willy
Browning, Robert
Buber, Martin
Buckley, William F.
Butler, Samuel
C...
Cadbury, George
Cagney, James
Callas, Maria
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick
Capone, Al
Cardozo, Benjamin
Carnegie, Andrew
Caruso, Enrico
Cato the Censor
Cecil, William
Chaplin, Charlie
Charles V
Charles, Prince of Wales
Chesterton, G.K.
Choate, Joseph Hodges
Christie, Dame Agatha
Churchill, Sir Winston
Clark, George Rogers
Clark, Mark Wayne
Clemenceau, George
Cleveland, Frances Folsom
Cleveland, Grover
Cohan, George M.
Cocteau, Jean
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Columbus, Christopher
Coolidge, Calvin
Copeland, Charles Townsend
Cornelia
Corrigan, Douglas [Wrong-Way]
Coward, Sir Noël
Croesus
Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great)
D... through E...
Dali, Salvador
Darrow, Clarence
David, Sir Edgeworth
Davis, Bette
DeMille, Cecil B.
Dempsey, Jack
Dewey, Mrs. Thomas E.
Dickens, Charles
Diogenes
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Donne, John
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
Dumas, Alexandre
Durer, Albrecht
Durocher, Leo
Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor)
Edison, Thomas
Einstein, Albert
Eisenhower, Dwight
Eliot, T.S.
Eric the Red
Erskine, John
Esposito, Phil
F... through G...
Fairbanks, Douglas
Foch, Ferdinand
Ford, Gerald R.
Francis of Assisi, Saint
Franco, Francisco
Franklin, Benjamin
Franks, Sir Oliver Shewell
Frederick II
Frost, Robert
Gabor, Zsa Zsa
Galbraith, John Kenneth
Gallup, George
Gandhi, Mahatma
Garbo, Greta
Gardner, Erle Stanley
Gardner, Isabella Stewart
George III
Gershwin, George
Getty, J. Paul
Gilbert, W.S.
Giotto di Bondone
Godiva, Lady
Goethe, Wolfgang von
Goodman, Benny
Grandma Moses
Grant, Cary
Grant, Ulysses S.
Green, Hetty
Guinness, Sir Alec
Gunther, John
H... through J...
Hale, Nathan
Hammett, Dashiell
Hancock, John
Handel, George Frideric
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Hayes, Helen
Hearst, William Randolph
Heifetz, Jascha
Hemingway, Ernest
Herschel, Wiliam
Hillary, Sir Edmund
Hitchcock, Sir Alfred
Hokusai, Katsushika
Hoover, Herbert
Huston, John
Hutt, Frances E.
Jackson, Andrew
Jefferson, Joseph
Jefferson, Thomas
John XXIII
Johnson, Lyndon Baines
K... through L...
Kant, Immanuel
Kelvin, William Thomson
Kennedy, John F.
Kennedy, Joseph P.
Ker, William Paton
Kipling, Rudyard
Knox, Ronald
Khrushchev, Nikita
Lafayette, Marquis de
Lamb, Charles
Lawson, Wilfrid
Lee, Robert E.
Levant, Oscar
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln, Robert Todd
Lister, Joseph
Lloyd George, David
Luckman, Sid
M... through O...
Madison, James
Mann, Thomas
Marshall, Herbert
Masaryk, Jan
Mastroianni, Marcello
Maugham, W. Somerset
McCarthy, Joseph R.
McCullers, Carson
McKinley, William B.
Meurisse, Paul
Michener, James A.
Milne, A.A.
Mitchum, Robert
Molnár, Ferenc
Moore, Clement C.
Morley, Robert
Moses, Grandma
Mother Teresa
Mountbatten, Louis
Newton, Sir Isaac
Nixon, Richard
O'Neill, Eugene
Oppenheimer J. Robert
P... through R...
Paine, Thomas
Parker, Dorothy
Pascal, Blaise
Pavarotti, Luciano
Peck, Gregory
Perot, H. Ross
Philip, Prince
Picasso, Pablo
Pope, Alexander
Previn, André
Rabelais, François
Raft, George
Rivera, Antonio
Rodzinski, Artur
Rogers, Will
Roosevelt, Teddy
Rose, Princess Margaret
Rubinstein, Arthur
Ruth, Babe
S...
Santayana, George
Schumann-Heink, Ernestine
Schweitzer, Albert
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Sellers, Peter
Shaw, George Bernard
Shearing, George
Sheen, Fulton J.
Sherman, William Tecumseh
Skelton, Red [Richard]
Snead, Sam
Socrates
Solomon
Spooner, William A.
Steinbeck, John
Stevens, Thaddeus
Stevenson, Adlai
Stout, Rex
Stravinsky, Igor
Sutton, Willie
Szilard, Leo
T... through V...
Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles
Tecumseh
Tetrazzini, Luisa
Thomas, Dylan
Thorndike, Sybil
Thorpe, Jim
Thurber, James
Titian
Toscanini, Arturo
Truman, Harry S
Truth, Sojourner
Twain, Mark
Udall, Mo
Untermeyer, Louis
Van Buren, Martin
Vanderbilt, Cornelius
Victoria, Queen
W... through Z...
Wanamaker, John
Washington, George
Waugh, Evelyn
Webb, Clifton
Webster, Daniel
Wellington, Duke of
Wells, H.G.
Wheatcroft, Harry
Whistler, James
White, Andrew Dickson
Wilde, Oscar
Wilding, Michael
Williams, Tennessee
Wilson, Richard
Woollcott, Alexander
Wordsworth, William
Wright, Bishop Milton
Wright, Orville & Wilbur
Zangwill, Israel
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