What was Mata Hari’s birth name and was she ever caught by the authorities?

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 15 of that year.

As the squad raised its rifles, she is said to have smiled and winked.