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Courtesan, exotic dancer and spy, Mata Hari was the most notorious of femme fatales. Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Holland in 1876, she married at eighteen and then found herself, in answer to a prank advertisement, living in Java with her officer husband - a violent womanising drunkard. After a number of sexual blackmail scams, she returns to Europe without her husband, working as a prostitute before reinventing herself as Mata Hari, an exotic dancer. Performing in all the major capitals, and enjoying liaisons with some of the most powerful men in Europe she began playing her most daring role of all, the German spy H21. Arrested and incarcerated in a French prison, her subsequent trial alleged that half of the French cabinet and most of the German military hierarchy were clients of hers. Mata Hari was executed by the firing squad on the morning of 15th October 1917.