Sometimes history is shaped by the most unexpected of people. Take the case of Fa'apua'a Fa'amu. Fa'amu mounted the world stage, and from a very remote location, only twice in her long life: once, by telling a lie, in 1926; next, by telling the truth, in 1987. The lie, told to a 24-year-old graduate student in anthropology from Columbia University, concerned nothing less than Fa'amu's sex life. The truth-telling concerned the same. "We just fibbed and fibbed to her," an abashed Fa'amu confessed to Australian anthropologist Derek Freeman when he interviewed her in her old age. "Samoan girls are terrific...