function displayArticleIntro() { document.write('November 21

Voltaire, Candide

On this day in 1694 Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) was born. Few could have predicted his Age-defining stature, but apparently the young Voltaire showed every sign of becoming, as biographer Theodore Besterman puts it, "one of those over-life-size personages who seem perpetually to attract equally extraordinary events." He would be applauded and attacked for most of his life, and it is hard to find a portrait of him in which he is not smiling.

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