Noah Webster
Anecdote
AN'ECDOTE, noun [Gr. to publish, part, given out.]
In its original sense, secret history, or facts not generally known. But in more common usage, a particular or detached incident or fact of an interesting nature; a biographical incident; a single passage of private life. Procopius gave the title of anecdotes to a book he published against Justinian and his wife Theodora; and similar collections of incidents in the lives of eminent men are now common.