I am trying to retrieve a special Greek character `µ` from a MySQL database but in HTML it is 
showing this `�`.

My HTML charset: `content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"`

In addition, after it retrieves the character it also need to be able to use the character to compare back in the database. 

I've tried putting the HTML code in the database like `&#956`; then it is not able to compare back to the database because HTML turns it into `µ`. 

How can I do this appropriately?