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The Underappreciated Nikola Tesla, and Other Under-Recognized Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan January 12, 2020 32 min

Nikola Tesla - A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers — Nikola Tesla. Pintrest

29. The American Revolution’s Undercover Heroine

Actress Heather Lind as Anna Strong in the AMC series TURN: Washington’s Spies. AMC Networks

During the American Revolution, the Patriot’s most important spy network, the Culper Ring, owed a great debt to Anna Smith Strong (1740 – 1812) of Setauket, New York. The ring’s leader, Abraham Woodhull, frequently traveled to New York City under the cover of his occupation as a farmer delivering produce, or to visit his sister, who lived in the city. While in New York, he gathered information about British units in the city, their dispositions, and any news he overheard from talkative Loyalists and British officers.

Close questioning by inquisitive British soldiers during one of those visits drove home to Woodhull the deadly risks he was running. To reduce his exposure and the frequency of his travels, he began leaning more on recruiting spies in the city, and using their reports instead of his personal observations. Anna Strong helped speed up the transmission of the gathered intelligence.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.