Alexis Coe’s essays on history appear once a month. Past installments can be found here. Vera Atkins called the 39 female British spies she recruited, trained, and placed in the field her “girls,” but to the rest of the world, they didn’t exist. During World War II, the French Section of Special Operations Executive (SOE) depended on this secrecy. Considered the amateurs of the British Intelligence community, it was created when other agencies, including…

Mollie “The Lost Chicken” Wisner was one of the most well-known musical performers in Gold Rush-era San Francisco, but she only knew one song. In 1849, nearly forty thousand fortune-seeking men flooded the streets of San Francisco, up from 1,000 the year before. Given the transitory, perilous nature of boomtowns, women were scarce; some historians estimate a 50:1 male-to-female ratio at the time. The lonely miners, sailors, trappers, and pioneers who frequented the nine-block-long red-light…