The Spy Girl Trivia Quiz

Answer: Netherlands

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (1876 - 1917) was born in Leeuwarden (as shown in the image), a city in the north of The Netherlands. She married young and moved to the Dutch East Indies. After having two children, one of which died, she divorced her abusive husband and became an exotic dancer.

Her stage name Mata Hari came from the Malay word meaning "eye of the dawn". She moved to Paris and associated with military officers and politicians, later being recruited to spy on high ranking German officials she met through her work.

She was exposed as being a double agent and charged by the French with being a German spy. She was shot by firing squad on 15th October 1917, without any shackles and refusing to wear a blindfold.

Answer: Her artificial leg

Virginia Hall's luck carried her through the whole of World War II, even though she was hunted after by the German secret police. They called her the "lady with the limp". The wanted posters described her as "the most dangerous of all Allied spies" and that she should be "destroyed" once found.

Her leg was amputated before the war when she accidently shot it during a hunting trip to Turkey. She called her prosthetic leg "Cuthbert". Her invalidity did not stop her from applying to the British SOE when it was formed in 1940, becoming a spy for the French Resistance. Under her role as a US news reporter, she was able to infiltrate German occupied France before America joined the war.

She then went underground and played cat and mouse with the German forces until the end of the war.

Answer: The White Mouse

Nancy Wake once quoted "I don't see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas." Born in Wellington, New Zealand, she became a freelance journalist in France during the 1930s. It was during a trip to Vienna that she witnessed Nazis beating up Jewish men and women and such was her disgust that she joined the French Resistance when the war started.

The German's called her the "White Mouse" as she continuously managed to evade capture. Between 1940 and 1943, she helped hundreds of downed allied servicemen and refugees escape France.

It is alleged that she killed a German sentry guard with a neck-chop during one of her missions. For her services to the war effort, America awarded her the Medal of Freedom, Britain awarded her the George Cross and France awarded her the Legion d'Honneur.

She died in 2011 at the age of 98 while living in London.

Answer: Sing Sing

Ethel Greenglass was born in New York on 28th September 1915. Along with her younger brother David, they became keen activists from an early age, both becoming members of the Communist Party. She married Julius Rosenberg in 1939 and they had two sons together, Michael and Robert.

It was at the start of World War II that Julius was recruited by the Russians to pass on secrets while serving in the US army. With the help of his wife and brother-in-law, they were able to obtain and pass on classified material about the Manhattan Project, the wartime research into nuclear weapons.

In 1950, they were all arrested for espionage. David Greenglass incriminated his sister and brother-in-law and was given a nine and a half year prison sentence. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death by electric chair.

They were transferred to the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York and were executed on the evening of June 19th, 1953. Other infamous inmates at Sing Sing have included Lucky Luciano and David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam.

Answer: Violette Szabo

Born to an English father and French mother, Violette Bushell grew up in London and married a French army officer called Etienne Szabo, who was killed fighting in North Africa. She was recruited by the British government under code name "Louise", working in France with the French Resistance until she was captured and executed. She was only 23 and was posthumously awarded the George Cross and the Croix de Guerre for her bravery.

There have been many notable films with fictional female spies, and these have included "Salt" (2010), "The Avengers" (1998), "Spy Kids" (2001) and of course all the ladies in the "James Bond" franchise. "Mata Hari" (1931) starring Greta Garbo and "Carve Her Name with Pride" (1958) starring Virginia McKenna were both based on real women spies.

Answer: Julia Child

Celebrity chef Julia Child (1912-2004) was better known for her cook-book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and for fronting the television show "The French Chef" during the 1960s and 1970s. Her catchphrase was "Bon appetit!". Born in California, Julia Carolyn McWilliams left school and was trying to find her niche in life, mainly working in advertising until America joined World War II.

At 6' 2", she was too tall to enlist in the woman's forces so in 1942 she joined the wartime spy agency, Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

She served the last two years of the war in Ceylon as Chief of the OSS Registry. It was here that she met her future husband Paul Child, who introduced her to his love for French food and dining. French cooking became her choice of career when the war ended.

Answer: Used invisible ink on her music sheets

Josephine Baker was the first African-American female to star in a major motion picture in the 1925 film "La Sirčne des tropiques". Although born in America in 1906, racism forced her to work in Paris instead, where she became a stage sensation with her dancing and singing acts, becoming known as the "Black Venus". To thank the French people for opening their arms to her, she performed for troops during World War II in North Africa, gathering information from high ranking officials and smuggling messages by writing invisible ink on her music sheets.

After the war, she became known for her work in the American Civil Rights Movement.

Answer: Operation Ghost Stories

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires all foreign agents to register with the US Department of Justice. Ten Russian agents did not do this and therefore they became "illegals" in the USA. After a year of investigation (Operation Ghost Stories), the FBI uncovered these ten people and they were arrested in 2010. Anna Chapman was one of the agents, caught when the FBI carried out a sting operation with one of their operatives pretending to be a fellow agent working for the SVR (Sluzhba vneshney razvedki). Russian born Anna Vasil'yevna Kushchyenko (Chapman) and nine other members of the spy ring were exchanged for four men convicted in Russia.

Answer: She was androgynous

Charles d'Eon was born a male, and lived as a male for the first 49 years of his life. He joined an elite group of underground spies called Secret du Roi (King's Secret) and his first role was to infiltrate the Russian courts. Only women and children were permitted to cross the border into Russia, and so he cross-dressed as a woman and took on the temporary role as private tutor and secretary to Empress Elizabeth. On his return back to France, he was next sent to London (as a man) to become an ambassador. Rumours started to spread that he was actually a woman which forced him into exile. Because of the many state secrets he knew about France, he negotiated a safe return to his home country as long as he would be recognised as a woman.

Answer: Nurse

Due to the secret nature of espionage work, women spies were often asked to infiltrate different places to gather as much information as they could. Their primary roles included nursing, teaching and in entertainment, often being able to obtain information or assisting the war effort without anyone becoming suspicious. Edith Cavell was one such woman.

After training as a nurse in London, she obtained a nursing job in Brussels where she lived at the outbreak of World War I. She sheltered British and French soldiers and civilians before transporting them in secret across the border to the Netherlands.

When found out, she was arrested and sentenced under German military law, not for espionage but for treason (though she was not German). She was executed by firing squad on 12th October 1915.