Paul Revere’s famous ride, in which he warned the people of Massachusetts about the impending march of the British, owed much to the intelligence network he had set up with the Sons of Liberty (via History Imagined). The Mechanics were the revolutionaries’ only intelligence network, and it was Revere who got in touch with a fellow patriot who had information that the Redcoats were going to destroy the colonists’ weapons and equipment. Revere then coordinated with another whose job was the now-famous act of leaving one lantern or two in the church tower to signify if the British were coming by land or by sea.

One big misconception about Revere’s ride, brought about by the famous poem, was that he was the only one riding throughout Massachusetts to warn the colonists about the impending march of the British. A network of riders was in place — they could cover more ground, a system put in place by the spy ring founded by Revere a few years prior. Without Revere’s band of spies, the start of the Revolutionary War could have gone much worse for the American colonists.