Cipher Mysteries

Italian scientists claim to have solved two mysterious deaths from the Quattrocento: those of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Agnolo Ambrogini, two big-brained Florentines at Lorenzo de' Medici's court who suddenly passed away within only a few weeks of each other in 1494. Though some historians had conjectured the pair might have died of syphilis, the contemporary rumours ...

Here's a quicky news story from the Mysterytopia mystery news-clipping website. Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red. So, if you do happen to get a chance to look at the VMs at ...

One very early cipher involved replacing the vowels with dots. In his "Codes and Ciphers" (1939/1949) p.15, Alexander d'Agapeyeff asserts that this was a "Benedictine tradition", in that the Benedictine order of monks (of which Trithemius was later an Abbot) had long used it as a cipher. The first direct mention we have of it was in a ninth century ...