Top 10 unsolved mysteries in the world. Red glow over the Pacific Ocean

03.07.2020

Ciphers, riddles and coded public messages tease us with their intrigue: Why is this message encrypted? What great secrets can it hide in itself? Despite the efforts of the best historians, brilliant cryptographers and the most dedicated treasure hunters, history is full of mysteries that continue to confuse us to this day. Fictional stories like those in the book The Da Vinci Code and the movie National Treasure have nothing to do with these secrets from real life. Take a look at our list of the ten most mysterious unsolved mysteries and unsolved ciphers.

Voynich Manuscript

Named after the Polish-American antiquarian book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912, the Voynich Manuscript is a detailed 240-page book written in a completely unknown language. Its pages are also filled with colorful drawings and strange diagrams, depictions of incredible events and plants unlike any known species, adding to the intrigue of a document that cannot be deciphered. The author of the manuscript is unknown, but radiocarbon analysis has shown that its pages were made somewhere between 1404 and 1438. The manuscript has been called "The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World".

There are many theories about the origin and nature of the manuscript. It is considered by some to be a pharmacopoeia describing the various knowledges of medieval and early modern medicine. Many pictures of herbs and plants also suggest that he was something like a textbook for alchemists. The fact that many of the diagrams seem to depict astronomical phenomena, coupled with unidentifiable biological sketches, has even led some of the more ingenious theorists to speculate that the book is of extraterrestrial origin.
But there is one thing almost all theorists agree on: that this book is hardly a hoax, given the amount of time, money, and painstaking work it took to produce it.

Cryptos

Kryptos is a mysterious, cipher-covered sculpture by artist Jim Sanborn that is located in front of the headquarters of the Central intelligence agency in Langley, Virginia. It is so mysterious that even the CIA itself could not fully decipher its code.

The sculpture contains four ciphers, and although three of them have been deciphered, the fourth one has not yet been deciphered. In 2006, Sanborn gave a hint that the first cipher contained clues to the fourth, and in 2010 revealed another one: the characters 64-69 NYPVTT in the fourth part mean the word BERLIN.
Maybe you can decipher it?

Bale Cipher

The Bale Cipher is a set of three ciphers that supposedly reveal the location of one of the greatest buried treasures in American history: many thousands of pounds of gold, silver and precious stones. The treasure was originally mined by a mysterious man named Thomas Jefferson Bale in 1818 during a gold mining operation in Colorado.

Of the three encryptions, only the second was decoded. Interestingly, it appears that the key to the cipher is the American Declaration of Independence - a surprising fact, given that Bale's name is the same as the name of the Declaration's author.
The deciphered text pointed to the area where the treasure was located: Bedford County, Virginia, but its exact location appears to be encrypted in one of the remaining ciphers. Today, treasure hunters scour the (often illegally) hills of Bedford County for this untold treasure.

Phaistos Disc

The Phaistos Disc Mystery is like an Indiana Jones story. Discovered by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in 1908 in the ruins of a Minoan palace at Phaistos, the disk is made of baked clay and bears mysterious symbols that may represent an unknown form of hieroglyphs. It is believed that it was made somewhere in the second millennium BC.

Some scholars believe that these hieroglyphs resemble the symbols for "Linear A" and "Linear B", written languages that were once used in ancient Crete. Then what is the problem? That "Linear A" is indecipherable.
Today, the disk is one of the most famous mysteries in archeology.

Cipher from Chaboro

Take a look at the 18th century Shepherd's Monument in Staffordshire, Britain, from afar, and you might think it's a sculptural reproduction of Nicolas Poussin's famous painting The Arcadian Shepherds. But take a closer look and you will notice the strange sequence of letters DOUOSVAVVM - a code that has not been deciphered for more than 250 years.

Although the author of this cipher remains unknown, some believe that this code may be a clue left by the Knights Templar regarding the location of the Holy Grail.

Many of the world's greatest minds have tried to decipher this code and failed, including Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

Tamam Shud case

Considered one of Australia's biggest mysteries, the Tamam Shud case revolves around an unidentified man who was found dead in December 1948 on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. Apart from the fact that the man was never identified, the matter became even more mysterious when a tiny piece of paper with the words "Tamam Shud" was found in a secret pocket sewn into the man's trousers.

This phrase translates as "finished" or "completed" and is used in last page collection of poems "Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam. In addition to this mystery, a copy of the Rubaiyat was soon found, which contained a strange cipher, supposedly left by the dead man himself.
Due to the content of the poems of Omar Khayyam, many believe that this message was death note of some kind, but it still remains unsolved, as well as the case itself.

Wow! signal

One summer night in 1977, Jerry Eman, a SETI volunteer, may have become the first person to receive a message from another planet. Eman was scanning radio waves from deep space in the hope of accidentally stumbling upon a signal bearing the hallmarks of a sentient race when he noticed a jump in his measurements.

The signal lasted 72 seconds - the maximum possible measurement duration that the equipment and Eman's scanning range allowed. It was loud and seemed to be coming from a place no human had ever been: the constellation Sagittarius from a point near a star called Tau Sagittarii, 120 light years from Earth.
Eman wrote the word "Wow!" on the original printout of the signal, which is why it was called "Wow! signal."
All attempts to catch the signal again failed, leading to much debate about the nature of its origin and its meaning.

Zodiac Letters

The Zodiac Letters are a series of four encrypted letters believed to have been written by the famous Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorized the people of San Francisco during the latter half of the 1960s and early 1970s. The letters were probably written as a way to tease journalists and the police, and although one letter was deciphered, the other three remain unsolved.

The identity of the Zodiac has also never been established, although no more Zodiac murders have been identified since the 1970s.

Guiding Stones of Georgia

The Georgia Waystones, sometimes referred to as the "American Stonehenge", is a granite monument erected in Elbert County, Georgia in 1979. The stones are engraved in eight languages - English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian - and each contains ten "new" commandments for the "Age of Reason". The stones are also installed taking into account some astronomical considerations.
And although the monument does not contain encrypted messages, its purpose and origin remain a mystery. It was erected by a man whose identity has never been definitely established, and who was hiding behind the pseudonym R.C. Christian.

Of these ten commandments, the first is perhaps the most controversial: "Keep the number of mankind below 500 million in eternal balance with wildlife." Many believe that this is a calling to reduce the human population to the specified number, and critics of the Waystones even demanded their destruction. Some fans of conspiracy theories even believe that they were created by the "Secret Society of Lucifer", calling for a new world order.

rongorongo

Rongorongo is a system of mysterious signs inscribed on various artifacts found on Easter Island. Many believe that they represent a lost writing system or proto-writing, and may be one of three or four independently invented writing systems in human history.

The signs still remain undeciphered, and their true meaning - which some believe holds clues to the fate of the vanished civilization that built the statues on Easter Island - is likely lost forever.

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Incredible Facts

These mysteries still raise questions from scientists and researchers.

1. Holes in the ground on Yamal in Siberia

In July 2015, a 100-meter crater appeared on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. Despite the fact that a team of researchers was sent there in November 2015, the reason remained unknown. Since then, two more craters have opened in the Tazovsky district and on the Taimyr Peninsula.

There is an assumption that the formation of dips in the ground is associated with a gas explosion or an eruption from within the permafrost.

2. Walrus at St. Pancras

The walrus at St. Pancras was discovered by archaeologists in the old church of St. Pancras in 2003. This site was used for a mass grave due to a series of epidemics in the early 19th century.

One of the graves contained the remains of eight people, along with the bones of a Pacific walrus.

Scientists have not been able to find an explanation for how the remains of the walrus got there.

3. D. B. Cooper

In 1971, a man known only by the name D.B. Cooper boarded a Boeing 727-100 at Portland International Airport. The flight, which took place on Thanksgiving Day, was bound for Seattle. During the flight, Cooper gave the flight attendant a note saying he had a bomb, demanding $200,000 and four parachutes.

The flight was delayed by two hours to give the FBI time to collect the ransom and parachutes.

The plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and once all of Cooper's demands were met, the passengers were released except for one flight attendant. Cooper ordered the pilots to take off again and head for Mexico City. On the way, he jumped out and disappeared.

4. Invasion of the Air by Max Headroom

During the airing of an episode of the television series "Doctor Who", the signal of the television station was interrupted and a man in the mask of Max Headroom appeared on the screen, who made inarticulate sounds.

The reason for this and the identity of the masked man remains unknown, although there are several theories.

The shutdown lasted just over 90 seconds and occurred on November 22, 1987, which some attribute to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the same day in 1963.

Earlier that day in 1987, the same person silently interrupted a news program on another television channel.

5 Meat Rain in Kentucky

In the spring of 1876, in Bath County, Kentucky, pieces of meat fell from the sky within minutes, as reported in several major media outlets. According to some eyewitnesses of the event, the meat tasted like lamb.

There is speculation that the phenomenon is related to nostoc, a type of cyanobacteria present in the ground that swell into a jelly mass when it rains.

6. The Man in the Iron Mask

You may have heard about this story in the book and movies, however historical truth about this person may seem even stranger.

For more than three centuries, people are still trying to figure out the identity of a man who was mysteriously imprisoned and forced to wear a mask to hide his identity.

7 Hinterkaifeck Farm Incident

This incident has all the hallmarks of a horror movie: a strange house in the village, complaints about ghosts, footsteps in the attic and, finally, the brutal murder of an entire family by an unknown person.

This crime remains one of the most mysterious in the history of Germany.

8. Real night hunter

The unidentified serial killer, also known as the "Golden State Killer" and "Rapist from the East," committed a string of crimes in Sacramento County over the course of a decade, including robbing more than 120 homes, raping 45 people, and killing 12.

It is known that he called the victims in advance, and sometimes after, mocking them.

It is believed that the perpetrator of these crimes is still alive, and the FBI recently launched a campaign in the hope of finding a man who managed to avoid justice for so long.

9. Hum

We really appreciate the silence when it disappears, especially when it comes to some incomprehensible sounds.

A hum is a constant low frequency noise heard by people in different parts of the world from the UK to New Zealand. At the same time, the source of the sound cannot be explained.

10. Ship "Mary Celeste"

Mary Celeste is one of the most famous examples ghost ships - a ship with a crew that disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The ship was found abandoned off the coast of Portugal, leading to much speculation as to what happened to her crew.

11. Signal "Wow!" 1977

Signal "Wow!" is a radio signal that got its name from astronomer Jerry Eyman, who discovered it by writing "Wow!" on its printout.

The unexplained radio signal is believed to indicate the existence of extraterrestrial beings. Despite many attempts, the signal was never received again.

12. Tarrare

Tarrare was an 18th-century Frenchman famous for his strange eating habits and voracious appetite.

During the performances, he ate stones, live animals and a whole basket of apples, but he never satisfied his appetite. Despite his gluttony, he was of average weight.

13. Silent twins

Twins June and Jennifer Gibbons were born in Wales in the 60s and did not communicate with other people, talking only to each other and sometimes in a way that was not clear to everyone else.

The story got even weirder when the twins grew up and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. They had an agreement that if one of them died, the other should start talking to the rest of the people. Jennifer soon died suddenly from acute myocarditis, but doctors could not detect any signs of poison or drugs in her system, and her death remains a mystery.

After her death, June, as agreed, began to communicate with others.

14. Tunguska meteorite

On June 30, 1908, there was a major explosion in the Podkamennaya Tunguska area. The nearest city was 60 km away, but still felt the effects. The explosion produced 85 times more energy than atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, and leveled about 80 million trees.

Although the destruction is believed to have been the result of a meteorite impact, no impact crater has been found, leading to many hypotheses.

15. Cicada 3301

Every year since 2012, a secret organization puzzles the Internet by anonymously publishing complex puzzles online. Whether this is some kind of tactic of the secret services or hackers, or the tricks of some kind of cult, is still not known.

16. Green Children of Woolpit

This event took place in 12th century England when two green-skinned children visited the village of Woolpit. They spoke a strange language and claimed to have come from the underworld where other green people live.

17. Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript is a manuscript written in an unknown language with an unknown alphabet, containing diagrams and drawings, dating from around the 15th century. Researchers have been trying to decipher the strange book for centuries, but they have never been able to do it.

18. Case of Taman Shud

The Taman Shud case involves the discovery of a dead man on the coast of Australia. He did not have a passport and could not be identified. An autopsy showed that he had been poisoned, but there were no traces of poison.

The case became even more confusing when, 4 months after death, an expert examined the body of a man. In his pocket he found a small piece of paper with the inscription "Taman Shud".

These were the last words in the collection of poems "Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam, which translates as "completed". A piece of paper was torn from a book that was in a car near the beach. The book contained the nurse's phone numbers and a coded message that the police could not decipher.

The nurse said she had given the book to a man named Albert Boxall. Some time later, however, Boxall reappeared alive and had the same book with the last words.

19. Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

One of unsolved mysteries remains Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014. There were 277 passengers and 12 crew members on board the international flight from Malaysia to Beijing. The last contact with ground services was made less than an hour after takeoff, and the plane itself disappeared from the radar screens a few minutes later.

Military radar followed the plane for an hour after the incident, watching it veer off course until it disappeared into the Andaman Sea.

No distress calls, bad weather warnings, or reports of technical problems. The plane is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, but the wreckage has never been found. Disappearance theories range from black holes to alien abductions.

20. Serial killer Zodiac

The Zodiac is one of the most famous unsolved murders in history. In 1969, he killed at least five people in San Francisco.

Zodiac himself sent coded letters to newspapers and confessed to several murders, but he was never found. Several suspects have been interviewed, but the crime remains unsolved.

The most interesting thing in science is not what we already know, but what we don't know yet. After all, if science knows everything, then its development would have stopped a long time ago. Some mysteries go unanswered, waiting for the right technology, a new genius, or just some luck to come up with an answer. And over time, these answers are found, so it is not surprising that we are now unraveling the mysteries that have puzzled science for many years.

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Origin of the Falkland wolf

Falkland wolves, which lived on the islands of the same name until 1876, were the only mammals on the islands at the time of their discovery in the 17th century. Unfortunately, they were exterminated by people to late XIX century.

These animals were distinguished by their gentle nature - they were almost tame. But their presence on the islands was the subject of much controversy and discussion, because the islands are very far from the mainland.

A recent study that was published in Nature solved this mystery. Previously, scientists believed that these wolves parted ways with their mainland relatives about 330,000 years ago. But an analysis of the DNA of an extinct relative showed that this happened about 160 thousand years ago during the Ice Age. It was then that it was possible to cross the ice between the islands and the continent.

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One of the species of crustaceans without an adult form

Cerataspis monstrosa is the name of this species of crustacean, which was discovered 180 years ago. Always found only its larvae in the intestines of fish. No adult specimen has ever been identified, for obvious reasons, scientists became interested in such an unusual crustacean. Again, the key to unraveling this mystery was DNA analysis.

Professor Keith Crandall conducted a DNA analysis of this mysterious creature, which, for its extraordinary appearance, was called the “monster larva”. He discovered that in reality the mysterious creature turned out to be the larval form of a completely different animal species - Plesiopenaeus Armatus. Scientists missed this connection because the adult of this species is a shrimp that lives deep underwater and looks completely different from itself at a young age.

It was also quite difficult to find specimens of shrimp, because adults live deep under water. Professor Crandall believes that he was able to solve this almost two hundred year old mystery thanks to luck in finding the right samples, and in the last 10 years new methods of research have appeared. This combination allowed him to make such a discovery.

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The likelihood of cannibalism in the Susquehanna tribe

The Susquehanna are an Indian tribe that had a very bad reputation with European settlers. Thought to have been brutal cannibals, they have also been accused of massacring their neighbors, the Shanks Ferry culture. April Beisau, an anthropologist from Vassar, suggested that such "fame" had been misguided and unfair for the last few centuries, so she decided to check if these massacres actually happened.

With the help of two magisters, she went to investigate all possible evidence. She studied more than 2,000 different exhibits and documents in many museums, and found absolutely no evidence that violence of any kind took place between the tribes. Such a myth most likely served as a useful cover for the settlers who themselves destroyed the Susquehanna tribe. April hopes her research will help her 'rewrite history'

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Where were the teeth of a shark whose jaw is twisted into a spiral?

In the photo: Helicoprion dental spiral

In 1897, a fossil was found in the Perm province in the form of teeth twisted into a spiral. The discovery surprised the scientists. Scientists have made many assumptions about where this spiral was located on the body of the creature, starting from its upper and lower jaws and ending with the tail.

Scientists gave the name to the creature that had such a spiral of teeth - helicoprion. If you search for images of Helicoprion, in almost all the pictures you can find, the spiral of teeth is depicted as spiraling down like a buzz saw.

This is how many scientists imagined this fish.

Helicoprion is a species of bizarre shark-like fish with a characteristic spiral jaw.

Using the X-Ray CT scanner to acquire images from high resolution, scientists have obtained a 3-D model of the skull of Helicoprion. They found that the coil was located entirely within the mouth, acting as a "dental bar" and not sticking out. Although the mystery has now been solved, 100 years of delusions have given us a large number of different amazing illustrations of a creature that could be considered one of the most comical in nature.

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Why do corals pulsate?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was among the first scientists to study corals. One of the mysteries that has survived to this day is why do some of them pulsate? This movement, in which their flower-like heads open and close, requires a lot of energy, so there must be very good reasons for this.

The jellyfish is the only other creature that pulsates in the same way as the coral. But she uses such movements to move and hunt for prey, and corals do not do this.

Scientists, armed with infrared cameras, found that corals pulsate constantly, resting for only half an hour a day. Scientists have found that coral ripples keep the waters around them from stagnating, and that oxygen levels in the water near the corals are kept low, causing the algae that the corals feed on to grow better.

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Can women blush in the dark

“The question of whether young women blush in the dark is very difficult,” wrote the 18th-century German scientist Georg Lichtenberg. At first glance, this question may seem quite simple, but it was impossible to answer it definitively. In those days, for some reason, this question was of great interest to some people.

Darkness is darkness for that, that in it it is impossible to visually observe whether a person blushes or does not blush. By turning on the light, the darkness disappears and the experiment will be failed.

But modern technology has come to the aid of researchers from Germany and the Netherlands to solve this burning issue. In a joint experiment in which they used a temperature sensitive camera, they asked a woman to blush in a dark room. When she said she blushed (they chose one that could blush own will), the heat from her cheek has increased, which means that the blood has rushed to the surface of the skin. It turns out that women can still blush in the dark. Vivat, science!

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Darwin's dilemma

Darwin's dilemma, a.k.a. the mystery of the Cambrian Explosion, has to do with a period about 500 million years ago, when a plethora of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record. Darwin considered this phenomenon "inexplicable", but he hoped that future scientists would be able to figure it out.

Creationists often use this point as evidence that the theory of evolution is wrong. However, a study by Australian scientists showed that there is an explanation for the "Evolutionary Big Bang". Scientists have used modern means mathematical modeling and performed a detailed analysis of the fossils. They concluded that evolution occurs at different speeds, in some periods significantly accelerating. This explains the sudden appearance (sudden, from a geological point of view - more than tens of millions of years) of animal diversity on our planet. The result of the study does not refute Darwin's theory, but is in full agreement with it.

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The fungus that caused the potato famine in Ireland

In 1845, the Potato Famine devastated Ireland. 750,000 died of starvation. people, and 2 million left Ireland. The fungus strain responsible for the destroyed crop remained unknown until recently. Scientists assumed it was the US-1 strain, but a recent study found that the cause was a fungus that was still alive a few decades ago but is now gone.

Scientists analyzed DNA fragments of dried plants aged 120 to 170 years. They very much hope that this study will improve knowledge of the emergence of plant pathogens, which may ultimately prevent future crop failures.

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Secret cipher of the founder of Rhode Island

Roger Williams, who is the founder of Rhode Island, has managed to throw an interesting problem to many scientists. V last years life, he came up with his own set of characters with which he encrypted his soaps. Surprisingly, for more than 300 years, the mystery of his cipher was not solved, although many of the greatest scientists tried to find the answer.

The task of decoding these notes was given to the students, who conducted a deep systematic analysis of the enigmatic symbols. Initially, the analysis was not successful, but one of the students found out that Williams had come up with his cipher based on the method of court shorthand used in England. This conjecture became the key to understanding the mysterious cipher and led to the complete decipherment of Williams' notes, which, apparently, cover historical geography, medicine, and infant baptism issues.

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How the earth rotates

Edmond Halley, the discoverer of the comet of the same name, in 1692, was the first to prove the rotation magnetic field Earth. Halley concluded that our planet must have two cores, which must rotate at different speeds, but there was no explanation for this. Later, scientists proved that the Earth has an inner and outer core.

The inner core of the planet consists of solid iron (it is comparable to the size of the moon). It rotates eastward, and the outer core is liquid. It also consists of iron and rotates in the opposite direction, but more slowly. But the connection between them remained a mystery.

Scientists at the University of Leeds have used a super-powerful computer to more accurately simulate the movement of the earth's cores, 100 times more accurately than ever before. As a result, they saw that such a difference could be explained in terms of Newton's third law of motion. The magnetic field pushes the outer core in one direction and the inner core in the other, thus causing movement in different directions.

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Conclusion

It was an article 10 Incredible World Mysteries Recently Solved. Thank you for your attention!

Bale Cipher

The deciphered text pointed to the area where the treasure was located: Bedford County, Virginia, but its exact location appears to be encrypted in one of the remaining ciphers. Today, treasure hunters scour the (often illegally) hills of Bedford County for this untold treasure.

rongorongo

The signs still remain undeciphered, and their true meaning - which some believe holds clues to the fate of the vanished civilization that built the statues on Easter Island - is likely lost forever.

Voynich Manuscript

The fact that many of the diagrams seem to depict astronomical phenomena, coupled with unidentifiable biological sketches, has even led some of the more ingenious theorists to speculate that the book is of extraterrestrial origin.

But one thing almost all theorists agree on is that this book is hardly a hoax, given the amount of time, money, and meticulous work it took to create it.

Zodiac Letters

The Zodiac Letters is a series of four encrypted letters believed to have been written by the famous Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorized the people of San Francisco during the latter half of the 1960s and early 1970s. The letters were probably written as a way to tease journalists and the police, and although one letter was deciphered, the other three remain unsolved.

The identity of the Zodiac has also never been established, although no more Zodiac murders have been identified since the 1970s.

Phaistos Disc

Some scholars believe that these hieroglyphs are reminiscent of the "Linear A" and "Linear B" characters, in other words, written languages that were once used in ancient Crete.

Tamam Shud case

This phrase translates as "finished" or "completed" and is used on the last page of Omar Khayyam's collection of poems "Rubaiyat". In addition to this mystery, a copy of the Rubaiyat was soon found, which contained a strange cipher, supposedly left by this dead man himself. Due to the content of Omar Khayyam's poems, many believe that this message was a posthumous note of some kind, but it still remains unsolved, as well as the case itself.

Cryptos

Kryptos is a mysterious, cipher-covered sculpture created by artist Jim Sanborn that is located in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It is so mysterious that even the CIA itself could not fully decipher its code.

Maybe you can decipher it?

Cipher from Chaboro.

Many of the world's greatest minds have tried to decipher this code and failed, including Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

Wow! signal

Eman wrote the word "Wow!" on the original printout of the signal, which is why it was called "Wow! signal."

All attempts to catch the signal again failed, leading to much debate about the nature of its origin and its meaning.

Guiding Stones of Georgia

The Georgia Waystones, sometimes referred to as the "American Stonehenge", is a granite monument erected in Elbert County, Georgia in 1979. The stones contain engravings in eight languages - English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian - and each contains ten "new" commandments for the "Age of Reason". The stones are also installed taking into account some astronomical considerations.

And although the monument does not contain encrypted messages, its purpose and origin remain a mystery. It was erected by a man whose identity has never been definitely established, and who was hiding behind the pseudonym R.C. Christian.

Many people like to solve all sorts of riddles. And especially attract those of them that have not yet been solved. Ciphers, riddles and coded public messages tease us with their intrigue: why is this message encrypted? what great secrets can it hide in itself?

There are a great many such mysteries, but we decided - in the spirit of the times - to compile some Top 10 mysteries of the world that have not yet been solved.

In the first place, of course, is the Voynich manuscript. Named after the Polish-American antiquarian dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912, the Voynich Manuscript is a detailed book, quite thick at 240 pages, written in a completely unknown language.

Unknown so far! And there is not even any suggestion what kind of language it might be. Its pages are also filled with colorful drawings and strange diagrams, depictions of incredible events, and plants that do not resemble any known species, which only add to the intrigue of a document that cannot be deciphered. The author of the manuscript is unknown, but radiocarbon analysis, as well as several examinations, showed that its pages were made somewhere between 1404 and 1438. The manuscript has been called "The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World".

In second place is Kryptos, a mysterious cipher-covered sculpture., created by artist Jim Sanborn, located in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, USA. It is so mysterious that even the CIA itself could not fully decipher its code.

In third place is the Bale cipher. The Bale Cipher is a set of three ciphers that supposedly reveal the location of one of the greatest buried treasures in American history: many thousands of pounds of gold, silver and precious stones. The treasure was originally mined by a mysterious man named Thomas Jefferson Bale in 1818 during a gold mining operation in Colorado.

In fourth place is the Phaistos disc. The Phaistos Disc Mystery is like an Indiana Jones story. Discovered by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in 1908 in the ruins of the Minoan palace at Phaistos, the disk is still one of the most famous mysteries in archeology. It is made of baked clay and contains mysterious symbols, which may represent an unknown form of hieroglyphs. It is believed that it was made somewhere in the II millennium BC.

Some scholars believe that these hieroglyphs are reminiscent of the "Linear A" and "Linear B" characters, in other words, the written languages that were once used in ancient Crete.

Then what is the problem? That "Linear A" is indecipherable.

In fifth place is the encryption from Chaboro. It is actually the 18th century Shepherd's Monument in Staffordshire, England. If you look at it from afar, you can mistake it for a sculptural reproduction of the famous painting by Nicolas Poussin "The Arcadian Shepherds". But as soon as you look closer, a strange sequence of letters immediately becomes noticeable: DOUOSVAVVM, a code that has not been deciphered for more than two and a half centuries. And although the author of this cipher remains unknown, some believe that this code may be a clue left by knights templar regarding the location of the Holy Grail.

Many of the world's greatest minds have tried to decipher this code and failed, including Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

In sixth place is the so-called Tamam Shud case. Considered one of Australia's biggest mysteries, the Tamam Shud case revolves around an unidentified man who was found dead in December 1948 on Somerton Beach in the Australian city of Adelaide. Apart from the fact that the man was never identified, the matter became even more mysterious when a tiny piece of paper with the words "Tamam Shud" was found in a secret pocket sewn into the man's trousers. This phrase translates as "finished" or "completed" and is used on the last page of Omar Khayyam's collection of poems "Rubaiyat". In addition to this mystery, a copy of the Rubaiyat was soon found, which contained a strange cipher, supposedly left by the dead man himself.

Due to the content of the poems of Omar Khayyam, many believe that this message was a posthumous note of some kind, but it still remains unsolved, as well as the case itself.

In seventh place is not an object - a signal. One summer night in 1977, Jerry Eman, a volunteer for the SETI program (a widespread program for searching for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence), became perhaps the first person to receive a message from another planet. Jerry Eman was scanning radio waves from deep space in the hope of accidentally stumbling upon a signal bearing the hallmarks of an intelligent race when he noticed a jump in his measurements. And stumbled. The signal lasted 72 seconds, the longest possible sample duration allowed by Jerry Eman's equipment and scanning range. It was loud and seemed to be coming from a place no human had ever been: from the constellation Sagittarius, from a point near a star called Tau Sagittarii, 120 light-years from Earth.

Jerry Eman wrote the word "Wow!" on the original printout of the signal, which is why it was called "Wow! Signal". All attempts to catch the signal again failed, leading to much debate about the nature of its origin and its meaning.

In eighth place is the so-called "Letters of the Zodiac", but this has nothing to do with the signs of the zodiac. The Zodiac Letters is a series of four encrypted letters believed to have been written by the famous Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorized the people of San Francisco in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Letters are written with icons, partly resembling letters, partly runes. There is no separation of words from each other.

The letters were probably written as a way to tease journalists and the police, and although one letter (or rather, three fragments of it) was deciphered, the other three remain unsolved. The deciphered message suggests that in three months, the Zodiac from a ready-made Aztec priest became a victim of his own addiction to homicide, tearfully begging to help him stop killing people (by putting him, for example, in a gas chamber). Also, Starliper's transcript ends with the sentence "My name is Lee Allen". By the way, the identity of the Zodiac himself has also never been established, the killer is not caught, although the murders of the Zodiac have not been identified since the 70s.

In ninth place are the waystones of Georgia. The Georgia Waystones, sometimes referred to as the "American Stonehenge", is a granite monument erected in Elbert County, Georgia in 1979. The stones contain engravings in eight languages - English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian - and each contains ten "new" commandments for the "Age of Reason". They look like four steles, practically connected in a cross with a pillar in the middle and covered on top with a "cap" of a small square slab.

Well, what's the mystery here, most will ask. The monument does not contain any encrypted messages! Yes, it does not. Its purpose and origin remain a mystery. It was erected by a man whose identity has never been definitely established, and who was hiding behind the pseudonym R.C. Christian. Where he got these commandments from is also unknown, for no sources contain anything like that.

There is a version that these giant "letters" were also installed taking into account some astronomical considerations - hence, in fact, the name: "American Stonehenge".

In tenth place are Rongo-rongo boards. These mysterious wooden tablets with the writings of the inhabitants of Easter Island. It is currently not clear whether each character represents a single word or syllable. To date, only about 25 "plates" have been preserved in museums around the world. Traditionally, they are numbered with letters of the Latin alphabet, which, however, is not the only way to designate "tables", among which there is one wand, two inscriptions on the breast decoration of the reimiro, as well as an inscription on the snuffbox and on the tangata manu figure.

The "tablets" were discovered in 1864 by Bishop E. Ayro, who claimed that these tablets were in almost every Aboriginal home, but the islanders could hardly read them. Two years later, almost all the tablets that E. Eiro saw died: either from his own hands, or during civil strife. It is believed that they were written in the Rapanui language. The last Rapanuian who knew Rongo-Rongo, Vike, died in 1866.

Since then, scientists from all over the world have been trying to decipher rongo-rongo. A significant contribution to the study was made by T. Bartel, Yu. V. Knorozov and N. A. Butinov, I. K. Fedorova and many others. However, there is no consensus even on the definition of the type of writing, let alone specific readings. The well-known theorist of grammar I. Gelb believed that this was not writing, but only magical drawings, arguing that his signs are so similar to each other, differing only in minor details, that an attempt to differentiate them encounters enormous difficulties.

Butinov and Knorozov prove that this is by no means a pictography, but a morphemic-syllabic writing. New Zealand researcher S.R. Fisher (in a 1997 monograph) believes that the tablets "for the most part reproduce the magical formula of fertilization, recorded in the later version of the creation of the world, and are built on the repetition of the producing formula: agent X combined with agent Y and gave birth to object (s) Z". According to the ironic characterization of linguists K.I. and I.K. Pozdnyakov, "it turns out a leapfrog, in which everyone copulates in the most incredible combinations."