My copy of Daniel Cohen’s (1981) “The Great Airship Mystery: A UFO of the 1890s” arrived yesterday, and I’ve started working my way through it. Initial impressions are that it definitely earned its place on my essential Airship Flap bibliography: it’s thorough, well written, and the author is a definite UFO skeptic. Where Cohen has … Read More → The post Professor Swift, John Ahern, and Rodney… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

From the time of writing “The Curse of the Voynich” to now, I’ve felt annoyed with myself for not being able to figure out precisely what is going on with the Voynichese “daiin daiin” pattern. Back in 2006, I wondered whether all the scribal variations of EVA ain in Herbal A might actually be somehow … Read More → The post Thoughts on daiin daiin… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Wonderful news – a long-standing cipher mystery (to be precise, a pair of them) has been broken! Today I received a message from David Vierra announcing that he had broken Feynman Ciphers #2 and #3, and including a link to his blog post including all the technical details. He noted: They both use the same … Read More → The post Feynman Ciphers #2 and #3 broken! appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I’ve previously included a link to Dr Battey’s (1893) “Aerial Machine” patent on Google Patents (it was even cited in a 2018 patent!), because it seems to me to share many features with the mysterious airship in the 1896 & 1897 Airship Flaps. I thought it would be useful to post a description of Battey’s … Read More → The post Dr. S. B. Battey’s (1893)”Aerial Machine” patent US502168A… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Just a quick post to say that Cipher Mysteries’ email subscription button now no longer works, because the Feedburner service behind it is no longer (since a little earlier this year, in fact) accepting new subscriptions. Which is annoying (of course), but it is what it is. Google had a reputation for buying companies more … Read More → The post R.I.P. Feedburner (just about)… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

After my last post, I went looking for a source for the 1896 Airship Flap that concentrated specifically on the reports of flying machines and strange lights in the California sky in late 1896. Specifically, I wanted to know whether there was anything particular about the California sightings that might differentiate the 1896 Airship Flap … Read More → The post Loren E. Gross’s (1974) “The UFO Wave of 1896” appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

The 1896-1897 Airship Flap is a slice of Forteana that I think is tasty enough to satisfy the appetites of both Ufologists and steampunk enthusiasts simultaneously. As such, it has plenty of devotees and debatable documentation, where much of the latter seems (unfortunately) to recycle the same underlying material. This post tries to filter out … Read More → The post An 1896-1897 Airship Flap Bibliography… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

When dealing with a person who died less than a century ago, it’s almost always a good idea to look at their family tree. Might they have left some papers, articles, diaries, memoirs or photographs? Sometimes this leads to a family member with an interest in genealogy and/or family history: asking is free, and if … Read More → The post Dr Sumter Beauregard Battey’s family tree… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Given that the first two well-attested full-scale metal-clad airships (both by David Schwartz and industrialist Carl Berg) were in Russia and Prussia in the 1890s, it should be no great surprise if an American concern built its own similar airship at about the same time. But entrepreneurs are opportunists; opportunity needs timing; and timing is … Read More → The post 1896/1897 Airships and the Pittsburgh Reduction Company… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

A full account of how Walter McCann came to take two photographs of the mysterious airship appeared in the Chicago Times-Herald on Monday, April 12, 1897. The text of that article is helpfully reproduced in a Tripod website (from 2006) and on Patrick Gross’s website. The second (much better) photograph itself was reproduced by one … Read More → The post Walter McCann’s 1897 airship photographs… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Following on from my last post on metal-clad airships, I thought I ought to look a little more closely at Dr Sumter Beauregard Battey of New York and his nitro-glycerine-pellet-powered airship design. Dr Sumter Beauregard Battey As is so often the case, his obituary in the New York Times (included on his findagrave.com page) is … Read More → The post Sumter Beauregard Battey, continued… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Though the whole idea of metal-clad airships sounds like a steampunk fantasy, they were in fact completely real – the US Navy famously commissioned one (the ZMC-2), and plenty of people tried (and indeed even to the present day continue to try) to build others. And the wonder-stuff that made them possible was that marvellously … Read More → The post Metal-Clad Airships, and the 1897 Airship Flap… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Would it surprise me if I’m currently the only person in the world who genuinely wants to know exactly what Thomas Greenhow Williams (‘Tex’) Settle’s US Navy timeline was? No, of course it wouldn’t. So why inflict it on the world as a blog post? Too late, here it is! Naval History Division Settle’s US … Read More → The post Tex Settle’s US Navy timeline… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

The last Cipher Mysteries post (from Jo) on Hickey Taylor only had a single scratchy picture of him playing bridge backstage. However, this lack of good images prompted CM commenters to dig up a whole sequence of pictures, which I thought would be good to put into a photo timeline. Photo Timeline 1929 “Desert Song”, … Read More → The post Hickey Taylor, a photo timeline… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

(Nick: here’s a guest post [lightly edited to house style] from Melbourne-based Cipher Mysteries commenter Jo, introducing Hickey Taylor to the Somerton Man discussion. Over to you, Jo…) Stuart Webb recently re-posted “the family photo” on Derek Abbott’s Facebook page, along with a query about one of the people on it: Hickey Taylor.  My first … Read More → The post Hickey Taylor (and the Somerton Man?) appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Much as I’ve enjoyed looking through old J. C. Williamson programmes and Melbourne bridge columns hunting for Gerald Keane and Carl Webb, I can’t help but wonder if it’s time for a new research angle. I mean, tracking Dermott Derham ‘Derry’ George (of 13 Wandeen Road, S.E.6, mechanic in 1939 Victoria census) and his wife … Read More → The post The Somerton Man, where next? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I’ve recently had some nice correspondence with Rafał Miazga, an independent Polish researcher who, having deftly avoided getting trapped by the perils of Voynich Manuscript research, instead travelled deep down the Rohonc Codex rabbit-hole. He has posted up a (substantial) paper on academia.edu outlining both his research and his interesting (yet tentative) conclusions, which I … Read More → The post Rafał Miazga and the Rohonc Codex… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Some Cipher Mysteries commenters have speculated that Gerald (Jerry) Keane’s job at J. C. Williamson’s might have connected him to the run of “Under The Counter” at Adelaide’s Theatre Royal in November 1948. But is there any actual evidence of this? Keane doesn’t appear in the UTC programme, so why should we think this is … Read More → The post “Under the Counter”, the end of a long run… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Thanks to Cipher Mysteries commenter Poppins, we now know that Carl Webb’s close relative Gerald Keane was known as Jerry Keane. This was from the souvenir programme for a J. C. Williamson production of “Victoria Regina” that ran from 1937 to 1938 (the file is dated October 1937, but the front cover has the hand-written … Read More → The post Chief Mechanist Jerry Keane and the Somerton Man… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

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Like most people, I’ve read numerous articles about ChatGPT recently. Perhaps the most entertaining was where ChatGPT (sort of) played chess against the #1 chess engine Stockfish, with hilarious consequences (if you’re a chess player, that is). However, few articles manage to get the point across that ChatGPT is not an all-knowing Oracle, but rather … Read More → The post ChatGPT and the Voynich Manuscript… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I had been looking, as you’d expect, for something completely different: but when I found out that “A Takapuna Scandal” starring Hector St Clair was available online, I thought I had to share the link with all you lovely people. Filmed around Auckland in 1927, it’s a mixture of meta-infused modernity, bad puns, and panto … Read More → The post Starring Hector St Clair… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Pretty much everyone and their dog now knows about the mysterious white tie (marked “J Keane” or “T Keane”, depending how you interpret the markings on it) found in the Somerton Man’s suitcase in Adelaide’s railway station. And everyone seems to have a theory about that same wretched tie (heaven knows I’ve posted more than … Read More → The post Carl Webb, fake Mason? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Contract bridge was a fashionable game in the 1930s and 1940s; columns presenting bridge news and puzzles were popular recent additions to newspapers. What was appealing was that bridge problems had a human, social side that, say, chess problems lacked. Bridge columnists ran puzzle competitions for readers not only to solve, but to compete against … Read More → The post Carl Webb, bridge puzzle solver… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

According to the Cipher Mysteries WordPress dashboard, more than 43000 comments have been posted (and approved) here. (Akismet tells me it has deleted more than 690,000 spam comments.) Moderation is a thing I have to do every day, and over the last six months this has got progressively more time-consuming (and boring). As a result, … Read More → The post Update to Cipher Mysteries’ comment policy. appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Anyone who has seen the recent (2022) Netflix series “Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi” (I watched this over Christmas, it’s actually rather good) will know that the story it tells – of how, in 1983, 15-year-old “Vatican Girl” Emanuela Orlandi disappeared – is nothing short of a full-blown mystery. Many decades later, her … Read More → The post Emanuela Orlandi: Life (& Death?) in London… appeared first on Cipher ....

David Morgan has very kindly sent me through a transcript (generated using ChatGPT/Glasp) of the recent ABC “Australian Story” episode on the Somerton Man. I thought it needed a post of its own, so here it is: [00:09] I had no idea about the Somerton Man case. I’d never heard of it. It hadn’t entered … Read More → The post Transcript of ABC Australian Story on Somerton Man… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Commenter John Sanders is convinced that the man at the right-hand-edge of the Webb family photo is Leslie William Scott, husband of Carl Webb’s sister Gladys May. Here are some notes on Mr and Mrs L. W. Scott… Leslie William Scott Born in 1895, he spent 4½ years as an apprentice printer working for his … Read More → The post Gladys May Webb and Leslie William Scott… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Over at voynich.ninja, there’s an interesting recent thread on the (in-)homogeneity of Voynichese, i.e. how consistent (or inconsistent) with itself the Voynich Manuscript’s text is (either locally or globally). Given that I have been working on Q20 recently, I thought it might be interesting to take a brief look at that quire through this particular … Read More → The post Voynich Manuscript: Q20 (in-)homogeneity and BAAFU… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

In a recent post, I started trying to list out Q20 order-related microtheories, but got somewhat sidetracked by the microtheory that f58 (with its ‘Scribe 3’ starred paragraphs) may have preceded Q20 (which, for the most part, is also made up of ‘Scribe 3’ starred paragraphs). However, this whole idea is closely linked to the … Read More → The post What happened to Voynich Q8 and Q14? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.