Here’s a guest post by Cipher Mysteries commenter Pat, who has been hot on the trail of Dorothy Jean Robertson in Trove. There are, of course, many different Dorothy Robertsons out there, but Pat thinks these refer to the Dorothy Jean Robertson who married Carl Webb (the Somerton Man). So… here we go! Yet Another … Read More → The post On the trail of Dorothy Robertson… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

[The following is a guest post from Cipher Mysteries commenter Behrooz: all I’ve done is reformat it slightly into WordPress/HTML markup. Enjoy! — NickP] I have the good news that, following some clarifications just received yesterday, I am now allowed to share publicly the contents and quotations from the contents of the Lockyer vs. Lockyer … Read More → The post Lockyer vs Lockyer Divorce Files (continued)… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Given the solid dating of Jean-Marie Justin Nageon de l’Estang’s birth to 1776, I decided to revisit the issue of whether the “richesses de l’Indus” refers to an actual ship. We’ve already seen a brig called “Indus” captured by the French in 1782 (though full of rice rather than treasure). Additionally, Jean-Marie Justin’s reported death … Read More → The post Ships called “Indus”, 1783-1798… appeared first on Cipher ....

A comment today by Anthony Lallaizon to Cipher Mysteries seems to have thrown the Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang timeline up in the air (if not completely out of the window). This definitely required a post of its own! What Anthony found yields a definitive birthdate for Jean Marie Justin Nageon de l’Estang. Jean Marie Justin … Read More → The post Jean Marie Justin Nageon de l’Estang, revisited… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

In his (much-examined, much-copied, and probably much-misunderstood) Last Will and Testament, Andre Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang (1715-1750) claimed to have retrieved “richesses de l’Indus” and hidden it in some kind of cave (presumably in Mauritius, where he lived and died). Consequently, many treasure hunters have trawled historical archives for ships called “Indus” with dates that … Read More → The post Was Bernardin’s “Indus” ....

Darrell Huff’s (1954) “How to Lie With Statistics” is a twentieth century classic that’s well worth reading (I have a well-thumbed copy on my bookshelf that I bought back in the 1980s). It’s basically a breezy introduction to statistics, that concentrates largely on how people get things wrong in order to get across the general … Read More → The post Darrell Huff, Voynich theories, and “How to Lie [to yourself] with Statistics”… appeared ....

As the many journaux de bord listed in my previous post attest, the Marine JJ series of documents is where lots of good stuff is to be found. An appendix in a 974-page historical slavery report I found online includes a handy list of such journaux from this period at CARAN in Paris. 4 JJ … Read More → The post Indian Ocean ships 1747-1748 and French marine archives… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

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I’ve recently had some interesting back-and-forth email correspondence about the Nageon de l’Estang treasure documents with independent Swiss researcher Daniel Krieg. In recent years, Daniel has made his own fresh attack on this long-standing historical mystery, and his particular interpretation of many key aspects of those documents has led him to draw his own conclusions. … Read More → The post Daniel Krieg on the (1782) “Indus”… appeared first on Cipher ....

In the last few days, looking at the whole Isaac / Chad ‘alien alphabet’ mystery has made me think more broadly about cipher mysteries. What I’m trying to do is to work out what the relationship between the different pieces of evidence are – but not just in terms of “A preceded B”. Inserts Generally, … Read More → The post On inserts and Google search… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

When “Isaac” posted his alien alphabet / antigravity stuff in June 2007, it was (he claimed) in response to recent reports of strange ‘dragonfly’-shaped drones, some of which had the same ‘alien’ writing on them: Those sightings are well documented in a “One Year Later” article in MUFON Ufo Journal April 2008 (pp. 3-11): the … Read More → The post Before Isaac, there was Chad (etc)… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Today, I have a curious story of a 1957 cipher mystery from Scarborough in Yorkshire, with a flying saucer spin. And – best of all – its secret history has (as far as I know) never been fully revealed. The first press write-up dates to the 9th December 1957, when the Yorkshire Post ran an article (which … Read More → The post The Silpho Moor UFO cipher mystery… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Who was the mysterious “Isaac“, who claimed to have been working on an alien language in a Palo Alto research institute (“CARET”) in 1984-1987? In 2007, this Isaac posted a page on the free hosting website Fortune City (which has now been archived) with a load of scanned ‘alien’ documents; then answered various follow-up questions … Read More → The post In search of “Isaac”… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

If the Last Will and Testament written by Andre Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang is genuine (or, at least, perhaps only modestly embellished in the copying) and – as part of that – was indeed written by him, it can only have been written prior to his death in 1750. I previously also wrote about the … Read More → The post In search of Mauritian shipwrecks 1740-1750… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Perhaps you well-informed people already knew, but recently I was surprised to discover that during WWII, these three luminary SF writers all worked at the Naval Aviation Experimental Station in Philadelphia. Because this overlaps some of the other history I’ve been working my way through of late, I thought I’d tell this story again (but … Read More → The post Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, and Robert Heinlein at the Philadelphia Navy Yard… appeared first on Cipher ....

Since posting up some images way back in 2009, I haven’t really covered the (allegedly) ‘alien’ language claimed to have been stolen from a (fictitious) “CARET” research institute in Palo Alto by a mysterious Fortune City poster called “Isaac”. The whole lot was – in my opinion – nothing more than a Ufologist-trolling hoax (albeit … Read More → The post Isaac, CARET, StarfireTor, Alienware appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Charles Dellschau’s curious notebooks talk elliptically about a mysterious lifting gas called “NB Gas”: this was discovered (or, perhaps more accurately, harnessed) by miner Peter Mennis. It was created by dripping a green liquid (which Dellschau nicknamed “suppe”, for “pea soup”) onto an electrode, releasing the “NB Gas”, thus giving – so the theory goes … Read More → The post “NB Gas” decoded (in plain sight)…? ....

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Anyone trying to make sense of Charles Dellschau’s partly-enciphered airship drawings will quickly run into three roadblocks: (1) what was the mysterious “NB gas” that allegedly made the airships buoyant? (2) What was the curious green “soup” that was allegedly used to release additional NB gas whilst in flight? (3) What was the mysterious group … Read More → The post On NB gas, suppe, and NYMZA… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

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Prompted by Karl Kluge, I’ve been reading Dennis Crenshaw’s “The Secrets of Dellschau” to try to work out my own angle on the mysterious Sonora Aero Club and its alleged airships. However, when Crenshaw mentions Mount Tamalpais (in connection with the 1896 Airship Flap in California), he refers to two articles from The San Francisco … Read More → The post Two Hunters on Bolinas Ridge… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

You know, I’m so glad you asked me that question, it’s almost as if I was waiting to be asked. It turns out that there were in fact two airship ciphers. Well… one. Well… none. Well… maybe a half. Bear with me, I’ll try to explain. The 1897 Aurora Alien Incident Daniel Cohen has a … Read More → The post Did the 1896-7 Airship Flap have any cipher mysteries? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

In the last post, I brought together all the sightings of the October 22 1896 Meteor I could find, and was able to conclude that they were all indeed sightings of an unusual meteor (rather than of a mystery airship). So… what remains? What was the first actual sighting of the 1896 California Airship Flap? … Read More → The post When did the 1896 California Airship Flap begin? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

OK, now that I’ve collected a ton of reports, it seems abundantly clear that the October 22 1896 Meteor sighted in California was indeed a meteor, and not an airship. What seems to have happened is that once the 1896 airship “flap” sightings began (in mid-November 1896), people started misremembering what was seen at Cliff … Read More → The post The October 22 1896 Meteor was not an airship appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Searching for “W. M. Richards” (who took “A splendid view of the triple-connected meteor”) following my last post, it struck me that that person might well have been an astronomer. Though it seems Richards wasn’t, this hunch quickly led me to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for 1896, which contained a … Read More → The post “The Meteor of October 22 1896” appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

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.

Following on from my post yesterday, I found a copy of the Stockton Evening Mail for 23 Oct 1896 (p.5) in newspapers.com, which (to my delight) told the story of what happened in Saceamento really rather well. Rodney (John Ahern’s dog) even gets a starring role, which will no doubt please many passing animal lovers. … Read More → The post “A Wonderful Meteor” 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.