Mensa Quadrata
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Mensa Quadrata

A 16th-century transposition cipher based on square numbers.

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Speakeasy Password
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Speakeasy Password

Passwords PINs and Paper are a concern for ordinary users who want to keep their apps and accounts safe from trolls and thieves. Often, passwords are not a problem: people are a problem. This is a wacky reminder of paper and pen.

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Kipling Opium
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Kipling Opium

Young Kipling technical journalism about the Ghazipur Opium Factory in India. He did not include the article in his collected works and it was discovered in an attic in 2007.

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Silk Secret
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Silk Secret

Jim Thompson, silk story and The King and I. Who was he and where did he come from? The unanswered question is where did he go? He vanished on Easter Sunday 1967. No one knows.

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Book Sale
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Book Sale

The Big Book Sale every 6 months at the Neilson Hays Library.

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Glenn Miller
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Glenn Miller

Glenn Miller disappeared in December 1944 but no one appeared to notice for days.

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Charles V Cipher
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Charles V Cipher

King Carlos of Spain wrote to his ambassador in Paris after the death of King Henry VIII of England. His cipher letter has finally been translated in November 2022.

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Angela Lansbury
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury, woman of mystery, longest-serving American actress, from a British family marked for extermination in a concentration camp

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Photo Wrongs
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Photo Wrongs

Creative Composite Images and Copyright

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Fake Fairies
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Fake Fairies

School girl created fake photo with cardboard cutouts in 1917

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Photo Art
Photography, Art Stephen Colbourn Photography, Art Stephen Colbourn

Photo Art

Photo manipulation goes back to the early days of photography in the mid-19th century. Whover thought up the claim that ‘the camera does not lie’ was not telling the truth.

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Cipher or Cypher
Stephen Colbourn Stephen Colbourn

Cipher or Cypher

Cypher and Cipher confusion - heraldry and cryptic messages

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