Five unsolved mysteries hidden in coded messages.

On December 1, 1948, the corpse of a mysterious man was found on Australia's Somerton Beach, there were no signs of violence on the body, all that was there were cigarettes, a train ticket and sundries. He was dressed in a shirt, tie and fancy jacket, and all the labels on his clothes had been neatly cut off. The pathologist who performed the autopsy was unable to determine

the exact cause of his death, but firmly assured the inquest that all indications were that the victim had been poisoned with a poison that disappears from the body after only a few hours. The deceased was not a local resident and could not subsequently be identified from photographs or fingerprints.

The investigation was deadlocked, but a month and a half later, workers at the local train station handed over to the police an unclaimed suitcase that turned out to belong to the murdered man. Inside were various tools, a knife converted into a shiv and clothes with labels torn off, including pants with a secret pocket. In this pocket, the detectives found a piece of paper carefully cut from the page of a book with the inscription Tamam shud, which translates as finished or completed. The book in question turned out to be an extremely rare edition of a collection of Omar Khayyam's poetry.

After large-scale searches, a copy of this book with a torn page was brought to the police by a random person who found the book on the back seat of his unlocked car a day before the discovery of the mysterious corpse. And the most interesting thing is that on the last page of this book pencil was written cipher over the unraveling of which many amateur experts are still struggling. It was five lines with an incomprehensible set of letters from the crossed out second line. In 1978, the Australian Department of Defense issued a statement that it is quite likely a secret cipher. But they also admitted that this note could be a meaningless set of symbols.

But since 2009, attempts to decipher the cryptogram have been underway at the University of Adelaide. Researchers have come to the conclusion that it is indeed some kind of cipher, but as you have already realized at the moment have not managed to solve not the cipher not the case of Tamam shud, which for more than sixty years remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in the history of Australia.

2

The following cryptogram contains nothing less than the secret location of the looted treasure of one of France's most notorious pirates, Olivier Levasseur . Some believe that

Robert Louis Stevenson himself was inspired by the stories of his adventures in Treasure Island. Levasseur was the last of the famous Indian Ocean pirates who kept sea travelers and traders in fear for two decades. On April 13, 1721, Levasseur and his crew had the good fortune to come across a ship in distress, the Vierge du Cap, which had been caught in a violent storm the day before. The crew of the ship could hardly stand on their feet and naturally could not offer any resistance to the pirates. And all the cannons were thrown overboard during the storm to keep the ship afloat. Meanwhile, on the ship traveled such notables as the viceroy of India and the Portuguese archbishop, who were on their way to Europe. And they carried all their treasures and jewelry with them, including a gold cross taller than a man. You can imagine what treasures found pirates, if each ordinary robber got five thousand gold coins and 50 diamonds.

And the lion's share of the loot, including church utensils, was taken by Levasseur. But in 1730, Levasseur was caught and sentenced to death by hanging. And here the famous pirate goes to the scaffold, and already standing under the gallows with a noose around his neck, he tears off a piece of parchment from his chest throws it into the crowd and shouts:

- "Let whoever is smart enough find my treasure".

On this scrap of paper were written mysterious signs and drawings, 17 lines in all. Many believe it's a coded message indicating where one of the largest treasures in human history lies. Which is now estimated to be worth around a billion pounds. And Olivier Levasseur's cryptogram has yet to be deciphered.

3

At the time of his death, small-time crook Ricky McCormick was 41 years old. He was once again unemployed and living on disability benefits. Ricky McCormick's body was found in a Missouri cornfield on June 30, 1999. The first mystery was where the body was found. McCormick's house was fifteen miles away. And it's not clear what he was doing in a cornfield. By the time they found him, his body had already begun to decompose. Initially, Ricky McCormick had been murdered, no one would have guessed. The man was of no interest to anyone, and the detectives were simply unable to come up with a decent motive for his murder. Nor did they mention the contents of his pockets. Only after 12 years in 2011, the FBI came to the conclusion that McCormick still killed, informed the world about the two mysterious notes. And so, in the pockets of Ricky's pants found some notes, judging by the ink they were written three days before his death. The text on the notes is a jumble of letters, numbers, and brackets. According to the head of the FBI's cryptanalytic division, the notes may contain information critical to reconstructing the circumstances of McCormick's death. But unfortunately, so far, all the efforts of FBI specialists have come to nothing. The FBI even appealed to the general public for help in deciphering, but it did nothing.

Another interesting fact. According to McCormick's relatives, the deceased had been using a similar coding technique since childhood. But unfortunately, none of them knew the key to this cipher. So any of you can try to help the FBI decipher this cryptogram and solve the murder of Ricky McCormick.

4

Information about the Bale treasure first surfaced in 1885 in a pamphlet written by a James Ward called the Bale papers. In James Ward's words, he described the message after three decades of unsuccessful attempts to solve the mystery of the treasure. This book tells the story of the innkeeper, Maurice, with whom Thomas Jefferson Bale, a hunter and gold prospector, stayed more than once. Although later it was suggested that under this name hid the famous pirate Jean Lafitte robbed English Spanish ships. One day a guest left Maurice a locked iron box for safekeeping. Bale said he could only open it after 10 years if he didn't come forward. Bale disappeared, and the owner opened the box, which contained three encrypted messages.

Cryptogram number one was the location of the stash. Cryptogram number two was the contents, and the third was the names and addresses of the heirs. The second cryptogram was decrypted by the so-called notebook cipher method - when a certain book represents a key. According to the author of the brochure in the room where Bale stayed there was always the U.S. Declaration of Independence. And the author numbered the words on the first page then substituted for each number the first letter of the word that received the corresponding number, and it worked. This note reported a hoard of two wagons of gold and silver belonging to Bale.

Which is now worth tens of millions of dollars. But the problem is that the notebook cipher method only worked for one of the messages. The researchers tried to find the key in other books to crack Bale's ciphers. They checked about 8,000 documents and all to no avail. And while there's still some debate about the reality of the treasure. Computer analysis of unsolved cryptograms showed that there are cyclic correspondences between the numbers, which can not be considered random. And that in both cases cryptograms are text encoded in the same way as the second cryptogram. But the key to this cipher should be sought not in the declaration of independence, but in some other texts.

5

Perhaps the most famous and mysterious serial killer of the 20th century.

Who has never been identified is the Zodiac Killer.

Since 1968, five people have fallen victim to him, two more survived. According to the Zodiac himself, he's killed 37 people. Zodiac gained widespread fame thanks to the encrypted messages he sent to California newspapers. In his messages, the zodiac placed fragments of the people he killed. Thus dismissing all doubts about the authenticity of the letter. The most intriguing thing about these cryptograms

was that the Zodiac said that if anyone could decipher them, they would know his secret identity. And the police would have no difficulty in catching the maniac. A total of four such messages were received, signed with the famous symbol of a crossed-out circle, which the Zodiac accompanied his letters. The zodiac's first message was the only one

that had been deciphered. After the publication of this cipher in a newspaper in 1969, the fastest to decipher it was an ordinary Californian couple.

The killer didn't give his name. And the point of the letter with many grammatical errors was that killing people is much more interesting than killing animals. Because humans are the most dangerous creatures on the planet. "I will go to paradise where those I have killed will be my slaves," the note read. It was the last successful attempt to decipher the Zodiac cryptogram.

The contents of a postcard with a code of three hundred and forty characters sent three months later to the editors of the san francisco chronicle remain a mystery. "You can print it on the front page. I get awfully lonely when I'm not noticed," the killer requested in an accompanying letter. A few days later, the Zodiac sent another letter. In which he encrypted his name. It also went unsolved. The last time the Zodiac made himself known was in 1974. And so far, neither the identity of the killer nor the contents of his coded messages have been identified. And who knows, maybe these messages are just a mess of symbols and the zodiac was just messing with the investigation.