Strange History

Psychic spies, unreadable books and the eye on the dollar: the odd corners of the past, checked against the documents and told straight.

• The Voynich Manuscript: The Book Nobody Can Read A fifteenth-century book in an unknown script has beaten codebreakers for a century. Here is what is known, and why every solution fails.
• Project Stargate: When the U.S. Government Paid Psychic Spies For two decades and about $20 million, American intelligence tested remote viewing. The declassified files tell a stranger story than the myth.
• The Eye on the Dollar Bill Is Not What You Think The pyramid and floating eye came from a 1782 committee, a Christian symbol and a Roman poet, not from the Freemasons or the Illuminati.