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Showing posts from July, 2020

This sculpture at CIA headquarters holds one of the world's most famous unsolved mysteries

Learn more about the CIA's uncrackable code in the latest episode of Great Big Story, a new podcast from CNN about the delightful, surprising stories all around us. In the middle of CIA headquarters, there sits a sculpture that contains a secret code that has stumped top cryptologists for decades. In the late 1980s, artist Jim Sanborn was commissioned to create a sculpture to be displayed at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Knowing some of the world's top intelligence officials would see the piece practically every day, Sanborn made a work of art that is, in a word, puzzling. Unveiled on November 3, 1990, it's called Kryptos, and it contains a cryptographic challenge. Surely, someone would crack the code in just a couple of weeks, Sanborn thought. But no one did. And, today, Kryptos remains one of the world's most famous unsolved mysteries. "I didn't think it would go on this long -- thirty years -- without being deciphered," Sanborn says. Krypto...