View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-world-s-most-mysterious-book-stephen-bax Deep inside Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library lies a ...
========== Deep inside Yale University's Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library lies the only copy of a 240-page tome. Recently carbon dated to around 1420, its vellum pages features
looping handwriting and hand-drawn images seemingly
stolen from a dream. Real and imaginary plants, floating castles, bathing women, astrology diagrams, zodiac rings, and suns and moons with faces
accompany the text. This 24x16 centimeter book
is called the Voynich manuscript, and its one of history's biggest
unsolved mysteries. The reason why? No one can figure out what it says. The name comes from Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish bookseller who came across
the document at a Jesuit college in Italy in 1912. He was puzzled. Who wrote it? Where was it made? What do these bizarre words
and vibrant drawings...