History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

by Meltzer, Brad

  To Da Vinci, that was ridiculous. Indeed, he was fascinated with the human anatomy. Using only the crude instruments of his day, he dissected and drew the different parts of the brain. He made major breakthroughs in our understandings of the backbone. In fact, in 2005, Francis Wells developed a revolutionary technology to repair damaged hearts that was based on Da Vinci’s diagrams from 500 years ago. But despite the great advancements in medicine, the Church was opposed to dissecting cadavers.

  Why?

  In Italy in the 1400s, the Catholic Church was more powerful than the government. And the Church was deeply committed to protecting that power. Revolutionary ideas and insights into science could easily threaten the institution, and some were thus forbidden or suppressed.

  Is that why Cardinal Tadini hid his part of page 1033 of the Codex Atlanticus? We asked that exact question to Father Norman Tanner in Italy. Could this self-portrait have contained hidden meanings or symbols?

  “Throughout the medieval periods, there was a lot of interest in the occult and prophecy and so on,” he told us. “So that was quite standard. And they also liked writing in secret language and so on. So that was part of life.”

  So did that mean the sketch could contain messages about the future?

  “Yes . . . it’s possible,” Father Tanner added. “They rather liked this kind of playful hiding and a certain amount of secrecy within paintings. Yes, we find that in many other painters.”

  In the end, though, according to Father Tanner, the Church eventually embraced Da Vinci and much of his work, even if they didn’t entirely understand him. So the question remains: Why would Da Vinci place a self-portrait among his most cryptic prophecies? To find the answer, we needed to look at his other works.

  Sistine Secrets

  Did Michelangelo hide a secret code, made up of mystical Jewish symbols that were intended to insult the Pope?

  The Michelangelo Code

  Another Renaissance artist who was thought to use secret language was Michelangelo. It is reported that the Sistine Chapel contains coded messages consisting of Hebrew letters and Old Testament symbology.

  Like Da Vinci, Michelangelo may have been hiding ideas that would have got him in trouble with the Church. Some say the Sistine Chapel contains hidden attacks on the corrupt Pope Julius II—the same man who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel in the first place.

  Leonardo da Vinci’s work also changed the course of comic books in the 20th century. When Bill Finger and Bob Kane were creating their new superhero in the 1930s, they looked at Da Vinci’s design for his ornothopter flying device and took it as inspiration for the winged look of their character’s cape. The character they were creating? None other than Batman. Without Da Vinci, there is no Batman.

  A VISION OF FLYING

  Da Vinci’s bird-inspired design for his ornothopter flying device predated the Wright brothers by centuries.

  Caped Crusader

  The wings of Da Vinci’s ornothopter flying device was an acknowledged inspiration for the design of Batman’s cape.

  Inside the Paintings

  According to Mona Lisa expert Marina Wallace, Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus contained “considerations about how one should behave, and how one should expect things to be. They’re kind of ways of deep, deep thought, using very clever wording.”

  That wasn’t the only place he hid certain meanings. During his life, Da Vinci thought a lot about the future, and we know he was obsessed with water. When he died, he was preparing what many believe would have been his last masterpiece. It was to be called The Great Flood.

  The sketches (see Exhibit 4D for an example) show storms so violent, they topple mountains. There is great power in the sketches, but also great sadness; all of the enormous artistic talent and skill of Leonardo da Vinci are here, but also a weariness, perhaps even despair. Some experts told us they’ve spotted Da Vinci’s own self-portrait in the art. We don’t see it. But take a look for yourself. What would another mysterious self-portrait mean?

  “When he describes the flood, the deluge, with incredible words, it’s very descriptive, and it’s very evocative,” Wallace explains. “And the drawings are very detailed and they’re very specific drawings, looking at the destruction that such a natural event could bring, so he was pointing to the fact that these are the things that our human nature is going to be subjected to during our lifetime. If you want to extend that to the lifetime of all the ones that come after us, certainly you can say that that is a warning to ourselves as part of nature.”

  But of all the details Wallace shared with us, the most intriguing was simply this: That when Da Vinci was traveling, “he took the Mona Lisa with him wherever he went.” He liked to have it with him.

  OK . . . this is where we call time-out.

  We all know the Mona Lisa. This seemingly simple image is possibly the most widely recognized and studied piece of art in the history of the world. It’s estimated to be worth more than $700 million. But. Could there be more to this painting than meets the eye? This isn’t just the plot of a novel. Could the Mona Lisa be the key to crack a code that spans Da Vinci’s life’s work?

  Mona Lisa

  Da Vinci’s—and the world’s—most famous painting is full of enigmatic details that suggest encoded messages and prophecies.

  The Mona Lisa

  According to Wallace, when you look closely at the Mona Lisa, there’s actually water in the background of the painting—like a beautiful nature scene. But if you look even closer, the water is clearly higher on one side than the other, as though a flood is inevitable.

  And here’s the thing: If you pull Mona Lisa out of the painting, the waters come crashing together. The only thing stopping the flood is the figure, alleged by some to be a self-portrait.

  So again we have to ask (and yes, it sounds crazy to me too, but . . .), could the Mona Lisa be part of a larger story—Da Vinci’s story—of the end of the world?

  When we asked the question of art historian Silvano Vincetti, he explained that in the left eye of Mona Lisa “there is the letter S. In the right eye there is the letter L. Then in the background of the painting, underneath the arch, there is the number 72. During this period of the Renaissance, geometric symbols and numbers were very important.”

  How important? When you’re investigating signs and symbols, the numbers 7 and 2 come up time and time again. (In fact, I hide the number 27 in every single one of my novels.) But in Leonardo’s case, many of the hidden codes are more personal. For reasons not fully understood, he was obsessed with the numbers 7 and 2—as well as their combined forms of 27 and 72—and hid them in many works, including his two most famous:

  A stone bridge in the Mona Lisa’s background contains the number 72.

  There are 72 panels in the ceiling above the gathering at The Last Supper.

  Mona Lisa’s Smile

  It is a smile people have dissected for centuries. There are numerous explanations and speculations. Some say Mona Lisa’s smile is a private joke between Da Vinci and those who viewed the painting; others argue that the smile is a way for Leonardo, known for his eccentric sense of humor, to “wink” at himself, a bit of sly self-mockery. Still others argue that the smile represents secret knowledge possessed only by its artist. Knowledge that would be dangerous to Da Vinci personally—knowledge that might well foretell an apocalypse.

  In other words: prophetic knowledge.

  “The genius of Leonardo is that he was able to put all that he learned inside his paintings, and put messages in there that speak to us over the ages.”

  —Silvano Vincetti, art historian

  But there is more to 72 than the numbers 7 and 2. And there is more to Leonardo’s use of them than their presence in the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Among other t
hings, Da Vinci:

  Designed a unique geometric shape that has 72 sides

  Designed his famous Vitruvian Man drawing around a basis of 27- and 72-degree angles

  Why these numbers?

  Because they have biblical connections. According to Vincetti, the number 27 refers to the Book of Revelation (the Book of Revelation is the 27th book in the New Testament) in which Jesus tells Apostle John about a violent series of events at the end of the world. The number 72 is also a biblical reference. It refers to the number of races that survived Noah’s Ark. That’s right: The number 72 doesn’t just relate to an apocalyptic story, but to a story describing a worldwide flood.

  Notice a theme here? Prophecies. Apocalypse. The end of the world. In the Mona Lisa, we saw Da Vinci’s potential warning about the power of nature and the dangers of floods. Even better, Da Vinci is known to have copied flood-related passages from the Bible, and kept them in his workrooms and studios. In addition, remember what would’ve been Da Vinci’s last great painting? The Great Flood.

  According to Bruce Edelstein, a professor at NYU in Florence, “Leonardo not only made many drawings of water and included the representation of water and aqueous bodies in many of his paintings, but he also wrote about water in the Codex Atlanticus itself. And they were talking about flooding, the dangers of flooding, and how conscious Leonardo would’ve been of that. One of the things that he wrote in the Codex Atlanticus was: ‘The swollen rivers overflow and submerge the wide lowlands and its inhabitants.’ This sounds like some great mystery, some great apocalyptic happening that Leonardo is foretelling.”

  Indeed, Vincetti added, “The genius of Leonardo is that he was able to put all that he learned inside his paintings, and put messages in there that speak to us over the ages.”

  OK, I can believe he put some hidden meanings in his art. And it’s clear that Da Vinci had an obsession with water, tidal waves, and floods. But it still doesn’t answer the key question that we asked about the so-called prophecy in the Codex Atlanticus: In his work, was Da Vinci predicting a specific event we can prepare for . . . or was he simply observing the cycles of nature?

  Vitruvian Man

  Da Vinci designed his famous Vitruvian Man drawing around a basis of 27- and 72-degree angles, which he also did in the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Those numbers keep showing up in his work.

  Da Vinci as Prophet

  Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man (Top)

  The earliest known self-portrait of Da Vinci was lost until the mid-twentieth century . . .

  Masterpiece Regained (Bottom)

  . . . when it was found, then later confirmed as the long-missing piece from the apocalyptic page 1033 of the Codex Atlanticus.

  Most of us will agree that Da Vinci was a genius. But was he using his art to actually make prophecies about the future? Some try to draw connections—and c’mon, have you been reading this chapter? It’s easy to start threading things together when you start pulling apart his secrets—but in my mind, it wasn’t until we met Da Vinci scholar Marco Levi that we found our real answer.

  We asked Levi about Leonardo being a prophet. No question, he was a visionary, Levi agreed. But “if you ask me if he was able to predict what was going to happen . . . a certain disaster, on a certain day? No. He was a scientist who was trying to comprehend, to give an order to these things.”

  Exactly. A scientist.

  “Like all the geniuses we had: Oppenheimer, Einstein, and others were not thinking to destroy the world,” Levi pointed out. “They were thinking to give us something new . . . better for our future. So it depends how you use the things you have.”

  And right there is perhaps Da Vinci’s most profound prediction of all.

  Think back to those different interpretations of the Mona Lisa: She sits in the midst of nature. Just as we sit in the midst of nature. Will we sit there serenely as the female figure in the painting does? Or will we be crushed by nature’s coming devastation?

  It depends what you’re looking for. And how you choose to act in this world.

  During his lifetime, Da Vinci pursued innovations in medicine and engineering that improved health and quality of life. He also designed cutting-edge weapons to help us wage war. But when it comes to which we’ll face—a calm peace or a riotous battle—the answer, so often, is simply . . . up to us.

  That isn’t just Da Vinci speaking to us from beyond the grave. As Decoded team member Buddy Levy pointed out, it’s him speaking to us for all time.

  Conclusion

  What sent us down this path was a newfound portrait by Leonardo da Vinci that came from his so-called book of prophecies. So what did the portrait mean? Was it a hint? A clue? A prophecy in itself? It was, because it’s Da Vinci himself who’s the answer.

  It’s Da Vinci himself who is absolute proof of the world’s most beautiful secret: that the future is created by us, by human innovation. So what will the future bring? It depends how big we’re willing to dream.

  Almost 500 years ago, every single one of Da Vinci’s inventions failed. The wings didn’t help him fly. The scuba gear was made from a suit of leather. His pre-helicopter never took off. But over time, as human innovation caught up with his ideas, they all worked.

  It is his ultimate prophecy: Be daring, be daring, always be daring.

  There is no big dream unless you dream big.

  Is There Any Gold in Fort Knox?

  What if I told you that Fort Knox is empty?

  The last time anyone was allowed inside Fort Knox was in 1974, following a congressional call to see the gold.

  Many experts today believe the soldiers stationed at Fort Knox are protecting absolutely nothing. They point to numerous theories to explain their beliefs.

  Some say the gold was used to make off-the-books purchases. Others say it was used to manipulate the price of the dollar. And a few believe it was put to even darker uses. No one really knows.

  But if you tell me that no one has been allowed to see our gold since 1974, I want to know if it’s there. And I want to know what else is inside the vault.

  That’s why we went to Kentucky—to decode Fort Knox.

  On April 5, 1933—only one month and one day after being sworn in for his first term—President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6012, and with his signature made it illegal for private citizens to own gold. Roosevelt cited the crisis from the Great Depression as his reason.

  To house all this gold, the U.S. Treasury built the vault at Fort Knox. It soon held more than half the world’s known gold, worth some $200 billion.

  The Kentucky location was chosen because it was landlocked, making it less susceptible to enemy attack. Today, Knox remains the most impregnable vault in the world, with a thousand miles of U.S. territory in every direction, and an enormous arsenal to protect it. To top it off, the granite foundation is five feet thick . . . and the vault door weighs some two and a half tons.

  But how drastic and dramatic was the action to take gold from the American people?

  Take a look at Exhibit 3A’s copy of Executive Order 6012—and you’ll quickly get a sense.

  Private ownership of gold became not just illegal but also punishable with stiff fines and jail terms of up to a decade.

  While some citizens transferred their gold holdings to banks in Switzerland or other nations, most of the U.S. gold left private hands. Other than small amounts used in dentistry and jewelry, valuable coins held by collectors, and the five ounces that private citizens were still allowed to own, thousands of tons of gold were transferred to the government.

  FDR

  On April 5, 1933, because of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6012 (see Exhibit 3A). From there, it became illegal for private citizens to own gold.

  The Crash
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  The collapse of the stock market in October 1929 caused the U.S. economy to grind to a halt, putting thousands out of work and on the breadlines.

  The price of gold has fluctuated wildly in the last few years—yet the government says that the value of our gold reserves has been almost exactly the same.

  Decoded Team Report

  Christine: When I asked Senator Huddleston, “Do you think it’s really empty?” he nodded and said, “Could be . . . could be.”

  When we walked out of the library together, he was moving slowly. I remembered then that he was in his eighties. Maybe he was slipping into a foggy haze of old age and wasn’t remembering his facts correctly. As we approached the parking lot, I looked around to see who was here to pick up my confused and elderly friend. He then shook my hand, picked up the pace, and practically skipped over to his parked sedan. It occurred to me that he had been walking slowly because he was a gentleman and was waiting to open the door for me. He looked over his shoulder and asked, “Do you need a ride?”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  Senator Huddleston wasn’t a kook at all. He wasn’t foggy or confused. He was a perfectly sane man with the confidence to look me in the eye and clearly state, on the record, that Fort Knox could be empty.

  What’s in There?

  So let’s ask the question: What’s really inside Fort Knox?

  Lawyer and journalist David Ganz was there the last time the depository was opened for inspection.

  What Ganz saw is exactly what most of us would expect to see. “It was utterly amazing, one of the most exciting events I’ve ever been to,” he said. “First, you’re blinded by the light. The room was lined on three sides with gold, floor to ceiling. The second thing is a big, overwhelming sense of claustrophobia because of how small the room was.”