This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The most colossally stupid and historically consequential mismanagement of classified war plans in an ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. Online primary source: the coded message that proposed a German-Mexican alliance in World War I (and that helped to bring the U.S. into the war).

While World War I raged overseas, Mexico was engulfed in its own struggle—the Mexican Revolution. From 1910 to 1920, revolutionary leaders like Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Venustiano Carranza ...

Host Simon Singh examines the secretive history behind the development and evolution of ciphers and code breaking. Thestories in the series range from the cipher that sealed the fate of Mary, Queen of ...