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#1 On October 15, 1586, Queen Mary of Scots was on trial for treason. She had been accused of plotting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth in order to take the English crown for herself. Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's Principal Secretary, planned to prove that Mary was at the heart of the plot, and was therefore equally culpable and deserving of death.

#2 The plot to kill Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, a fellow Catholic, was discovered by Walsingham, the principal secretary. The challenge for him was to demonstrate a link between Mary and the plotters.

#3 The art of secret writing was used to save Greece from being conquered by the Persians in 480 B. C. The long-running feud between Greece and Persia reached a crisis soon after Xerxes began constructing a city at Persepolis, the new capital for his kingdom. The Greeks began to arm themselves.

#4 The ancient Chinese wrote messages on fine silk, which was then scrunched into a tiny ball and covered in wax. The messenger would then swallow the ball of wax. In the sixteenth century, the Italian scientist Giovanni Porta described how to conceal a message within a hard-boiled egg by making an ink from a mixture of one ounce of alum and a pint of vinegar.