An uncrackable code. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leib. And this is Ghost Town. In 1982 David Martin, a resident of Surrey, England decided to clean out the chimney of his 17th century home before the holidays.

It was an innocuous activity to most, but what Martin didn't realize was that a simple household

chore would unlock a mystery spanning decades, tripping up some of the most senior and

expert code breakers the world has ever known. So how does a chimney lead to an uncrackable

code? Through a lost World War II carrier pigeon. Let's get into it. So Martin is looking through his chimney and something catches his eye.

He reaches in and in a later interview told the BBC that he began, quote, pulling it down,

pulling it down. Then the pigeon bones began appearing one by one by one.

Down came the leg with a red capsule on with a message inside.

Inside the capsule attached to a random pigeon leg bone, Martin discovered a coded

message, seven rows of capitalized letters in clusters of five letters each and the last row including some numbers.

Then two separate rows altogether underneath this message,

spelling out N-U-R-P-40 T-W 194, and on the next line, N-U-R-P-3-7-D-K-76.

This information, and of course the Red Capsul and being who he was at a certain point in history,

all of it alerted Martin to the fact that he probably pulled a carrier pigeon out of his chimney.

During World War I, pigeons were used extensively to

carry messages to Britain from mainland Europe. Fly at speeds of up to 52

miles per hour, the birds could travel astonishingly long distances for being very tiny birds, up to

six hundred and twenty miles away. Now if you want to learn more about the

incredible history of military carrier pigeons, check out episode 202, project pigeon.

The European Carrier Pigeon Initiative is endlessly fascinating.

I highly recommend listening to that to help understand just how insane this story is, link in the show notes.

But of course, you're here now and I digress.

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