Signpost 43 (22 February)

REFLECT

• The Rosary is full of mysteries, each one is a meditation on episodes in the life and death of Jesus. The Rosary Centre shows you how to pray the rosary here with the rosary prayers set out here.

CONNECT

• In a quaint Cotswold village, a mystery has been puzzling residents for decades. Following the death of local boy scout Karl Smith in 1947, mysterious gifts and messages began appearing on his grave in Prestbury. Despite his sister Ann Kear's best efforts, the identity of the visitor has never been revealed. Journalist Camila Ruz joins Ann on her quest to track down the stranger who has been visiting her brother's grave for up to 70 years.

LEARN

Even this weeks’ “this week in history” is full of events that were connected to bigger mysteries! During this week:

• In 1564, Elizabethan playwright and poet, Christopher Marlowe was born. His eventual death in May 1593 has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years.
• In 1863, John Hanning Speke and Hames Grant announced that Lake Victoria was the source of the Nile. This announcement was thought to bring to end a mystery of thousands of years, but many still do not quite agree! In this article from the Royal Geographical Society, renowned explorer, Sir Christopher Ondaatje puts forward a different perspective.
• In 1979, Tom Keatings’ trial for forgery was halted due to his ill health. This trial was the culmination of years of scrutiny in the media over Keating's production of over 2,000 fake images by over 100 different artists. Keating's story is well described in this extract from the book “Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age" by Jonathon Keats.

DO

• You could not find more mystery and intrigue than that at Bletchley Park, with its significant role in code-breaking during World War II. The Bletchley Park website has a puzzles section for you to try your luck at solving some. You can also explore more information about the wartime operations here.

FUN

• Project Gutenberg is a website that keeps electronic copies of famous books that you can read online. Why not try a few of the ultimate mysteries by reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyles’ 'Sherlock Holmes' classic. You can read ‘A Study in Scarlet’, ‘The Sign of the Four’, ‘The Valley of Fear’, or ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.