February 17, 2025
Wandering Wikipedia: The Year 1467
This week I was feeling positively historical. So, I chose a year in history, precisely 558 years ago, during the Middle Ages. The time of dragons, alchemists, and wizards, if you’re a fantasy nerd like me. If you’re a historian like these Wikipedia people, you’ll know it is a time full of cruel, ruthless monarchs such as Khan Xälil.This particular year, however, was a great year for war and peace. Interestingly, on October 21 of 1467, a man named Giovanni il Popolano was born to the noble Medici family. He grew up to be a diplomat and studied under his cousins Giuliano and Lorenzo El Magnifico. Unfortunately, he died in the year of 1498 at the young age of 30. His cause of death was unknown.
A hop, a skip, and a jump a little ways northwest to Europe: This year, the first polyalphabetic cipher was invented by Leon Battista Alberti. He, much like Giovanni, is also Italian. A polyalphabetic cipher, boiled down to basics, is simply a cipher where a person swaps letters of their alphabet for symbols, numbers, or other sequences that only they have a key for. Notable examples of polyalphabetic ciphers are the Vigenère Cipher and The Enigma Machine (pictured above).