Instead of commonplace designs like flowers or snowflakes, seamstress Celestia A. Milliken decorated her colorful quilt in 1908 with the square and compass and 70 other secret symbols of Freemasonry.

Their symbols, the compass and square, are meant to represent reason and faith. Their lodges, they insist, are temples of moral instruction. But behind the carefully guarded doors of those lodges, a ...

In 1854, US Commodore Matthew Perry landed at Hakodate, Hokkaidō, in the northern part of Japan. Two members of his crew who had died from disease were buried on the slopes of Mount Hakodate—the ...

Several Masonic signs have been found 'hidden' in paintings of Scotland's bard Robert Burns. Tiny letters and symbols have been painted in minute detail in a paintings by Alexander Nasmyth, a ...

Secret societies and organisations have long fascinated outsiders, but few have attracted as much intrigue and speculation throughout history as the Freemasons. It is the "world's largest secret ...

Fourteen presidents have called themselves Freemasons, members of the centuries-old fraternal organization known for its secret rituals and mysterious symbols. Abraham Lincoln was not one of them, but ...

Every building in San Francisco is full of secrets, but there are perhaps none with quite as many as the Van Ness street staple better known now as the Regency Center. The four-story complex located ...