Above is a funny comic from last week from XKCD concerning the Voynich Manuscript, which is, in fact, a real object. When I was doing some research at the Beinecke Library at Yale, it was one of the manuscripts that I most wanted to get my hands on. Unfortunately, when I arrived, someone else apparently had it.
You can read much more about the Voynich Manuscript for yourself over at Wikipedia, in what is largely an accurate article.
