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.

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 ...

April 19, 2006 — -- Having tackled the secretive Catholic conservative group Opus Dei, Dan Brown says he's writing his next book about the Freemasons. The Freemasons say they are simply a ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Freemasons Society, one of the oldest fraternal organisations in the world was established in 1717 in England, and for years misunderstood as a “secret society”. The 12 Bistendu (Bombay Ebony) ...

A half-century ago, when more Americans participated in civic groups, 4.1 million men regularly spent evenings at Masonic lodges around the country. That period, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s ...