Of course, once you're condemned to silence, it's kind of impossible to teach a code to someone unless, you know, they already understand the code you're using. So, as soon as his team was captured and he realized that they were about to be separated, Captain Carlyle "Smitty" Harris recalled being taught about the tap code by an Air Force instructor in his youth and quickly taught it to the three guys next to him, who in turn taught it to every prisoner they came into contact with. The result was that "the building sounded like a den of runaway woodpeckers," all of whom were tapping out carefully coded fuck yous to the Vietnamese.

The prisoners quickly used the code to re-establish the chain of command, direct medical aid and their rations to the most severely injured inmates, keep stories straight and, most adorably, say goodnight to each other. Considering the amount of time it took (and the number of calluses one developed) to tap out a single word, you really have to respect that.

So they communicated with flowers instead. The rose we mentioned earlier is a holdover from what used to be a giant, complex flower code.

How Did They Do It?

They had worked it out so that everything from the type of flower to the hand with which you presented it had meaning. You could ask a girl to marry you with a flower and she could turn you down just by taking it with her left hand. Flowers weren't the only things taken into account, either -- herbs, spices and even fruits and freaking vegetables had meaning. There's a full list here if you want to revive the age-old tradition of telling people to go fuck themselves with flowers.

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Although the tradition of attaching meanings to flowers dates back much earlier in time, it was the famously prudish Victorians who made the most use of it. Since it wasn't civilized to communicate feelings or flirt openly, small bouquets called tussie-mussies were the best way to indicate that you wanted to do the horizontal hug. Even whole arguments could be contained entirely within the exchange of flowers or plants. Although we can't help but feel that slapping someone in the dome with a cucumber would be far more insulting than giving them some seasoning.

And if you've ever seen pictures of women from Victorian England or pre-revolutionary France, you probably noticed that they used to carry fans around everywhere. It's not that they had a problem with blistering year-round heat waves -- the way they carried those fans was part of a complicated visual language that women used to communicate without having to worry about gossip.

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How Did They Do It?

Fan language was pretty much as complex as sign language, with dozens of different signals conveyed by the opening or closing of the fan, the speed of fluttering and where it was held in relation to the body. A woman could indicate how she felt about someone, whether she and her companion were being watched or whether or not her companion was allowed to kiss her. She could even indicate the hour at which a secret meeting could take place by opening a certain number of slats on the fan.

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This was really beneficial in an age before text messaging. People could communicate across a crowded room without having to shout, and they could share messages without everyone in the district knowing the ins and outs of their conversation. On the other hand, it would suck if you were just fanning yourself because you happened to be hot and accidentally proposed to some random dude by doing so.

As for kimonos, the length of the sleeves, how open the neckline was and the method by which the sash was tied all gave off different meanings. The images used in the kimono's patterns were also meaningful, indicating various moods and seasons and even literary references. In other words, the pattern of cloth you were wearing could show off your favorite book, making Japan possibly the earliest known producer of the geek T-shirt.

In regular Chinese, each character is kind of its own word, representing a whole concept. But nushu characters are more like English letters, representing sounds. So the languages were different enough that Chinese women could exchange letters and erotic fiction without their husbands knowing what they were up to, kind of like how spammers started spelling "porn" as "p0rn" with a zero to get around word filters.

The language was stamped out in the 20th century when the Communists decided that they didn't like it, and women started being allowed to learn to read in their native language -- in 2002, it was believed that only one woman alive still knew how to write it.

Via James Bear / For The Times