Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Strange street plaques embedded in the asphalt of major U.S. and South American urban intersections have been appearing since the mid-1980s. There are hundreds of reported examples. The cryptic four-line message of the Toynbee Tiles reads: "Toynbee Idea / In Kubrick's 2001 / Resurrect Dead / On Planet Jupiter". While the text on the plaques is clear enough, none of the numerous media outlets that have documented the phenomenon know what these tiles mean, how or why they were installed, or who is responsible for them.