In 1936, a small brass plate buried in the dirt seemed to solve one of America’s biggest mysteries: where Sir Francis Drake landed on the California coast in 1579. Celebrated as the “holy grail” of California history, the plate was hailed by scholars and displayed in museums for decades. But there was just one problem… it was a prank.
Join us as we unravel the wild story of how a historical society’s joke spiraled out of control, fooled some of the nation’s top historians, and became one of the longest-running cons in U.S. history.
