The Drake’s Plate Hoax with David Allen Simerley - November Programming

Our next program, on November 12 at 3pm “The Drake’s Plate Hoax”, will be a presentation by David Allen Simerley, local radio host and historian enthusiast. A small brass marker embedded in a rock on the Tuolumne Rancheria, is a clue to solving the state’s most infamous historical “mystery.”
For years, California schoolchildren were taught that a brass marker discovered in 1936 was Sir Francis Drake's "Plate of Brasse," recording the California coastal landing in 1579 of the English explorers and his ship, the Golden Hinde. Although it was historical evidence that completed the story, it was science performed over 25 years ago by Michel and Asaro that confirmed what a few historians had suspected all along about the plate's dubious origins.
Simerly traces the mystery behind the discovery of a treasure that became the greatest fraud in California history. With as many twists and turns as an Indiana Jones adventure, Simerley follows the trail of evidence from its beginnings in the sixteenth century until the truth behind the mysterious artifact, revealed in 2002.

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