Fool’s Gold

“A gold bar at the National Museum of American History, long thought to be a sample from the 19th century California Gold Rush, is a fake, according to a well-known geologist. Bob Evans, the scientist who examined the five-ounce bar, said the ingot is indeed gold but was not made in 1857, the date stamped on it. He said it was probably made in the 1950s and was purchased unknowingly by Josiah K. Lilly, the pharmaceutical industry executive who willed his enormous collection of gold coins to the Smithsonian in 1968… the museum will move the two bars into a section of the coin exhibit that deals with counterfeiting.”