Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of I-Heart Radio.

Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Bogobom here.

Martin Robesher thought it had hit the jackpot.

The year 1576 found this English explorer and legal pirate.

He was sanctioned by the crown to plunder enemy treasure ships,

seeking the Northwest Passage, the undiscovered Arctic sea

route that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

He found something else instead.

Labrador, Canada, and what's now Frobisher Bay.

But weeks later, he sailed west and reached icy Baffin Island, where he gathered a mineral

sample that seemed to be flaked with gold, but it wasn't.

Well, not according to the Royal Assayer, who identified the shiny bits as pyrite,

also known as Fool's Gold.

Undeterred, Queen Elizabeth's merchants sent Frobisher back to Baffin, where he gathered and

shipped 1400 tons of ore.

Most of it was worthless.

In a few tested samples, the gold content was only 5 to 14 parts per billion.

Though he longed to abandon Baffin and go exploring again, Frobisher spent years fruitlessly hunting Arctic treasure and it was all because of that

pirate.

The Captain Christopher Newport could likely sympathize.

As the leader of James Town, England's first permanent settlement in North America,

he was constantly getting tricked by New World Gold that turned out to be, you guessed it,

...