California - 17th Century Fake News [India 2022]

Around the same time Columbus landed, some guy published a random fictitious novel about a mythical island where only black women live (Amazon-style), the only metal used is gold, etc. In the book, he named the island California, ruled by a beautiful queen named Calafia, located “to the right of the Indies”.

This myth got super popular. When the Spanish crossed Mexico and started mapping the west coast of Mexico, they found land (Baja California) across the narrow sea and thought it was an island. But they quickly found it was not when they continued mapping.

After a few decades, some British landed on the west coast of America. The Spanish freaked out and sent a team to map the whole west coast and claim it for themselves.

A monk on that team was obsessed with that myth. He was convinced that the golden island of California existed there. His team found that this was not the case and accurately mapped the region. These correct maps were widely used in the 16th century.

But the monk came back to Spain and started spreading fake news that he saw California with his own eyes, and that it had a shortcut to return to Spain. He kept sending letters with fake maps and fake eyewitness accounts to influential people.

One such map was found on a Spanish ship by Dutch pirates and finally ended up with Dutch authorities. In those days, maps were national secrets. So the Dutch thought the Spanish had somehow discovered that California was actually an island.

Since Dutch were reputed in mapmaking, their maps with California as an island got super famous and everyone started copying those maps.

Therefore, although disproved early, everyone believed and kept retweeting this fake news throughout the 17th century. Finally someone mapped it again, the king issued a decree and the consensus started to change.

Three hundred years later, in 1848, just after California was won by the USA in war with Mexico, gold was actually found there. This gold rush led 300,000 people there, making it the state it is now.

So yeah, California, the Golden State was actually named from a fictional novel.

Initial source: Johnny Harris video