September 23rd

September 23rd

1387 One of the most extravagant of the early Medieval English feasts was recorded. It was held in honour of King Richard II and the Duke of Lancaster (John of Gaunt). The feast included 14 salted oxen, 2 fresh oxen, 120 sheep, 12 boar, 14 calves, 140 pigs, 144 poultry, 1200 pigeons, 144 partridge, 96 rabbits, 120 gallons of milk, 11,000 eggs ..... and much more!

1641 The Merchant Royal, a 17th century English merchant ship was lost at sea off Land's End. On board were at least 100,000 pounds of gold (nearly one billion pounds in today's money), 400 bars of Mexican silver and nearly 500,000 pieces of eight and other coins, making it one of the most valuable wrecks of all times. The wreck remains undiscovered.

1862 Otto von Bismarck is appointed Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Prussia by King Wilhelm I.

1875 Billy the Kid is arrested for the first time and jailed after receiving clothing stolen from a Chinese laundry but escapes two days later.

1955 Quizmaster Michael Miles first invited contestants to 'Open the box' in the long running show Take Your Pick..

23 Sep 1966
The 'Rolling Stones 66' 12 date UK tour kicked off at the Royal Albert Hall London. Supported by Long John Baldry, Ike and Tina Turner and The Yardbirds, (Jimmy Page was playing bass, with Jeff Beck on guitar). Michelangelo Antonioni attended this concert and asked The Yardbirds to appear in his forthcoming film Blow Up. Also both Keith Moon and John Entwistle from The Who were in the audience.

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

Thankyou for that: interesting!

ninalanyon · 70-79, T

The wreck remains undiscovered.

With a billion GBP of gold on board? That's got to be worth looking for!

I asked Duck AI (GPT-5.6 Luna) for the value assuming the pounds of gold were the weight in Troy pounds and got this:

At a spot price of $4,334.74 per troy ounce, 100,000 troy pounds of gold would be worth approximately $5.20 billion USD. jmbullion.com

Calculation:
100,000 troy lb×12 troy oz/lb=1,200,000 troy oz100,000 troy lb×12 troy oz/lb=1,200,000 troy oz

That is about 37.3 metric tonnes of gold, excluding dealer premiums, transaction costs, and taxes.

I asked the AI to convert to sterling and got:

Using the previous estimate of **$5,201,688,000** and an exchange rate of approximately **$1 = £0.7515**, the value is:

So, **100,000 troy pounds of gold is worth approximately £3.91 billion sterling**. The exchange rate used is the mid-market rate for September 23, 2026. <https://wise.com/us/currency-converter/usd-to-gbp-rate/history>

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ninalanyon · 70-79, T

@ArishMell Yes radio waves propagate very poorly through water. Navies huge use very low frequency (VLF) aerials to communicate with submarines. The low frequency means a very low data rate ( less than 300 bits per second) and even then the submarine can typically not receive anything if it is more thirty metres below the surface and it certainly can't reply.

The US navy has, or had, a project using even lower frequencies that could penetrate a couple of hundred metres. Such installations are extremely large, difficult to construct, and have extremely low data rates.

There is no way any such technology could be deployed to find anything on the sea bed even if you could construct the aerial because the wavelength and hence precision with which you could locate something is measured in thousands of kilometres.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@ninalanyon Although their equipment is by no means powerful enough for communicating with submarines over huge distances, I understand the cave rescue organisations in Britain, France and probably some countries have VLF "radio" (I think nearer, inductive) telephones that allow conversations through tens of metres of rock and air.

Portable enough to be used underground, I gather these have been developed and built over several decades by cavers whose other hobbies or professional knowledge include electronics.

ninalanyon · 70-79, T

@ArishMell Interesting! I found this:

https://www.vollok.nl/docs/overview_english.html

In the eighties some English cavers started with the first experiments to build a cave radio. By building a very low frequency transmitter at 87 kHz and the use of a loop antenna they were able to make a wireless communication through 150 m of rock. This frequency of 87 kHz was rather choosen by accident and is at this moment still the standard frequency for cave radios in Europe. Because of the low frequency normal antennas could not be used. To radiate an antenna has to be one wavelength long. Only then the energy from the transmitter will be transformed into electro magnetic waves. At 87 kHz this means an antenna of several kilometers. Therefore the English used a magnetic loop antenna. It is in fact a coil of wires about one meter in diameter. This type of antenna is very directional and therefore less sensitive to atmospheric noise. Because of this the design of the transmitter and receiver could be less complicated.

That's a much higher frequency than could be used to communicate through salt water though.

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