![Cardiff Giant](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Cardiff_Giant.png)
The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous
archaeological
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
hoax
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...
es in American history. It was a , 3,000 pound
purported "
petrified
In geology, petrifaction or petrification () is the process by which organic material becomes a fossil through the replacement of the original material and the filling of the original pore spaces with minerals. Petrified wood typifies this proce ...
man" uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell in
Cardiff, New York
Cardiff is a hamlet in Onondaga County, New York, United States, located south of Syracuse. It was named after Cardiff, the capital of Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England ...
. He covered the giant with a tent and it soon became an attraction site.
Both it and an unauthorized copy made by
P. T. Barnum
Phineas Taylor Barnum (; July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and politician, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus (1871–2017) with James Anthony Bailey. He was ...
are still being displayed. P.T. Barnum's is on display at
Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum
Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, located in Farmington Hills, Michigan, is an arcade/museum devoted to a large collection of coin-operated animatronic dummies, mechanical games and other oddities. Exhibits include, for example, the classic ...
in
Farmington Hills, Michigan
Farmington Hills is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Part of the affluent suburbs northwest of Detroit, Farmington Hills is the second most-populated city in Oakland County, after Troy, with a population of 83,986 at the 20 ...
.
Creation and discovery
The giant was the creation of a New York
tobacconist
A tobacconist, also called a tobacco shop, a tobacconist's shop or a smoke shop, is a retailer of tobacco products in various forms and the related accoutrements, such as pipes, lighters, matches, pipe cleaners, and pipe tampers. More specia ...
named George Hull. He was deeply attracted to science and especially in the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin.
Hull, an
atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
, got into an argument with Reverend Turk and his supporters at a
Methodist
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...
revival meeting about
Genesis 6:4, which states that there were giants who once lived on Earth.
Being the minority party, Hull lost the argument.
Angered by his defeat and the credulity of people, Hull wanted to prove how easily he could fool people with a fake giant.
The idea of a petrified man did not originate with Hull, however. During 1858, the newspaper ''
Alta California
Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...
'' had published a fake letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a
geode
A geode (; ) is a geological secondary formation within sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Geodes are hollow, vaguely spherical rocks, in which masses of mineral matter (which may include crystals) are secluded. The crystals are formed by the fill ...
. Some other newspapers also had published stories of supposedly petrified people.
In 1868, Hull, accompanied by a man named H.B. Martin, hired men to
quarry
A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envi ...
out a block of
gypsum
Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. ...
in
Fort Dodge, Iowa
Fort Dodge is a city in, and the county seat of, Webster County, Iowa, United States, along the Des Moines River. The population was 24,871 in the 2020 census, a decrease from 25,136 in 2000. Fort Dodge is a major commercial center for North Ce ...
, telling them it was intended for a monument to
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
in New York. He shipped the block to Edward Burghardt in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, a German
stonecutter who he had sworn to secrecy. Burghardt hired two sculptors named Henry Salle and Fred Mohrmann to create the giant. They had taken cautious steps to cover up their work during the carving, putting up quilts to lessen the sound of carving.
The giant was designed to imitate the form of Hull himself.
Hull consulted a geologist and learned that hairs wouldn't be petrified, so he removed the hair and beard from the giant.
The length of the giant was 10 feet 4 1-2 inches and it weighed 2990 pounds.
Various
stains
A stain is an unwanted localized discoloration, often in fabrics or textiles.
Stain(s) or The Stain(s) may also refer to:
Color
* Stain (heraldry), a non-standard tincture
* Staining, in biology, a technique used to highlight contrast in samples
...
and
acid
In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequ ...
s were used to make the giant appear to be old and weathered. In order for the giant to look ancient, Hull first wiped the giant using a sponge soaked with sand and water. The giant's surface was beaten with steel knitting needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. The giant was also rubbed with sulphuric acid to create a deeper, vintage-like color. During November 1868, Hull transported the giant by railroad to the farm of his cousin, William Newell. By then, he had spent for the hoax.
On a night in late November 1868, the giant was buried in a hole in Newell's farm.
Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869, they found the giant. One of the men reportedly exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!"
Exhibition and exposure as fraud
On the first day, the audiences were able to view the giant with no fee charged. The next day, a tent was set up on the discovery site and Newell charged each audience fifty cents for a fifteen-minute session of visiting the giant. The number of audiences went to about three to five hundreds per day as the demand for wagons and carriages dramatically increased. The townspeople also gained huge profit because of the Cardiff Giant. The hotels and restaurants in Cardiff had seen more customers in the past four days than they had ever seen before.
Some believed this giant was a petrified man, while some believed it was a statue. Those who believed it was a petrified man thought it was one of the giants mentioned in the aforementioned Genesis verse.
On the other hand,
John F. Boynton
John Farnham Boynton (September 20, 1811 – October 20, 1890) was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and an American geologist and inventor. He was one of the original members of the Latter Day Saint movement's Quorum of the Twelve A ...
, the first geologist to examine the giant, declared that it could not be a fossilized man, but hypothesized that it was a
statue
A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size; a sculpture t ...
that was carved by a French
Jesuit
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, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
in the 16th or 17th century in order to impress the local
Native Americans.
Andrew D. White
Andrew Dickson White (November 7, 1832 – November 4, 1918) was an American historian and educator who cofounded Cornell University and served as its first president for nearly two decades. He was known for expanding the scope of college curricu ...
, the first president of
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
, made a close inspection of the Cardiff Giant. He noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the exact spot the giant had been found.
“Being asked my opinion, my answer was that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax; that there was no reason why the farmer should dig a well in the spot where the figure was found; that it was convenient neither to the house nor to the barn; that there was already a good spring and a stream of water running conveniently to both; that, as to the figure itself, it certainly could not have been carved by any prehistoric race, since no part of it showed the characteristics of any such early work; that, rude as it was, it betrayed the qualities of a modern performance of a low order.”
However, he was taken aback by the channels on the bottom part of the giant, stating that for such grooving to be created on local Onondaga grey limestone would require years.
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
paleontologist
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
Othniel C. Marsh examined the statue, pointed out that it was made of soluble gypsum, which, had it been buried in its blanket of wet earth for centuries, would not still have fresh tool marks on it (which it did), and termed it "a most decided
humbug
A humbug is a person or object that behaves in a deceptive or dishonest way, often as a hoax or in jest. The term was first described in 1751 as student slang, and recorded in 1840 as a "nautical phrase". It is now also often used as an exclama ...
". Some
theologians
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the s ...
and preachers, however, defended its authenticity.
Eventually, Hull sold his part-interest for to a
syndicate
A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest.
Etymology
The word ''syndicate'' comes from the French language, Frenc ...
of five men headed by David Hannum. They moved it to
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, Onondaga County, New York, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in the state of New York following New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffa ...
, for exhibition. The giant drew such crowds that showman
P. T. Barnum
Phineas Taylor Barnum (; July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and politician, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus (1871–2017) with James Anthony Bailey. He was ...
offered $50,000 for the giant. When the syndicate refused, he hired a man to model the giant's shape covertly in
wax
Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to giv ...
and create a
plaster
Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for Molding (decorative), moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of ...
replica. He displayed his giant in New York, claiming that his was the real giant, and the Cardiff Giant was a fake.
[
As the newspapers reported Barnum's version of the story, David Hannum was quoted as saying, " There's a sucker born every minute" in reference to spectators paying to see Barnum's giant. Since then, the quotation has often been misattributed to Barnum himself.
Hannum sued Barnum for calling his giant a fake, but the judge told him to get his giant to swear on his own genuineness in court if he wanted a favorable ]injunction
An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in pa ...
.
On December 10, 1869, Hull confessed everything to the press, and on February 2, 1870, both giants were revealed as fakes in court; the judge also ruled that Barnum could not be sued for terming a fake giant a fake. Hull proclaimed that he did not confess because of the pressing criticism, but confessed proudly that he intended for the hoax to be exposed to reveal the tendency of the Christian community to believe in things too easily and to counter the fundamentalist belief that giants once roamed the earth.
Subsequent and current resting places
The Cardiff Giant was displayed at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition
The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair held in Buffalo, New York, United States, from May 1 through November 2, 1901. The fair occupied of land on the western edge of what is now Delaware Park, extending from Delaware Avenue to Elmwood A ...
, but did not attract much attention.[
]
Iowa publisher Gardner Cowles, Jr.
Gardner "Mike" Cowles Jr. (1903–1985) was an American newspaper and magazine publisher. He was co-owner of the Cowles Media Company, whose assets included the '' Minneapolis Star'', the ''Minneapolis Tribune'', the ''Des Moines Register'', '' ...
, bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room
A recreation room (also known as a rec room, rumpus room, play room, playroom, games room, or ruckus room) is a room used for a variety of purposes, such as parties, games and other everyday or casual activities. The term ''recreation room'' is c ...
as a coffee table and conversation piece. In 1947 he sold it to the Farmers' Museum
The Farmers' Museum is located in Cooperstown, New York, and is one of the best-known attractions in the town.
Just north of Cooperstown, it overlooks Otsego Lake and recreates rural life from the 19th century through exhibits and interactive ...
in Cooperstown, New York, where it is still displayed.
The owner of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum
Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, located in Farmington Hills, Michigan, is an arcade/museum devoted to a large collection of coin-operated animatronic dummies, mechanical games and other oddities. Exhibits include, for example, the classic ...
, a coin-operated game arcade and museum of oddities in Farmington Hills, Michigan
Farmington Hills is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Part of the affluent suburbs northwest of Detroit, Farmington Hills is the second most-populated city in Oakland County, after Troy, with a population of 83,986 at the 20 ...
, has said that the replica displayed there is Barnum's replica.
A replica of the Giant is displayed at The Fort Museum and Frontier Village in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
Imitators
The Cardiff Giant has inspired a number of similar hoaxes.
* In 1876, the Solid Muldoon was exhibited in Beulah, Colorado
Beulah is an unincorporated community and a post office located within the Beulah Valley census-designated place in Pueblo County, Colorado, United States. The Beulah Post Office has the ZIP code 81023. Beulah is a part of the Beulah Valley C ...
, at 50 cents a ticket. There was also a rumor that Barnum had offered to buy it for $20,000. One employer later revealed that this was also a creation of George Hull, aided by Willian Conant. The Solid Muldoon was made of clay, ground bones, meat, rock dust, and plaster.
* In 1879, the owner of a hotel at what is now Taughannock Falls State Park
Taughannock Falls State Park () is a state park located in the town of Ulysses in Tompkins County, New York in the United States. The park is northwest of Ithaca near Trumansburg.
The park's namesake, Taughannock Falls, is a plunge waterfall ...
hired men to create a fake petrified man and place it where workmen would dig it up. One of the men who had buried the giant later revealed the truth when drunk.
* During 1897, a petrified man found downriver from Fort Benton, Montana
Fort Benton is a city in and the county seat of Chouteau County, Montana, United States. Established in 1846, Fort Benton is the oldest continuously occupied settlement in Montana. The city's waterfront area, the most important aspect of its 19 ...
, was claimed by promoters to be the remains of former territorial governor and U.S. Civil War General Thomas Francis Meagher
Thomas Francis Meagher (; 3 August 18231 July 1867) was an Irish nationalist and leader of the Young Irelanders in the Rebellion of 1848. After being convicted of sedition, he was first sentenced to death, but received transportation for life ...
. Meagher had drowned in the Missouri River during 1867. The petrified man was displayed across Montana as a novelty and exhibited in New York and Chicago.[Kemmick, Ed.]
"'Petrified' man was big attraction in turn-of-the-last-century Montana"
''Billings Gazette'', March 13, 2009
In popular culture
* In '' Halt and Catch Fire'', the fictional Cardiff Giant personal computer was named after the petrified man.
* "Cardiff Giant" is a song on the 2012 album ''Ten Stories
''Ten Stories'' is the fifth studio album by American indie rock band mewithoutYou. The record was produced by Daniel Smith and mixed by Brad Wood. The album's track listing was published by Alternative Press's website in March 2012.
The album f ...
'' by the band mewithoutYou
MewithoutYou, usually styled as mewithoutYou, was an American rock band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The band consisted of Aaron Weiss (vocals), Michael Weiss and Brandon Beaver (guitars), Greg Jehanian (bass guitar), and Rickie Mazzotta ( ...
.
* Inspired the story "The Capitoline Venus" by Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
and the ghost of the Cardiff Giant is a character in the short story titled "A Ghost Story."
* The Cardiff Giant was referenced in the short story "Out of the Aeons
"Out of the Aeons" is a short story by American writers H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, a writer from Somerville, Massachusetts. First published in the April 1935 issue of '' Weird Tales'' magazine, it was one of five stories Lovecraft revised f ...
" by H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald
Hazel Heald (April 6, 1896February 4, 1961) was a pulp fiction writer, who lived in Somerville, Massachusetts. She is perhaps best known for collaborating with American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft.
Biography
Heald was born the daughter ...
.
* The podcast ''The Memory Palace
''The Memory Palace'' is a monthly historical podcast hosted by Nate DiMeo that debuted in 2008. The program features historical narratives concerning such subjects as the Cardiff Giant and the CIA project Acoustic Kitty. It is currently dist ...
'' did an episode about the Cardiff Giant.
* A character called the Cardiff Giant appeared occasionally in the early years of the newspaper comic ''Alley Oop
''Alley Oop'' is a syndicated comic strip created December 5, 1932, by American cartoonist V. T. Hamlin, who wrote and drew the strip through four decades for Newspaper Enterprise Association. Hamlin introduced a cast of colorful characters an ...
''. He was larger than the other cavemen, had a pale beard, and spots over his torso and arms.
See also
* Pompey stone
The Pompey stone was a stone that was carved as a hoax near Pompey, New York, circa 1820. Upon its discovery that year, the stone was quickly accepted as authentic, dated to circa 1520, and extensively analyzed by historians of the day for its ...
* Nampa figurine
References
;Citations
;Bibliography
*
Further reading
*
*
External links
P.T. Barnum Never Did Say...
Photo of "discovery" site
US Library of Congress photo of the giant
{{Barnum
1868 sculptures
1869 archaeological discoveries
19th-century hoaxes
Archaeological forgeries
Hoaxes in science
Hoaxes in the United States
Sideshow attractions