My eyes were glued to the television set as Walter Cronkite's voice boomed out: The date is February 2, 1870. The place is Cardiff, New York, and you are there. "You Are There" was a TV show that transported the audience back through history. In this case, the show transported me back to the day when the oldest human fossil remains were found on a farm.
The human remains were a ten-foot tall petrified giant. It was instantly proclaimed to be proof of Genesis 6:4 - "there were giants in the earth in those days".
The farmer erected a tent, and people paid 25 cents to see the giant. The roads around the little town of Cardiff, New York, became clogged with horse-and-buggies. The giant was named the Cardiff Giant, and was moved to Syracuse, New York, where people paid 50 cents to see the giant.
The story on television fascinated me. But then it became more fascinating.
The Cardiff Giant was revealed as a hoax. People still kept on coming and paying 50 cents. P. T. Barnum got wind of the money-making hoax and offered to buy the Cardiff Giant. His offer was rebuffed, so P. T. carved his own giant out of plaster and put it on display. People kept on coming and kept on paying.
The details of the hoax came to light: George Hull had travelled from New York to visit his sister in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1869. He spent one evening discussing the Bible with a Fort Dodge minister. The minister believed that giants once roamed the earth, because Genesis said so. George Hull was an atheist, and he decided to play a joke on people who take the Bible literally.
He purchased a huge block of gypsum from a quarry near Fort Dodge, and transported it to Chicago. He hired a sculptor to carve a giant man who looked dead. The sculptor was sworn to secrecy; George Hull then moved the giant to upstate New York and buried it on his cousin's farm.
They waited a year, and hired neighbors to dig a well in 1870 -- and you guessed it -- to dig well right where the giant was buried.
I was 12-years-old when I watched Walter Cronkite’s show about the Cardiff Giant. I was not surprised that people, both believers and skeptics, would pay money to see the giant even when they knew it was a hoax....or, in the case of P. T. Barnum's giant, pay money to see a hoax of a hoax. I was not surprised because the TV show made me want to see the Cardiff Giant, and I was willing to pay money.
I assumed that the giant had disappeared sometime in the 19th century.
However, the Internet tells me that the Cardiff Giant did not disappear. The original hoax giant is in Cooperstown, New York. P. T. Barnum's hoax of a hoax giant is in Michigan.
And there is now a third Cardiff Giant. It is in Iowa. The town of Fort Dodge decided to commemorate its role in America’s biggest hoax, and had their own giant carved forty years ago. Since this giant is from the same quarry as the original, it is a brother of the hoax giant.
I am off to Fort Dodge, Iowa, this weekend --- where I will pay 7 dollars to see the giant.
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You can watch a 2-minute CBS Sunday Morning feature where Charles Osgood talks about the anatomically-correct giant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnxft3_0Btw
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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath. Price = $11. You can purchase a copy at http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com
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