April 15, 2024 • 25 mins
Join Mellie and Chris in this fascinating episode of Beggar's Belief as they unravel the intriguing tale of the Cardiff Giant, a 19th-century hoax that had an unexpected ripple effect.
From the conception of the idea by George Hull and his cousin, William 'Stubb' Newell, to the meticulous planning and execution of the hoax, this episode covers it all. It offers an insight into the societal beliefs of the period, including the fascination with petrified beings and prehistoric creatures, and sheds light on the large sums of money invested in this elaborate ruse. It further draws parallels with other notable societal trends and beliefs of the time.
The hosts conclude the episode with an insightful reflection on the public's reception of the hoax, provoking thought on how easily one can fall for such a monumental deception.
Listen to the captivating narrative of 'Old Hoaxy', a simple hoax that transformed into a major attraction, and examine its lasting impact on popular folklore, mainstream media and even legal debates. Get ready to dive deep into the extraordinary narrative of the Cardiff Giant, an enduring tale that truly beggars belief.
Music by Roger A. Martinez
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Mellie. I'm Chris. And this is Beggar's Belief, home of Scams,
Shams, Hoaxes, Pranks, and Charlatans, the story where you can't believe everything
you hear because somebody is lying.
First try. Good job. Yeah, I actually got it this time.
Music.
(00:43):
And this time our audio might not suck, so yeah, we're... It's only okay.
It's only mostly important if you hear us. Yeah.
I want to have these first episodes, too, so I can remind myself of how bad
it was. How far we've come. Exactly.
Future me can laugh at this. Yeah, I mean, I'm laughing at it already because we're funny, but.
(01:03):
Sure. So I got one for you today. And out of the first scripts that I'm kind
of working on, this is probably the best known.
Okay. But I will tell you that once I started digging into this,
I found out that the story, the very shorthand story that I knew, was not quite reality.
So I kind of enjoyed the little trip I took on my little research journey here
(01:28):
as I actually started digging through period newspapers and whatnot.
Are you going to break one of my illusions?
Am I going to like know this and go, oh, no. Not this time. Oh,
okay. Thanks for the warning.
Possibly in the future. you know so i want
to put yourself in the position and you tell me what is the hoax
and what is reality so the
(01:49):
year is 1869 you live
in central new york state more specifically in the town of
cardiff okay yeah i just saw the look okay you know where we're going already
it's farmland quiet on october day just like any other a little chilly and leaves
turning you bump into two of your bodies and they tell you that stub newell
(02:09):
just hired them to dig a well on their farm. Nothing unusual there.
You go about your day until those two friends come racing back.
As they dug, they found a body, not just any body, but a body that had been
turned into stone. And the person wasn't normal. He was a giant.
(02:30):
Of course, this is the biggest thing that has happened in this town,
so a bunch of your friends go out to see it.
Sadly, that day, you're far too busy doing whatever 1860 thing you're doing,
so you can't make it out for a week.
By then, there's a tent up around the giant, and someone is collecting admission.
Seeing the giant is now 50 cents, which would be about 11 bucks in today's money,
and you can only look at the giant for 15 minutes.
(02:53):
As you pat your pockets for change, the ticket taker tells you that inside,
it's a genuine biblical giant who had been turned into stone.
Inside, this figure is white with stains. It's lying on its back,
its feet together, one arm across its stomach, knees slightly bent.
It would be 10 foot 4 inches tall, and if you tried to pick it up for some reason,
(03:13):
it would weigh over 3,000 pounds.
The face has a sort of smirk to it and a bald head and visible ribs.
And there's no getting around saying it. This giant is very well endowed.
All right. Glad that he hung around as long as he did.
So what part's the hoax, Chris? Like I said, sometimes this is an easy game.
Honestly, honestly, listen, if this is like a male narrator recording this story,
(03:39):
he's not that well endowed.
Like six inches isn't that big. Have you seen pictures?
I have actually. Yeah, I have. I knew what was happening. I knew what was happening.
I'm not stoned enough for this one.
I love that especially, like, there's a lot of creative camera angles that are
used, but my- Well, especially talking 1869,
(04:01):
like- My favorite period photo, like, there's fig leaves added to a lot of the
pictures that are drawn, but my favorite period photo of it still buried.
They just, like, tossed a stapling over top of it, and it actually made the
situation worse. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, yeah. Man, RIP to these guys. You would have loved Instagram.
(04:23):
No, only fams. Oh, yeah. Only giants. Only giants, only giants.
So you obviously know where we're going. Like I said, this is our best known
one that we're going to be covering for the beginning here. Figure became known as the Cardiff Giant.
But let's start a story back a bit with a fellow by the name of George Hull.
Hull was a cigar maker and apparently rather liked picking arguments about religion.
(04:44):
So maybe not openly fans, maybe Reddit.
Maybe, yeah, that's where it got, yeah, yeah. And since it's underneath,
it's a subreddit. Yeah, exactly.
He read Darwin, he was an atheist, so yeah, Reddit.
And one day gets into a debate with a Methodist reverend named M.
Turk. Oh, just like my childhood days.
Turk seemed to favor a very literal interpretation of the Bible,
(05:04):
so the two locked horns over the issue. But hold back down because he was outnumbered.
It's too bad locking horns isn't a euphemism here. Sure. My brain went to a
thing with the Turks and I kind of went really far off there. Okay.
So, yeah, instead of postposing a reverend, he got weirder with his rebuttal.
One of the points they disagreed on was that the reverend literally thought there were giants.
(05:26):
Thanks to biblical readings like David and Goliath and Genesis 6-4,
which says there were giants in the earth those days.
And after that, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they
bear children to them, which also is ripped on in one of my favorite ghost songs.
So Hull's plan was to make a fool out of this belief and to make some money while he did it.
Hull had gypsum quarried in Iowa, claiming it was to be used for a statue of
(05:50):
Lincoln to be displayed in New York City. They actually had to cut it down in order to move it.
They hired two sculptors in
Chicago by the name of Henry Sall and Fred Mormon to sculpt it in secrecy.
So the two sculptors worked with their windows all shrouded with quilts to hide what they were doing.
The statue was actually made to resemble Hull, only without hair and a beard,
(06:12):
because he thought it would be weird that hair and beard would petrify.
This just reminds me slightly a bit, this is a small tangent,
but it's very related, of a university I used to work at has a wonderful theater program.
And they actually commissioned a statue.
This is a religious institution. They commissioned a statue of Jesus,
(06:36):
which took years and years and years to finally appear.
And when it showed up, this does not look like Jesus in any sort of like traditional sense.
This is very much so like this is a white Jesus, even from statue terms.
It turns out that it was modeled after the director of the state theater program.
(06:56):
So, yeah, it's important to choose good models, everybody.
There is a level of vanity there. So when the sculptors were done,
Hall tried to make it look older.
But he poured acid all over it and tried to give it pores by taking a plank,
hammering knitting needles into it, and then beating the statue with this plank.
(07:18):
That's what I was doing for a week in 1869, giving a wonderful facial treatment.
Here's my question. If your friend tells you that they're going to spend a weekend
beating a naked giant stone statue of themselves with a plank,
do you let them work through their niche issues or do you try to get them into therapy?
I say, when are we going to Ren Faire?
(07:39):
Not wrong. So when he's done with the statue, they had it transported in an
iron-sealed box all the way to Cardiff, New York.
Hull had a cousin there by the name of William Newell, who owned a farm.
Newell's nickname was Stubb. Why do you think his nickname was Stubb?
My brain has gone a lot of different directions, but I'm imagining that one
of his appendages is shorter than the others.
Lost a toe to frostbite and then proceeded to wear said amputated toe as a necklace.
(08:04):
Yeah, I should do it. It's the 1860s. Like, that's cool. There's not much going on. That's cool.
So the Stubb had this farm and the two cousins took to burying this three-ton
giant underneath tree roots, which must have been a big endeavor because apparently
it was just the two of them burying a giant under tree roots.
They filled it in. Hull went back to Iowa and they waited.
By this time, Hull had spent over $2,600 between having the statue made and
(08:28):
transported, which would have been $99,000 in today's money.
This was not a cheap endeavor. So a full year later, Stubb hires two men,
Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, to dig a well over where he knew the giant was buried.
They'd only gone down three feet when they uncovered the foot of the giant,
which probably is another subreddit.
The laborers had an appropriately old-timey reaction to finding it,
(08:51):
went out, told their friends, who all came to see the giant.
With the initial buzz generated, Stubb charges charging admission.
That's where we get ticket Stubb. That's where that comes from.
Oh, God, no. No. I love history lessons.
So Stubb was smart at first. When they were doubters, he said he might as well
rebury it and just forget about it and let others quote unquote convince him
(09:13):
of the fact that it should be kept as historical significance.
Soon there's about 500 people a day coming to see the giant.
There's a description of the scene, which was by the president of Cornell University, Andrew White.
Lying in its grave with the subdued light roof from the tent falling upon it,
and with the lives contorted as in a desk struggle, it produced a most weird effect.
(09:34):
An air of great solemnity pervaded the place. Visitors hardly spoke above a whisper.
Outside, though, with locals sold refreshments, hotels were full,
and the town of Cardiff had an explosion in the tourist industry and a huge
financial boom. So the question is, how much do people really believe it?
And I know you have heard this one before, and I've always heard it presented
(09:56):
as a everyone believe this is a petrified man.
That wasn't kind of what I found when I started digging into this.
Not nearly as much as sort of the short version of the story is.
Because I would understand it as at the time, this is a great kind of like way to kill time.
This is a great little fun attraction, but also like carnivals are a thing that are known.
(10:17):
People know about sideshow attractions. This is when they're starting to peak and boom.
Because you also had people trying to present the Jersey Devil as a kangaroo.
Like this isn't uncommon.
Yeah. So I think a lot of people didn't put a lot of like faith in this being
real. It was just, hey, here's something we can go do for $11 in 2024.
And I'll go into this. The choice of Cardiff was very well planned.
(10:39):
This was the burnt-over district of New York, which had a huge religious revival in,
The attempt to get it as a religious thing was very much forefront on Hall's mindset.
But less well spoken about is the fact that it was also an area that was known for fossils.
So let's talk about some of the other stuff that was going on in the world at
(10:59):
the time, too. There was a weird belief at the time that people could be petrified.
In 1858, the newspaper Alta California reported that a prospector had been petrified
when he drank the liquid out of a geode.
Mark Twain published fake articles about petrified men stuck thumbing their
noses and said upon autopsy, their hearts were made of jasper.
(11:21):
So this was not completely out of nowhere.
You could just say that they were jaded. Yeah, that too.
Additionally, this is the first time that skeletal dinosaurs are being presented
to the general population.
Which everyone knows are put there by Satan.
You know, he's busy. Yeah. Just the previous year, a nearly full skeleton of
(11:41):
a dinosaur was found in New Jersey and was mounted and put on display in the
Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
This was the first full dinosaur reconstruction of its time,
and there were record-breaking crowds coming to see it.
Not far from where this giant was discovered, there was a massive popularity
in fossil hunting, which was mostly trilobites and stuff like that.
Your average person probably hadn't seen a fossil, and they're literally reading,
(12:04):
we have a 30-foot stone dinosaur bones that are in exhibit in Philadelphia.
Now we have a 10-foot tall stone human, and you only have drawings of both that
are in the newspaper and a write-up of an article.
Would you believe one and not the other is the question? I mean,
honestly, I really, really like to think that this is like the prelude to the
(12:27):
exhibit that hosted the, like, basically two legs, the tail, the head, and the spike.
Yes. Like, here's a prehistoric animal.
It walked just like this.
The unicorn.
Tourists are bringing in money, so the locals really don't have a reason to
dispute it. The nickname locally for it was Old Hoaxy.
(12:48):
Old Hoaxy. Old Hoaxy. Yeah, it doesn't, that's, I believe that. Yeah.
This is, like I said, this is
a hoax that's known for fooling people into thinking it's a petrified man.
I could not find any first-person writings that the person did not have a financial
interest in this belief. No.
That said, we really think it is a petrified man. you'll have a lot of,
(13:12):
I saw somebody saying that.
With other stuff that I've been researching, there's a sermon being told about
it. There's an article being told about it.
This, it was more like people all were saying somebody else thought this.
So there's a lot of tertiary evidence, but there's not a lot of primary account.
Exactly. If at all. The body isn't realistic.
(13:33):
It doesn't look like a person, doesn't look like a mummy. The proportions are all wrong.
There's only one sense where they paid attention to anatomy.
To me hey hey what do you expect from two guys in a couple of hours and some quilts.
And beating things with knitting needles. Hey, don't blame Stubb. Blame the con.
The belief you do read about was that it was an old statue that had gotten buried.
(13:58):
Oh, that's where, Atlantis. Yeah, here's where we're going next.
But that it had historical significance, if not archaeological.
The first geologist to see it was named John F. Boynton.
He thought it was a statue from the 17th century, maybe made by Jesuits in trade
to local Native Americans.
New York State geologist James Hall said it was the most remarkable object yet
(14:20):
brought to light in our country.
It makes sense of it as a statue more.
Yeah. Yeah. But not everyone even believed that.
President of Cornell University, like I said, came, studied the giant and said, it's a hoax.
Being of my opinion, and this is a quote, being of my opinion,
the answer is that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax.
There was no reason why a farmer should dig a well at that spot where the figure was found.
(14:45):
As the figure itself, it shows it could not have been carved by any prehistoric
race, since no part of it showed the characteristics of any such early work.
Rude as it was, it betrayed the qualities of a modern performance of low order.
See, I like to think that the farmer showed up to recruit, you know, help for digging this.
And they're like, you shouldn't, you know, I don't think this is a good spot
(15:07):
for it. And his response was, well, actually.
That wasn't really far to go for a pun. I respect it. It was a deep dive.
It was a deep dig. Yeah, yeah.
You are right, though. Apparently, they were like, no, there's a stream over
there, and there's, this would be, and they're, no, right here.
Right here. Underneath these tree roots. Right here. Mm-hmm.
Other scientists, though, also pointed out that the gypsum was too soluble to
(15:31):
have been buried for centuries. It would have weathered down a lot more.
Another Yaley called it a very recent origin and a most decided humbug.
A most decided humbug. Yes. Is how I'm referring to all hoaxes from now on.
It's just going to be a running thing now. A most decided humbug. All right.
Holland Newell sold a percentage of the giant to a group, including businessman
(15:52):
David Hannum, for $23,000. And they moved it to Syracuse.
At the point, there were huge crowds. There was a train that would come up and
stop right across the street from where the giant was set up.
In the layover, you could pop off the train, look at the giant,
buy a snack, and be on your way. So it was a really good money-making scheme.
A most decided humbug. A most decided humbug and money-making scheme.
This, of course, caught the attention of P.T. Barnum. There he is. I was waiting.
(16:16):
Yeah, if it's the late 1800s, he's always just waiting in the wings for these.
How can I capitalize on these?
He was actually partially retired at this point, which is funny to me,
too. Literally, this stone giant brought him out of it for a while.
Yeah, there's the ringleader.
Mm-hmm. So he offered them $50,000 for the giant. These are big money.
That's a lot of money. That's so much money. When they refused to sell it to
(16:37):
him, he had someone sneak in, make a mini detailed copy of it in wax,
and then had them cast a replica in plaster.
He displayed his copy in Manhattan, saying it was the real one and the one up in Syracuse was fake.
The advertisements for the copy said, what is it? Is it a statue? Is it a petrification?
(16:57):
Is it a stupendous fraud? Is it the remains of a former race?
Which I kind of dig the all questions advertising. Yes, yeah.
So before long, Barnum's plaster giant was outselling the original gypsum giant.
And so Hannum sued Barnum for claiming the original giant was fake.
The judge wouldn't hear the case because he didn't think either giant was real. Oh, no.
(17:21):
So he told Hannum, bring your giant here.
And if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrification,
you shall have the injunction you ask for.
To have been at that. I wish I could have been in that courtroom.
So meanwhile, a few plaster giants pop up in sideshows far and wide.
And there's rumors that Barnum's artist had actually made more plaster duplicates based on his cast.
(17:46):
This is all happening in a really short order, by the way. This is about three
months span. Very short. Talk about creating a very niche job market.
Like, hey, so what are your top skills there, buddy? Well, I can make plaster
giants pretty quickly. You know, it's a thing I specialize in.
Stubb Noodle, at this point, had started running his mouth about the hoax.
And in December, even Hull came clean.
(18:08):
Finally, on February 2nd, 1870, newspapers printed confessions from the sculptors,
who admitted that they had created the original.
George Hull attempted to recreate the success of the Cardiff Giant a few years
later, this time making a seven-foot-tall giant with a tail and burying it in Colorado.
This time, he made it out of rocks, clay, plaster, ground bones, blood, and meat.
(18:31):
At first, I was like, is Mel really going to say ground beef?
But you got there anyway.
Yeah, I did. You got there anyway. It is nicknamed the Solid Muldoon.
All right. After a boxer, apparently, of the era. Yeah, this one I don't know about.
It didn't have any success. No one really believed it and actually cost Hull more money than he made.
The giant itself actually, even after it was outed as a hoax,
(18:52):
still had a lot of people coming and viewing it.
After it fell out of popularity, it was moved in and out of storage in the 1880s.
It popped up in exhibits here and there.
Later, it was displayed at the 1901 Pan American Exposition,
which is actually one of my favorite little historical facets. assets.
Eventually, it was purchased by the Iowa publisher Gardner Cowles Jr.,
(19:14):
who used it in his basement as a coffee table.
As you do. I mean, honestly, like, what better way to go out?
Like, how do you end this other than having old dirty newspapers and coffee on you? Yeah, exactly.
You know, just set down your coffee on old hoaxies junk. Old hoaxies junk.
So he eventually sold it to the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown,
(19:34):
New York in 1947, and it's still The banner above it reads, Taller than Goliath,
whom David slew. Six million people have paid to see him.
David Haram was his godfather. P.T. Barnum offered $150,000 for the giant,
the most valuable single exhibit in the world today, which is a lot to say for
something that was used as a coffee table. Yeah. Yeah, I would say so.
(19:57):
It's actually really a beloved exhibit there. They sort of personify it in 2019
when it was the 150th anniversary of being dug up. Museum for a birthday party.
So when are we going? That's my next question. Actually, he was on,
the giant itself just got off tour because it was on tour for a thing about
hoaxes and they just brought it back.
Yeah, I'm totally down. Wow, did they call it the, they might be giants tour?
(20:20):
Were so the giant's birthday party
gave him a party hat and his own slice of giant
cake with a giant fork yeah okay totally adorable i need a better birthday this
year i guess so the plaster copy that pete and barnum had is claimed to be at
marvin's marvelous mechanical museum in michigan that's so much alliteration
have you seen the pictures of this place this i have not okay yeah it's it's.
(20:44):
Completely a place that our type of people need to
go to okay i'll show you videos throughout the 1800s a
bunch of petrified man popped up in various newspapers and side shows
but none reached the popularity of the original a hundred years later in iowa
at the site where the original block of gypsum was quarried an artist named
cliff carson joins the story he claimed he found his own giant in the stone
(21:06):
just by removing the pieces of stone that weren't the giant yes yeah very tongue Tongue-in-cheek,
it's displayed in the Fort Dodge Museum there, which is otherwise a historical recreation,
and they claim it's the real giant with big quotation marks.
Cardiff Giant has been featured in stories by Mark Twain, H.P.
Lovecraft, and Nancy Drew novels.
(21:26):
It gave its name to songs, albums, a bar, and a professional wrestler,
and it's the inspiration for a Simpsons episode.
Oh, yes, it is. Oh, my gosh.
I just feel like a very weird core memory was unlocked. Exactly. Oh, my gosh.
All right. Now I'm going to have to go back and watch that. That's yeah,
that's fascinating because like I know of this story, but I know of it at a
(21:49):
very like superficial surface level of, hey, there was this weird stone giant.
People kind of bought into it for a little while.
I didn't realize that P.T. Barnum became involved, but I absolutely should have
guessed that was the direction it would go knowing the time period.
If P.T. Barnum is alive and there's a hoax involved, assume he's part of it.
I always read about this as a people back in the day believed anything.
(22:12):
People 100% believed it was a petrified man. And I was really,
it's almost like people enjoyed being able to point at other people and saying, look what they believe.
Hmm. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. When I paid my 50 cents to go in and look at the giant,
there were all these other schlubs
who paid 50 cents to look at the giant because I thought it was real.
(22:33):
Like, it was almost a point at the next guy and laugh situation more than it
was people legitimately believing what they were seeing.
Right. And yeah, that was fascinating to me.
I didn't know where this one was going as well as I thought it did.
And I was very excited about that.
I just now I'm gonna have to like google like hoaxy
(22:55):
coffee table to see what I can find because
if I could find like a little one that'd be great honestly that's
what that's the kind of merch I should be selling at the museum like furniture
based off of all of off of this stone giant like that's what I would be into
we could make it we could we could yeah our merch is coming soon by the way
look for coffee tables we're only gonna have one category it's just gonna be
coffee table I love the reaction there to the coffee tables.
(23:20):
It's a really interesting one. And then there ends up being like all of these
other ridiculous stone giants that pop up all over the place.
And some of them were very tongue in cheek. Some of them were very roughly made.
I didn't know how far to go into that, but like there was there was a few of
them that I was like, okay. I really hope that especially after the attempt
at the seven foot lizard amalgamation that someone out there was like,
(23:43):
you know why that one failed?
It didn't have enough meat. We need to stack more meat on this one.
It's got to get some meat on these stone bones.
Are you familiar with the Mark Twain story, though? Yes. A ghost story.
Yes. Because the Cardiff giant ends up haunting P.T. Barnum's fake. Yes.
Yeah, that's the whole story is that the giant is haunting the area around,
but he's haunting the wrong one.
(24:04):
Yeah that's good old twain yeah
another one if it's late 1800s he's
probably gonna show up yeah they're like three or four personalities they're
probably involved exactly exactly so yeah that's the story of the card of giant
yeah a thing i have now learned yes and as a reminder from this side of the
microphone don't believe everything you hear this is beggar's belief.
(24:29):
Music.
I'm Mellie. I'm Chris. And this is Beggar's Belief, home of Scams,
Shams, Hoaxes, Pranks, and Charlatans, the story where you can't believe everything
you hear because somebody is lying.
First try. Good job. Yeah, I actually got it this time.
Music.
(00:43):
And this time our audio might not suck, so yeah, we're... It's only okay.
It's only mostly important if you hear us. Yeah.
I want to have these first episodes, too, so I can remind myself of how bad
it was. How far we've come. Exactly.
Future me can laugh at this. Yeah, I mean, I'm laughing at it already because we're funny, but.
(01:03):
Sure. So I got one for you today. And out of the first scripts that I'm kind
of working on, this is probably the best known.
Okay. But I will tell you that once I started digging into this,
I found out that the story, the very shorthand story that I knew, was not quite reality.
So I kind of enjoyed the little trip I took on my little research journey here
(01:28):
as I actually started digging through period newspapers and whatnot.
Are you going to break one of my illusions?
Am I going to like know this and go, oh, no. Not this time. Oh,
okay. Thanks for the warning.
Possibly in the future. you know so i want
to put yourself in the position and you tell me what is the hoax
and what is reality so the
(01:49):
year is 1869 you live
in central new york state more specifically in the town of
cardiff okay yeah i just saw the look okay you know where we're going already
it's farmland quiet on october day just like any other a little chilly and leaves
turning you bump into two of your bodies and they tell you that stub newell
(02:09):
just hired them to dig a well on their farm. Nothing unusual there.
You go about your day until those two friends come racing back.
As they dug, they found a body, not just any body, but a body that had been
turned into stone. And the person wasn't normal. He was a giant.
(02:30):
Of course, this is the biggest thing that has happened in this town,
so a bunch of your friends go out to see it.
Sadly, that day, you're far too busy doing whatever 1860 thing you're doing,
so you can't make it out for a week.
By then, there's a tent up around the giant, and someone is collecting admission.
Seeing the giant is now 50 cents, which would be about 11 bucks in today's money,
and you can only look at the giant for 15 minutes.
(02:53):
As you pat your pockets for change, the ticket taker tells you that inside,
it's a genuine biblical giant who had been turned into stone.
Inside, this figure is white with stains. It's lying on its back,
its feet together, one arm across its stomach, knees slightly bent.
It would be 10 foot 4 inches tall, and if you tried to pick it up for some reason,
(03:13):
it would weigh over 3,000 pounds.
The face has a sort of smirk to it and a bald head and visible ribs.
And there's no getting around saying it. This giant is very well endowed.
All right. Glad that he hung around as long as he did.
So what part's the hoax, Chris? Like I said, sometimes this is an easy game.
Honestly, honestly, listen, if this is like a male narrator recording this story,
(03:39):
he's not that well endowed.
Like six inches isn't that big. Have you seen pictures?
I have actually. Yeah, I have. I knew what was happening. I knew what was happening.
I'm not stoned enough for this one.
I love that especially, like, there's a lot of creative camera angles that are
used, but my- Well, especially talking 1869,
(04:01):
like- My favorite period photo, like, there's fig leaves added to a lot of the
pictures that are drawn, but my favorite period photo of it still buried.
They just, like, tossed a stapling over top of it, and it actually made the
situation worse. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, yeah. Man, RIP to these guys. You would have loved Instagram.
(04:23):
No, only fams. Oh, yeah. Only giants. Only giants, only giants.
So you obviously know where we're going. Like I said, this is our best known
one that we're going to be covering for the beginning here. Figure became known as the Cardiff Giant.
But let's start a story back a bit with a fellow by the name of George Hull.
Hull was a cigar maker and apparently rather liked picking arguments about religion.
(04:44):
So maybe not openly fans, maybe Reddit.
Maybe, yeah, that's where it got, yeah, yeah. And since it's underneath,
it's a subreddit. Yeah, exactly.
He read Darwin, he was an atheist, so yeah, Reddit.
And one day gets into a debate with a Methodist reverend named M.
Turk. Oh, just like my childhood days.
Turk seemed to favor a very literal interpretation of the Bible,
(05:04):
so the two locked horns over the issue. But hold back down because he was outnumbered.
It's too bad locking horns isn't a euphemism here. Sure. My brain went to a
thing with the Turks and I kind of went really far off there. Okay.
So, yeah, instead of postposing a reverend, he got weirder with his rebuttal.
One of the points they disagreed on was that the reverend literally thought there were giants.
(05:26):
Thanks to biblical readings like David and Goliath and Genesis 6-4,
which says there were giants in the earth those days.
And after that, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they
bear children to them, which also is ripped on in one of my favorite ghost songs.
So Hull's plan was to make a fool out of this belief and to make some money while he did it.
Hull had gypsum quarried in Iowa, claiming it was to be used for a statue of
(05:50):
Lincoln to be displayed in New York City. They actually had to cut it down in order to move it.
They hired two sculptors in
Chicago by the name of Henry Sall and Fred Mormon to sculpt it in secrecy.
So the two sculptors worked with their windows all shrouded with quilts to hide what they were doing.
The statue was actually made to resemble Hull, only without hair and a beard,
(06:12):
because he thought it would be weird that hair and beard would petrify.
This just reminds me slightly a bit, this is a small tangent,
but it's very related, of a university I used to work at has a wonderful theater program.
And they actually commissioned a statue.
This is a religious institution. They commissioned a statue of Jesus,
(06:36):
which took years and years and years to finally appear.
And when it showed up, this does not look like Jesus in any sort of like traditional sense.
This is very much so like this is a white Jesus, even from statue terms.
It turns out that it was modeled after the director of the state theater program.
(06:56):
So, yeah, it's important to choose good models, everybody.
There is a level of vanity there. So when the sculptors were done,
Hall tried to make it look older.
But he poured acid all over it and tried to give it pores by taking a plank,
hammering knitting needles into it, and then beating the statue with this plank.
(07:18):
That's what I was doing for a week in 1869, giving a wonderful facial treatment.
Here's my question. If your friend tells you that they're going to spend a weekend
beating a naked giant stone statue of themselves with a plank,
do you let them work through their niche issues or do you try to get them into therapy?
I say, when are we going to Ren Faire?
(07:39):
Not wrong. So when he's done with the statue, they had it transported in an
iron-sealed box all the way to Cardiff, New York.
Hull had a cousin there by the name of William Newell, who owned a farm.
Newell's nickname was Stubb. Why do you think his nickname was Stubb?
My brain has gone a lot of different directions, but I'm imagining that one
of his appendages is shorter than the others.
Lost a toe to frostbite and then proceeded to wear said amputated toe as a necklace.
(08:04):
Yeah, I should do it. It's the 1860s. Like, that's cool. There's not much going on. That's cool.
So the Stubb had this farm and the two cousins took to burying this three-ton
giant underneath tree roots, which must have been a big endeavor because apparently
it was just the two of them burying a giant under tree roots.
They filled it in. Hull went back to Iowa and they waited.
By this time, Hull had spent over $2,600 between having the statue made and
(08:28):
transported, which would have been $99,000 in today's money.
This was not a cheap endeavor. So a full year later, Stubb hires two men,
Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, to dig a well over where he knew the giant was buried.
They'd only gone down three feet when they uncovered the foot of the giant,
which probably is another subreddit.
The laborers had an appropriately old-timey reaction to finding it,
(08:51):
went out, told their friends, who all came to see the giant.
With the initial buzz generated, Stubb charges charging admission.
That's where we get ticket Stubb. That's where that comes from.
Oh, God, no. No. I love history lessons.
So Stubb was smart at first. When they were doubters, he said he might as well
rebury it and just forget about it and let others quote unquote convince him
(09:13):
of the fact that it should be kept as historical significance.
Soon there's about 500 people a day coming to see the giant.
There's a description of the scene, which was by the president of Cornell University, Andrew White.
Lying in its grave with the subdued light roof from the tent falling upon it,
and with the lives contorted as in a desk struggle, it produced a most weird effect.
(09:34):
An air of great solemnity pervaded the place. Visitors hardly spoke above a whisper.
Outside, though, with locals sold refreshments, hotels were full,
and the town of Cardiff had an explosion in the tourist industry and a huge
financial boom. So the question is, how much do people really believe it?
And I know you have heard this one before, and I've always heard it presented
(09:56):
as a everyone believe this is a petrified man.
That wasn't kind of what I found when I started digging into this.
Not nearly as much as sort of the short version of the story is.
Because I would understand it as at the time, this is a great kind of like way to kill time.
This is a great little fun attraction, but also like carnivals are a thing that are known.
(10:17):
People know about sideshow attractions. This is when they're starting to peak and boom.
Because you also had people trying to present the Jersey Devil as a kangaroo.
Like this isn't uncommon.
Yeah. So I think a lot of people didn't put a lot of like faith in this being
real. It was just, hey, here's something we can go do for $11 in 2024.
And I'll go into this. The choice of Cardiff was very well planned.
(10:39):
This was the burnt-over district of New York, which had a huge religious revival in,
The attempt to get it as a religious thing was very much forefront on Hall's mindset.
But less well spoken about is the fact that it was also an area that was known for fossils.
So let's talk about some of the other stuff that was going on in the world at
(10:59):
the time, too. There was a weird belief at the time that people could be petrified.
In 1858, the newspaper Alta California reported that a prospector had been petrified
when he drank the liquid out of a geode.
Mark Twain published fake articles about petrified men stuck thumbing their
noses and said upon autopsy, their hearts were made of jasper.
(11:21):
So this was not completely out of nowhere.
You could just say that they were jaded. Yeah, that too.
Additionally, this is the first time that skeletal dinosaurs are being presented
to the general population.
Which everyone knows are put there by Satan.
You know, he's busy. Yeah. Just the previous year, a nearly full skeleton of
(11:41):
a dinosaur was found in New Jersey and was mounted and put on display in the
Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
This was the first full dinosaur reconstruction of its time,
and there were record-breaking crowds coming to see it.
Not far from where this giant was discovered, there was a massive popularity
in fossil hunting, which was mostly trilobites and stuff like that.
Your average person probably hadn't seen a fossil, and they're literally reading,
(12:04):
we have a 30-foot stone dinosaur bones that are in exhibit in Philadelphia.
Now we have a 10-foot tall stone human, and you only have drawings of both that
are in the newspaper and a write-up of an article.
Would you believe one and not the other is the question? I mean,
honestly, I really, really like to think that this is like the prelude to the
(12:27):
exhibit that hosted the, like, basically two legs, the tail, the head, and the spike.
Yes. Like, here's a prehistoric animal.
It walked just like this.
The unicorn.
Tourists are bringing in money, so the locals really don't have a reason to
dispute it. The nickname locally for it was Old Hoaxy.
(12:48):
Old Hoaxy. Old Hoaxy. Yeah, it doesn't, that's, I believe that. Yeah.
This is, like I said, this is
a hoax that's known for fooling people into thinking it's a petrified man.
I could not find any first-person writings that the person did not have a financial
interest in this belief. No.
That said, we really think it is a petrified man. you'll have a lot of,
(13:12):
I saw somebody saying that.
With other stuff that I've been researching, there's a sermon being told about
it. There's an article being told about it.
This, it was more like people all were saying somebody else thought this.
So there's a lot of tertiary evidence, but there's not a lot of primary account.
Exactly. If at all. The body isn't realistic.
(13:33):
It doesn't look like a person, doesn't look like a mummy. The proportions are all wrong.
There's only one sense where they paid attention to anatomy.
To me hey hey what do you expect from two guys in a couple of hours and some quilts.
And beating things with knitting needles. Hey, don't blame Stubb. Blame the con.
The belief you do read about was that it was an old statue that had gotten buried.
(13:58):
Oh, that's where, Atlantis. Yeah, here's where we're going next.
But that it had historical significance, if not archaeological.
The first geologist to see it was named John F. Boynton.
He thought it was a statue from the 17th century, maybe made by Jesuits in trade
to local Native Americans.
New York State geologist James Hall said it was the most remarkable object yet
(14:20):
brought to light in our country.
It makes sense of it as a statue more.
Yeah. Yeah. But not everyone even believed that.
President of Cornell University, like I said, came, studied the giant and said, it's a hoax.
Being of my opinion, and this is a quote, being of my opinion,
the answer is that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax.
There was no reason why a farmer should dig a well at that spot where the figure was found.
(14:45):
As the figure itself, it shows it could not have been carved by any prehistoric
race, since no part of it showed the characteristics of any such early work.
Rude as it was, it betrayed the qualities of a modern performance of low order.
See, I like to think that the farmer showed up to recruit, you know, help for digging this.
And they're like, you shouldn't, you know, I don't think this is a good spot
(15:07):
for it. And his response was, well, actually.
That wasn't really far to go for a pun. I respect it. It was a deep dive.
It was a deep dig. Yeah, yeah.
You are right, though. Apparently, they were like, no, there's a stream over
there, and there's, this would be, and they're, no, right here.
Right here. Underneath these tree roots. Right here. Mm-hmm.
Other scientists, though, also pointed out that the gypsum was too soluble to
(15:31):
have been buried for centuries. It would have weathered down a lot more.
Another Yaley called it a very recent origin and a most decided humbug.
A most decided humbug. Yes. Is how I'm referring to all hoaxes from now on.
It's just going to be a running thing now. A most decided humbug. All right.
Holland Newell sold a percentage of the giant to a group, including businessman
(15:52):
David Hannum, for $23,000. And they moved it to Syracuse.
At the point, there were huge crowds. There was a train that would come up and
stop right across the street from where the giant was set up.
In the layover, you could pop off the train, look at the giant,
buy a snack, and be on your way. So it was a really good money-making scheme.
A most decided humbug. A most decided humbug and money-making scheme.
This, of course, caught the attention of P.T. Barnum. There he is. I was waiting.
(16:16):
Yeah, if it's the late 1800s, he's always just waiting in the wings for these.
How can I capitalize on these?
He was actually partially retired at this point, which is funny to me,
too. Literally, this stone giant brought him out of it for a while.
Yeah, there's the ringleader.
Mm-hmm. So he offered them $50,000 for the giant. These are big money.
That's a lot of money. That's so much money. When they refused to sell it to
(16:37):
him, he had someone sneak in, make a mini detailed copy of it in wax,
and then had them cast a replica in plaster.
He displayed his copy in Manhattan, saying it was the real one and the one up in Syracuse was fake.
The advertisements for the copy said, what is it? Is it a statue? Is it a petrification?
(16:57):
Is it a stupendous fraud? Is it the remains of a former race?
Which I kind of dig the all questions advertising. Yes, yeah.
So before long, Barnum's plaster giant was outselling the original gypsum giant.
And so Hannum sued Barnum for claiming the original giant was fake.
The judge wouldn't hear the case because he didn't think either giant was real. Oh, no.
(17:21):
So he told Hannum, bring your giant here.
And if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrification,
you shall have the injunction you ask for.
To have been at that. I wish I could have been in that courtroom.
So meanwhile, a few plaster giants pop up in sideshows far and wide.
And there's rumors that Barnum's artist had actually made more plaster duplicates based on his cast.
(17:46):
This is all happening in a really short order, by the way. This is about three
months span. Very short. Talk about creating a very niche job market.
Like, hey, so what are your top skills there, buddy? Well, I can make plaster
giants pretty quickly. You know, it's a thing I specialize in.
Stubb Noodle, at this point, had started running his mouth about the hoax.
And in December, even Hull came clean.
(18:08):
Finally, on February 2nd, 1870, newspapers printed confessions from the sculptors,
who admitted that they had created the original.
George Hull attempted to recreate the success of the Cardiff Giant a few years
later, this time making a seven-foot-tall giant with a tail and burying it in Colorado.
This time, he made it out of rocks, clay, plaster, ground bones, blood, and meat.
(18:31):
At first, I was like, is Mel really going to say ground beef?
But you got there anyway.
Yeah, I did. You got there anyway. It is nicknamed the Solid Muldoon.
All right. After a boxer, apparently, of the era. Yeah, this one I don't know about.
It didn't have any success. No one really believed it and actually cost Hull more money than he made.
The giant itself actually, even after it was outed as a hoax,
(18:52):
still had a lot of people coming and viewing it.
After it fell out of popularity, it was moved in and out of storage in the 1880s.
It popped up in exhibits here and there.
Later, it was displayed at the 1901 Pan American Exposition,
which is actually one of my favorite little historical facets. assets.
Eventually, it was purchased by the Iowa publisher Gardner Cowles Jr.,
(19:14):
who used it in his basement as a coffee table.
As you do. I mean, honestly, like, what better way to go out?
Like, how do you end this other than having old dirty newspapers and coffee on you? Yeah, exactly.
You know, just set down your coffee on old hoaxies junk. Old hoaxies junk.
So he eventually sold it to the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown,
(19:34):
New York in 1947, and it's still The banner above it reads, Taller than Goliath,
whom David slew. Six million people have paid to see him.
David Haram was his godfather. P.T. Barnum offered $150,000 for the giant,
the most valuable single exhibit in the world today, which is a lot to say for
something that was used as a coffee table. Yeah. Yeah, I would say so.
(19:57):
It's actually really a beloved exhibit there. They sort of personify it in 2019
when it was the 150th anniversary of being dug up. Museum for a birthday party.
So when are we going? That's my next question. Actually, he was on,
the giant itself just got off tour because it was on tour for a thing about
hoaxes and they just brought it back.
Yeah, I'm totally down. Wow, did they call it the, they might be giants tour?
(20:20):
Were so the giant's birthday party
gave him a party hat and his own slice of giant
cake with a giant fork yeah okay totally adorable i need a better birthday this
year i guess so the plaster copy that pete and barnum had is claimed to be at
marvin's marvelous mechanical museum in michigan that's so much alliteration
have you seen the pictures of this place this i have not okay yeah it's it's.
(20:44):
Completely a place that our type of people need to
go to okay i'll show you videos throughout the 1800s a
bunch of petrified man popped up in various newspapers and side shows
but none reached the popularity of the original a hundred years later in iowa
at the site where the original block of gypsum was quarried an artist named
cliff carson joins the story he claimed he found his own giant in the stone
(21:06):
just by removing the pieces of stone that weren't the giant yes yeah very tongue Tongue-in-cheek,
it's displayed in the Fort Dodge Museum there, which is otherwise a historical recreation,
and they claim it's the real giant with big quotation marks.
Cardiff Giant has been featured in stories by Mark Twain, H.P.
Lovecraft, and Nancy Drew novels.
(21:26):
It gave its name to songs, albums, a bar, and a professional wrestler,
and it's the inspiration for a Simpsons episode.
Oh, yes, it is. Oh, my gosh.
I just feel like a very weird core memory was unlocked. Exactly. Oh, my gosh.
All right. Now I'm going to have to go back and watch that. That's yeah,
that's fascinating because like I know of this story, but I know of it at a
(21:49):
very like superficial surface level of, hey, there was this weird stone giant.
People kind of bought into it for a little while.
I didn't realize that P.T. Barnum became involved, but I absolutely should have
guessed that was the direction it would go knowing the time period.
If P.T. Barnum is alive and there's a hoax involved, assume he's part of it.
I always read about this as a people back in the day believed anything.
(22:12):
People 100% believed it was a petrified man. And I was really,
it's almost like people enjoyed being able to point at other people and saying, look what they believe.
Hmm. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. When I paid my 50 cents to go in and look at the giant,
there were all these other schlubs
who paid 50 cents to look at the giant because I thought it was real.
(22:33):
Like, it was almost a point at the next guy and laugh situation more than it
was people legitimately believing what they were seeing.
Right. And yeah, that was fascinating to me.
I didn't know where this one was going as well as I thought it did.
And I was very excited about that.
I just now I'm gonna have to like google like hoaxy
(22:55):
coffee table to see what I can find because
if I could find like a little one that'd be great honestly that's
what that's the kind of merch I should be selling at the museum like furniture
based off of all of off of this stone giant like that's what I would be into
we could make it we could we could yeah our merch is coming soon by the way
look for coffee tables we're only gonna have one category it's just gonna be
coffee table I love the reaction there to the coffee tables.
(23:20):
It's a really interesting one. And then there ends up being like all of these
other ridiculous stone giants that pop up all over the place.
And some of them were very tongue in cheek. Some of them were very roughly made.
I didn't know how far to go into that, but like there was there was a few of
them that I was like, okay. I really hope that especially after the attempt
at the seven foot lizard amalgamation that someone out there was like,
(23:43):
you know why that one failed?
It didn't have enough meat. We need to stack more meat on this one.
It's got to get some meat on these stone bones.
Are you familiar with the Mark Twain story, though? Yes. A ghost story.
Yes. Because the Cardiff giant ends up haunting P.T. Barnum's fake. Yes.
Yeah, that's the whole story is that the giant is haunting the area around,
but he's haunting the wrong one.
(24:04):
Yeah that's good old twain yeah
another one if it's late 1800s he's
probably gonna show up yeah they're like three or four personalities they're
probably involved exactly exactly so yeah that's the story of the card of giant
yeah a thing i have now learned yes and as a reminder from this side of the
microphone don't believe everything you hear this is beggar's belief.
(24:29):
Music.
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