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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that proves there's more than one way to make history.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Luesier, and today we're talking about one of

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Speaker 1: the most famous hoaxes of the nineteenth century, the discovery

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Speaker 1: of the Cardiff Giant, or, as he was billed to

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Speaker 1: an unsuspecting public, the American Goliath. The day was October sixteenth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine. A ten foot tall stone giant was

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Speaker 1: unearthed on a farm in Cardiff, New York. It was

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Speaker 1: found by two day laborers, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols,

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Speaker 1: who had been hired to dig a well by the

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Speaker 1: farm's owner, William Newell. The giant appeared to be either

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Speaker 1: of a petrified man or an ancient statue, but the

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Speaker 1: truth made little difference to Newell. He set up a

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Speaker 1: tent around the giant and started charging people fifty cents

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Speaker 1: apiece to view it. The attraction quickly gained national attention

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Speaker 1: and set off a flurry of debate over its true origin,

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Speaker 1: only to be declared a fraud shortly after. William Nuwell's farm,

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Speaker 1: just south of Syracuse was the perfect place to perpetrate

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Speaker 1: such a hoax, as many people assumed the giant was

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Speaker 1: a relic of one of the Native American cultures that

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Speaker 1: had once inhabited the area. Some even thought it could

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Speaker 1: be the petrified remains of an ancient relative of the

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Speaker 1: Onondaga people. In reality, though the so called petrified giant

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Speaker 1: was nothing but a statue carved from a five ton

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Speaker 1: block of gypsum, There was nothing ancient about it either.

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Speaker 1: Neuell had buried the statue on his farm just one

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Speaker 1: year earlier, and then instructed the workers he hired to

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Speaker 1: dig in that exact spot. The farmer played a key

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Speaker 1: role in the hoax, but it was his cousin, George Hull,

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Speaker 1: who was the true master mind. Hull worked as a

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Speaker 1: tobacconist in Binghamton, New York, and was the subject of

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Speaker 1: much local controversy due to his atheist views, an unpopular

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Speaker 1: stance in what was then a devoutly Christian nation. One

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Speaker 1: day in eighteen sixty seven, the cigar maker went to Aclee,

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Speaker 1: Iowa on business, and while there he crossed paths with

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Speaker 1: a traveling Methodist preacher named Reverend Turk. The two men

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Speaker 1: got into a heated argument over whether scripture should be

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Speaker 1: interpreted literally. One Biblical passage in particular was a sticking

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Speaker 1: point for Hull, Genesis sixty four, which says, quote, there

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Speaker 1: were giants in the earth in those days. Hull thought

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Speaker 1: it was ridiculous to believe that there were once literal giants,

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Speaker 1: but Reverend Turk insisted that everything in the Bible should

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Speaker 1: be taken exactly as written. Giants and all. The assertion

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Speaker 1: made Hull wonder just how far people's beliefs would take them.

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Speaker 1: Would it be possible, for instance, to convince them that

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Speaker 1: a stone statue was actually a petrified giant. If it was,

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Speaker 1: Hull thought, then he could not only prove how silly

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Speaker 1: and gullible religious believers are, he could likely make some

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Speaker 1: money in the process. With that dual goal in mind,

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Speaker 1: he spent the next two years carefully laying his trap. First,

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Speaker 1: he traveled to Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he was able

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Speaker 1: to source a huge slab of gypsum by promising it

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Speaker 1: would be used to make a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Then,

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Speaker 1: after shipping the stone to Chicago, he hired a pair

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Speaker 1: of sculptors to fashion it into a phony giant. It

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Speaker 1: took them several months to complete the carving, with Hull

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Speaker 1: himself posing as a model. The finished product was a

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Speaker 1: ten foot tall statue of a naked man lying on

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Speaker 1: his back with his right arm gripping his stomach and

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Speaker 1: one leg crossed over the other. It weighed nearly three

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Speaker 1: one thousand pounds and included fine details to make it

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Speaker 1: seem more authentic. The sculptors coated the statue in sulfuric

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Speaker 1: acid to make the stone look older, and they poked

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Speaker 1: pins into the body to give the impression of skin pores.

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Speaker 1: Once the giant was ready, at a cost of about

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Speaker 1: three thousand dollars, Hull contacted his cousin in Cardiff and

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Speaker 1: got him to agree to allow the statue to be

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Speaker 1: buried on his farm in exchange for a cut of

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Speaker 1: the eventual profits. In the fall of eighteen sixty eight,

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Speaker 1: Hull shipped the behemoth to Nwell's property in an iron

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Speaker 1: sealed box, and together, under the cover of night, they

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Speaker 1: buried the statue near a barn in a hole about

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Speaker 1: three feet deep. They kept their scheme a secret for

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Speaker 1: the next year, and then in early October of eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty nine, Hull wrote to his cousin and told him

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Speaker 1: it was finally time for the Cardiff Giant to make

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Speaker 1: his grand debut. It didn't take long for the workers

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Speaker 1: Nwell had hired to excavate the body, and once news

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Speaker 1: of the discovery spread, people came from miles around to

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Speaker 1: get a look for themselves. In fact, an estimated twenty

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Speaker 1: five hundred people came to see it in the first

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Speaker 1: week alone. It wasn't just local farmers and tourists either.

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Speaker 1: College professors, newspaper reporters, and a fair number of archaeologists

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Speaker 1: also came out and paid fifty cents for a glimpse

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Speaker 1: at the supposed giant. For his part, William Null kept

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Speaker 1: quiet about what the giant might be. He let viewers

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Speaker 1: draw their own conclusions about whether it was a petrified man,

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Speaker 1: an ancient statue, or just an elaborate hoax. And even

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Speaker 1: though there were obvious signs that it was a forgery,

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Speaker 1: including visible chisel marks which should have worn away over time,

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Speaker 1: many people still wanted to believe it was real. For some,

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Speaker 1: they just liked the excitement of finding something that couldn't

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Speaker 1: be fully explained, but for others, the giant was taken

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Speaker 1: as confirmation of the literal truth of the Bible. Just

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Speaker 1: as Hull had anticipated that said, George Hull knew his

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Speaker 1: ruse wouldn't fool people forever, so just a few weeks

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Speaker 1: after resurrecting his giant, he sold it to a group

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Speaker 1: of businessmen who planned to take it on tour. The

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Speaker 1: sale price was about twenty three thousand dollars, a little

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Speaker 1: less than half of which went to William Newell. The

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Speaker 1: giant's new owners took it on the road that November,

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Speaker 1: and while thousands came to see it at each stop,

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Speaker 1: all that exposure only led to more questions about its authenticity.

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Speaker 1: The killing blow came from auth Neil Charles Marsh, a

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Speaker 1: respected paleontology professor at Yale, who took one look at

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Speaker 1: the giant and declared it quote a very recent origin

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Speaker 1: and a most decided humbug. Not long after, George Hull

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Speaker 1: admitted to the press that the giant was not real,

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Speaker 1: But remarkably, the public didn't seem to care. They kept

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Speaker 1: coming to the exhibition anyway, and even gave the giant

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Speaker 1: an affectionate nickname, Old Hoaxy. By that point, demand for

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Speaker 1: the petrified giant had grown so large that even renowned

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Speaker 1: showman P. T. Barnum had gotten in on the action.

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Speaker 1: After his offer to buy the Cardiff Giant was rejected,

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Speaker 1: he created his own fake Giant, which eventually became even

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Speaker 1: more popular than the original. For the next decade, both

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Speaker 1: giants continued to make regular appearances at state fairs and

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Speaker 1: carnivals across the United States. It took way longer than

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Speaker 1: anyone expected, but by eighteen eighty the public's fascination with

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Speaker 1: the stone behemans had finally run its course. Neither giant

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Speaker 1: was scrapped completely, though, and today the original Cardiff Giant

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Speaker 1: can still be seen at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown,

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Speaker 1: New York. Meanwhile, Barnum's copy of that fake now resides

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Speaker 1: in Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan. With

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Speaker 1: the Cardiff Giant hoax, George Hull had set out to

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Speaker 1: prove the absurdity of religious belief, but in the end

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Speaker 1: it was American scientists who were left with egg on

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Speaker 1: their face. Many prominent scholars had proclaimed the Giant to

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Speaker 1: be the real deal, and the embarrassment they felt when

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Speaker 1: proven wrong spurred them to be more rigorous In the future.

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Speaker 1: In that way, the Cardiff Giant actually hastened the development

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Speaker 1: of archaeology as a professional field of study in the

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Speaker 1: United States. Within a few decades, a formal methodology for

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Speaker 1: archaeology had emerged, making it that much harder for hucksters

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Speaker 1: like George Hull to pull one over. Perhaps the clearest

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Speaker 1: example of that progress was in eighteen seventy seven, when

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Speaker 1: Hull once again unearthed the supposed giant in Colorado, this

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Speaker 1: one sporting a tale with the help of P. T. Barnum.

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Speaker 1: Hull advertised the forgery as Darwin's Missing Link, but this

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Speaker 1: time the hoax was exposed before anyone had time to

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Speaker 1: fall for it. I'm Gay Bluesier and hopefully you now

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Speaker 1: know a little more more about history today than you

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Speaker 1: did yesterday. You can learn even more about history by

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Speaker 1: following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show,

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Speaker 1: and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free

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Speaker 1: to send them my way by writing to this day

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Speaker 1: at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing

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Speaker 1: the show, and thank you for listening. I'll see you

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Speaker 1: back here again tomorrow for another day in History. Class