WEBVTT - They Might Be Giants 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:02.760 Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:09.080 Hey Zaren, what's nahda? You know it's ridiculous? 0:00:09.119 --> 0:00:13.240 I do, I do? Actually yama Nashi Japan. Oh come 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:16.840 on now, no, no, I wasn't done. In the place 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:20.319 of Yama Nashi Japan. There is this theme park. It 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.200 was only open for about four years, but in that 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:28.480 time they were able to build this giant Gulliver statue. 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:33.280 Enormous Gulliver statue, you know, from the book Gulliver's Travelers 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:35.080 by Jonathan Swift. And so when he goes to like, 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:37.440 you know, like the certain Lands, there's like, you know whatever, 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:39.520 the yahoos and so forth, and one of the little 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:42.880 Putians are tiny, and so he's huge, right, So it's 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.680 the Lilliputian world. So it is huge Jonathan Swift lying 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.919 on the ground, and so we are all relative to him, Liliputians. 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:54.000 This statue renders all human beings into Liliputians, right. And 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:56.000 as I said, it was only over four years. It's 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:58.560 now out of business and it's just been sitting there 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.960 basically the syntigree. So there's this disintegrating Gulliver statue that 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:05.800 can plague a little fictional trick on you. But you 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:07.760 got to go to Japan to see it. But I 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:09.560 love that. They're just like, I ain't cleaning that up. 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:14.000 Just just leave it for nature to be clean. Yeah, whatever, 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.640 that ain't our history. I don't care. Leave him to 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:17.199 the soil. 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:19.920 I like it. That's ridiculous. That's good. 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:21.600 If I'm going to Yamanashi, Japan. 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:23.800 You know what else is ridiculous? 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:24.280 No? 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:25.240 Another giant? 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:35.680 What you got? Giants? Giants? 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:52.920 This is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:56.040 and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:58.160 one ridiculous. 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:00.560 Damn right, Zaren Elizabeth. 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:01.800 Do you like Buried Treasure? 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:02.520 I do. 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:03.720 I like Buried Treasure. 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.480 I'm a big fan of the booty. 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:09.120 Like that he talked to it. 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:11.680 That's what pirates called it, buried treasure. 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.960 Okay, we've talked about that show The detectorss on here 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:16.560 before Metal Detective. 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:17.919 I recommend it to everybody. 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:20.320 I made a lot of people mad talking about the 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:23.600 Gilgamesh dream tablet. That hobby lobby got its grubby little 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.000 hands on. Oh really it didn't go over well. 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:27.920 OK, Sorry for your email inbox. 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:32.680 I have more archaeological treasures for you today, though, let 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:34.839 me start off with, as you always like to say, 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:35.639 an appetizer. 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:37.359 Yeah, mos boots. Yes. 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:41.600 In seventeen twenty five, I'm going back, baby, I love that. 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.239 Seventeen twenty five there was eighteenthentry doesn't get enough cloud, No, 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.920 it really doesn't. We don't cover it enough on this. Yeah. 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:52.960 There was a professor named Johann Bartholomeus Adam Behringer. 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:54.560 Okay, that's a name. 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:57.560 He was poking around his poke, poke poking and looking 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:02.400 for fossils, all right, as one does Wursburg, Germany. 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:04.360 Right, and got anywhere near Neanderthal. 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:10.399 Sure, right on top of it. He was into erictis. Okays, sure, 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:12.880 that is the geological side of fossils. 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:13.840 Ah. 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.160 And so he hired some kids, was like, hey, kids, 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:20.959 you guys like, come dig with me, and off they went. 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:22.480 I got shoveled, you got time. 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:25.840 Meanwhile, there were some guys at the university where they 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:28.919 all worked, who decided they had had an absolute enough 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.680 of his snooty, arrogant ways he was. He was a 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:33.560 real snooty guy. 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.720 Only kids would hang out with paid them, right, Adults 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:38.960 like only around him? 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:42.720 Okay, so these people at his coworkers decided to prank him. 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:47.520 I'm talking about eighteenth century pranks. Okay, that's not how 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:50.080 I imagine my life would be when I crossed the stage 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:52.840 to accept my college diploma, I would be talking about 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:53.880 eighteenth century. 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:57.960 Prank life of welcome surprises, beautiful, wonderful surprise awareness. 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.920 One of the guys he carved figures out of limestone. 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:09.120 They were little animals, spiders, frogs, lizards. Spiders. Just isn't 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.520 aside when I always say spiders like that. A friend 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.800 of mine kept getting these call, these collect calls from 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:18.159 the county jails. No, from the county jail. It would 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:20.880 be like, you have a collect call from whatever county 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.720 jail from And the guy would always go, spider. 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:26.360 Yeah. 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:29.640 Laura and I laughed about that. Anyway, I can't see 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:32.159 the word spider, the spider, So she'd always no, I 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:33.120 do not accept the charge. 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:35.679 Was it a wrong call? But they had the wrong number. 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:36.640 Have they ever gotten through? 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:40.719 No called all the time? Anyway? Spiders, frogs, and lizards 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:45.760 they had. There were inscriptions on these little figures. It 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:49.200 was the name of God in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:51.640 A little bit little bit of each on each one. 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:54.520 So they went around these two these three days, they 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:57.200 went and they planted the figures all over where the 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:01.800 Professor and his boy crew were looking. Fessor Barringer found them. 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.040 He's so excited. He's like, these are awesome, you guys, 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:06.520 and they all sat down in the dirt and looked 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:07.080 at him together. 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:10.120 Thank do's a law. 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:17.279 First, he thought they were actual fossils signed by God. 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:21.000 Ran them down when I tell you that these are 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:26.719 in no way convincing a fossils. They are not realistic representations. 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.560 They're kind of cartoonish. And he's like, oh, and it's 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:31.599 got God's name on it. God's like, here, I made this. 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:32.880 You know I always signed my works. 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:34.960 Yeah, I mean look at the bottom of our feet. 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:36.240 Yeah, that's where the signature is. 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:39.360 Then he thought about it and he was like, maybe 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:40.440 these aren't fossils. 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:41.679 Because the kids. 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.080 Were like rolling their eyes up. He's like, you know what, 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:46.919 I think these were carved by prehistoric pagans. 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:49.080 That's got to be it druids. 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:52.440 And then he's like, but here's the problem. How did 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:58.279 they know God's name they carved that on there? And 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.480 then people were like, actually, I see so he gives 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:04.680 up on the Pagans. He's like, they're fossils. I go 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:07.480 back to them being fossils, got God's namon. So people 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:08.960 are like, well, you know when you actually when you 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:11.400 look at it, there are chisel marks on the side. 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:15.400 That's not God's handiwork. And he's like, well, you know, 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:17.880 speak to the man himself. I don't know, you don't know, 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.240 let's ask him. So all of his theories, he collects 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:22.200 all these series. 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:24.080 Which is an academic, yes, a professor. 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:27.720 He has all these theories, and he publishes them. Oh 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:30.679 poor man, And not long after the publication of the book, 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.719 the penny drops, he finally figures out, wait a second, 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.720 these are fake. Now he put everything into writing this 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:41.080 book he published, so he figures out these aren't real. 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:43.760 And then he also figures out who made them his 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:48.880 nemeses at work. He sued two of them and one 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:52.320 and those guys lost their job at the college. They 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:54.600 each lost their job, and one of them was even 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:56.960 banished from the city. I mean, this is seventeen. 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.480 Hundred like out out with you the city wall. 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:02.800 Yeah, and then he comes back with the wig on 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:09.080 and there's not the court transcripts. The hoaxers testified that 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.040 they pulled this prank because quote, he was so arrogant 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:13.080 and despised us. 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:15.280 All, oh yeah, it's like the Drake's plate. 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:17.480 Then they'll come up and see exactly like Drake's plate. 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:20.880 So barringer. He spent lots of time and money trying 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.160 to chase down all the copies of his book to 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:27.400 get them back. He's like, we printed, I don't know 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:29.760 three hundred of them. I gotta find these three hundred 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:32.800 suckers who bought it. And but you know, don't worry 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.480 about it. It got a second printing in seventeen thirty seven. 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:36.640 Oh man, so it did well. 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:38.920 It did well, and then it was translated into English 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:40.000 in nineteen sixty three. 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:41.120 Poor dude. 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.200 As for the stones, some of them are currently on 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:47.440 display at the Oxford University Museum. 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:49.680 With a red sign pointing down joke. 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.480 Do you think this is a fossil? And they're now 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:56.160 known as lugenstein. I don't know if I'm saying it right. 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.120 The lying stone with that emphasis is definitely right. Yes, 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.880 maybe not, but it was rare somewhere. It's the lying stones, 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:04.360 lying stones. I like that. 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:05.320 That's a solid hoax. 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.480 That's a great one, though. 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:13.600 He had such a desire to find something of significance, 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.920 even if he had to like stretch the boundaries of plausibility. 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:19.520 An exploit child labor to get there. Exactly. 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:23.240 Well, in eighteen sixty six there was another scientist doing 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.920 his best to will his belief into evidence. 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:27.840 Eighteen sixty six eighteen sixty six. 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.880 Were jumping forward fifty years or so. There was a 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:36.880 professor of geology at Harvard named Josiah Whitney from Eli. Yeah, 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:40.960 he was also the state geologist of California, and Mount Whitney, 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:43.160 the highest peak in the lower forty eight, is named after. 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.400 Okay, as he was an he have a book like 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:46.959 a naturalist. 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:49.439 Oh yeah, he totally is. But he was an expert 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:54.000 in economic geology, so mins. Yeah, but he had his 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:57.160 share of mishaps for all of his you know, honors 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:01.160 and whatnot. He got into it with John Muir about 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:03.360 the origins of Yosemite. 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.040 Kind of one of those let them fight exactly. 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:09.600 So Whitney said that the Yosemite Valley was created when 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.360 there was a cataclysmic sinking of the valley floor. 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.080 That was Whitney's theory, not glacious. 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:18.360 Yeah, mirrors, Like, no, my dude, that makes no sense. 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.720 It was glacial action. They smacked him on the side 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.160 of the head. The Whitney then called him a quote 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.160 ignoramus and a quote mirror sheep heard her. 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:29.280 Did you call him a pumpkinhead? 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:31.720 White? Well, you know what, Whitney, you're not the one 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:33.720 who wound up on the back of the California quarter 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:38.280 boo roasted in eighteen sixty six. 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:39.400 He was. 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.520 Whitney was all about proving that humans, mastodons, and mammoths 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:45.640 all existed at the same time on this planet. 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:46.800 Oh, they definitely partied together. 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:50.080 Well we know now that it's sort of true twelve 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.800 thousand years ago in the place of scene era. Whitney 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.720 was pretty sure it was the Pliocene era, like three 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:00.120 million years ago. Yeah, big, no on that way. So there, 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.199 there he is. He's like swanning around the California Gold Country, 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:04.000 just east coast. 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:04.480 End it up. 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:08.199 The grizzled Minor forty nine ers, the prospectors, they did 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:11.640 not like him, which hold on, they're also newcomers, like 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:16.440 who are they to whatever? Yeah, So anyway, these these miners, 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.240 they wanted to play a joke on Whitney and kind 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:21.240 of like take him down a notch. So they came 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:24.080 into town from the Goldfield saying that they'd found a skull, 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.000 a really really old one. Where'd you find it? One 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:29.680 hundred and thirty feet down under the earth? If we 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.439 found it under lava, Now I'm going to guess that's 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:33.360 like the cold kind. 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:35.040 I think they mean like the saltrocket. 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.080 Yeah, but you know they said lava. They don't really know. 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:43.079 So Whitney stoked. He's like so excited. He comes running. 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.160 It's got to be ancient. He looks at it. Look, 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:47.320 this has to be millions of years old. Of course, 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:50.640 he tells everyone his theory has been proven. Look, I 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.480 have the skull to prove it. This was a skull 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.920 of a human who walked with mastadons. Three years later, 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:00.480 a minister told the San Francisco Evening Bulletin that skull 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.800 had been planted as a hoax, that a local shopkeeper 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:06.520 had put it there on a lark. Whitney didn't budge. 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.400 The guy at Harvard ran florine analysis on it. They 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.080 didn't have carbon dating yet, and he said that the 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:15.600 test revealed that the skull was recent. Whitney stayed the course. 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.400 So he's got science telling him it's recent. 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:21.239 No, and he's a scientist. He's a scientist. 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:26.720 He convinces another Harvard geology professor, Frederick Ward Putnam, that 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:29.800 he was right. Putnam's like, Okay, I believe you. 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:30.520 That sounds good. 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:33.080 Although whatever you say, you got a mountain named after you. 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.880 But he wants to know more. He's hungry Zaron for information. 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:39.200 So he had touched the skull. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:43.760 He sads out to California to do some investigations. He 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.640 was told out there that the miners had desecrated an 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:50.960 indigenous burial site, likely while prospecting, and planted the bones 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:54.040 and skulls like for skips and giggles. We'll say, Okay, 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:57.720 Putnam didn't believe that. But here's the thing. Everyone should 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.840 always believe the horrible behavior of gold rush miners. 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:02.000 Yeah, I always better. 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:03.320 They were horrible people. 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:05.840 They're generally in the practice of exploiting, and so you 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:08.160 can pretty much just extend from there. They're probably going 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:09.840 to exploit other things exactly. 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:12.960 So it wasn't until the early nineteen hundreds that the 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:16.679 skull was officially deemed a hoax. All that time, and 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:19.520 I should know that there are still creationists who believe 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:22.280 it's real, okay, and they're going to send me angry 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:24.920 emails to but I don't want to get into it anyway. 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.600 So there's my entrance into this story that I have 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:30.040 for you today. This isn't it? 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:35.000 That was just the a gold rush skull the foyer. 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:38.840 Of this mansion of ridiculous excavation nice foye. 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.520 Yeah, yeah, the gilded frames are a nice time. 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:44.320 I want to tell you about George. 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:46.200 Hull, George Hall. Do not know this one? 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:47.120 Is that okay with you? 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:48.040 Yeah? I got time. 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:49.440 Do you feel comfortable in this space? 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.520 Yeah? If you'll give me like a hug later, okay? Maybe. 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:57.040 George Hall he was a tobacconist. He made cigars. He 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:00.400 was a smoke slanger in the terms of the day. 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:04.680 He lived in Binghamton, New York, and that was like 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:08.240 almost one hundred and fifty years after old Professor Barringer 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:10.760 was digging up phony relics all over Germany. 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.400 Hull was an atheist, so an atheist leaf pusher. 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:18.400 Yes, and he was big into science, especially the theory 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:24.720 of evolution. In Charles Darwin Big Darwin Head in eighteen 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:29.240 sixty eight, Hull was visiting his sister in Aclee, Iowa, 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:31.680 and while he was there, the two of them went 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:34.959 to a Methodist revival meeting. That was fun for him. 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:35.520 That's good. 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:39.079 During the sermon, Hull heard Reverend H. B. Turk quote 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.520 Genesis six ' four and this is I will read 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:42.800 it to you. 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:44.200 Okay, I was going to do the quote, but you 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:45.480 do it. It's fine, go ahead. 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:48.520 The Nephilim were in the earth in those days and 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.440 after that when the sons of God came in unto 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.120 the daughters of men and they bore children to them, 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:56.920 the same were the mighty men that were of old, 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:57.920 the men of renown. 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:01.720 What are the Nephilim like the angels? 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.360 But they're the ones on earth loosely translated, their giants. 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.439 They're the son of fallen angels. So in the Jerusalem Bible, 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:12.760 what we read in Catholic School uses the word nephilim. 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.040 In the King James version, which is what Hull would 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:18.480 have heard quoted, they use the word giants. So he 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:20.280 just straight up says giants. 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:22.320 Yeah, because they're like the opposite of the chair of them. Right. 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:25.200 Hull's sister kind of like stepped in it by bringing 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.640 him to this revival because when the sermon ended, Hull 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:31.480 went to the pastor and started to debate him about 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:36.200 the literal accuracy of the Bible. He did not win 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.320 this argument because the rest of the congregation joined in 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:42.880 and shouted him down, like Hull, dude, let these people 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:45.280 enjoy their faith. Who cares? 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:47.480 Yeah, literally in their church? Who cares? 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:49.880 But he was changed that day. He was on a mission. 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:54.520 He had to prove these people wrong, embarrass them, and 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.360 maybe and maybe make a little money on the side. 0:14:57.760 --> 0:14:59.920 Why not, It's America, he law. 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.000 He was outnumbered by these meeting attendants, but he wasn't 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.320 gonna let it get him down. He decided, you know what, 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:06.400 I'm making a giant. 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:09.040 What that's his answer, I'm. 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:12.560 Making a big petrified giant. I'm making a big old 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:14.240 fake and I'm gonna sell tickets. 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:16.120 I'm selling tickets to see my long daddy. 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:17.040 That'll show them. 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:21.560 Yeah, okay, Barnum involved in this decision. 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:25.320 Making hold onto your underpants? He needed help, of course, huh. 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.760 So he talked to a friend of his in Marshalltown, Iowa. Okay, 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:30.160 this is a guy named H. B. 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:30.760 Martin. 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:35.880 So the two of them HB. What it's like, Horace 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:37.920 booty face. 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:40.440 I have a family member. His nickname. His name was 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:42.600 Aura O R A. In his middle of the name, 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:44.600 I don't know, it was t. I don't know what 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:46.720 the name was, but we always call him oor t Okay. 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:48.400 I just think that's so great we have those little 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.000 short names like that. Is even better because he's down 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:52.040 to two sounds exactly. 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:56.400 So, HB. Martin. These two guys, Hull and Martin, they 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.560 get together. They go to Fort Dodge, Iowa, and they 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.560 checked in at the Saint Charles Hotel. So this is 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:06.240 what a resident wrote into the Dubuke Times. Quote. For 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:09.680 a number of weeks after their arrival here, their movements 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:12.760 seemed to be of a very suspicious character. They would 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:17.280 wander about town apparently with no definite object in view. Lady, 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:18.160 that's called tourism. 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.360 So they wrote into the paper, I'm a busybody, and 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:22.960 here's what I noticed. I saw these two men people 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:23.440 in town. 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:27.720 They actually did have a definite object in view. When 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:29.560 we come back from this break, I'll tell you what 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:29.880 it was. 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:30.840 I hope it's a giant. 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:55.240 Hello, Skippy, what up? When we left off George Hall 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.200 and his pal HB. Martin with the cool name. They 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:02.200 were cruising around Fort Dodge for actions, right kind of 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.200 action you'll see. So they found out about this guy 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:09.840 named Cebe Cummins, another gra name Ceeb Cummins. He owned 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:14.000 a gypsum quarry Okay, and the pair tried to get 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.320 a contract with Cummins to cut out a block of 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.520 gypsum that would be twelve feet long by three and 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:24.120 a half feet wide and two feet thick, all. 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:26.639 Twelve by three by starting to put together with their building. 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:31.119 Come and said no, yeah, because he asked them a 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:33.480 bunch of questions about why they wanted such a big 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:35.960 piece of gypsum, and they He never got the same 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:36.919 story twice from them. 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:38.800 They couldn't you just say the words, I'm a sculptor. 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.280 Here's some money, Yeah, I'm a sculptor. Do you take cash? Yeah? No. 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:44.320 So one time they told him that they were going 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:46.919 to quote exhibit in New York as a specimen of 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:49.119 the products of Fort Dodge and vicinity. 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:50.640 That's wrong with these guys, Like we. 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.720 Want to show Fort Dodge's finest gypsum at the museum. 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:54.960 Liker, look here. 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.120 And like they're suddenly they were like real Fort Dodge boosters. 0:17:58.720 --> 0:17:59.400 You just got here. 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:01.280 I don't sell than Fort Dodge nerds. 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:04.960 Then they said they wanted to quote send it to Washington. 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.520 Is Iowa's contribution to the Lincoln Monument? 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:08.480 Wait? 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:12.320 What as if they're taking like, send us send it's 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:12.800 a pot luck. 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.360 Yeah, it's you know, it's a rock luck. We put 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.399 this every fifties all the states. I don't know how 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:19.600 many of the time memorial I don't know twelve. 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:23.119 So Commons he figures, Okay, these guys are up to 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:26.800 no good. They want this for nefarious and then he said, 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:31.240 I'm not going to do business with them at any price. Wow, principal, 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.240 run of them, Yeah, Pedler, Yeah. 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:37.280 Not like those guys you normally find slung in gyps 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:41.800 and anybody with gyps and nickels in their pockets, just. 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.200 Little bags of gyps on the side of Holland Martin. 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:51.440 Lucy's got them rocks, got them rocks. I should stop. 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.320 Yeah. So this Okay, they try again, Holland Martin. They're 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.240 not going to be deterred. This is gypsum country, after all, 0:18:57.280 --> 0:18:59.760 there's not you know, Commons isn't the only game in town. Okay, 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:02.960 so they hooked up with Michael Foley and he got 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:06.000 them a five ton block that they needed from old 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:06.960 Gypsum Hollow. 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.120 Nice. He himself, he just sliced it out. 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:12.280 I mean, is he a gyps guy or I don't know, 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:16.000 maybe stole it. Who knows. Hall had the block shipped 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:20.879 to a German stonecutter in Chicago named Edward Berghart. Nice 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:24.080 ships it off. Berghart agreed to keep Mum on the 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.840 whole scam if they cut him in on the prophet. Oh, 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.760 She's like, I know you're doing something crazy with this, fine, 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.479 but cut me in bek They had exactly, they had 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:38.440 a deal. So Burghart he hired two sculptors to assist 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:42.520 with the project, and then he Hull himself posed for 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.280 the statue. Oh and he made sure that they gave 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:45.640 him a. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:46.200 Big don. 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:52.520 I'm not kidding. It's a pretty healthy sized member on 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:52.920 this thing. 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.160 Well got yeah, I'd say, oh, you know, and it's 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.400 kind of would gray sweats. You're saying, this is a winter. 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:03.320 And the figure is standing there like it has to 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:04.120 go to the bathroom. 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:06.479 What is that I think of kids doing. 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.240 It's like kind of slightly bent over with his legs crossed, 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:12.199 and then one hand is covering his lower torso but 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:14.480 like with his ding ding hanging out, and on the 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:19.520 other hand looked down here trying to hold it behind 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:21.200 it with my hand, but there's not enough hand. 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:21.840 I don't have enough. 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.359 And then the other hands behind his back like presumably 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:26.480 to stop the turtle head. 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:31.480 Oh, I was thinking like a thoughtful pose like my 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:34.000 morning constitution, triumphs. 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:35.760 Burghart. 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:36.400 It both ends. 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:40.960 Apparently Burghart put stains and asses on the giant sculpture 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:44.959 to give it like that weathered Chevvy machine. Then he 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:47.520 and his underlings they made pores on the surface of 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:50.280 it by beating it with steel knitting needles that had. 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:52.919 Been embedded into a board. Cool, Isn't that's smart. 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:56.040 When it was done, the statue of the giant, the 0:20:56.320 --> 0:21:01.200 enormous George Hull naked, stood ten tall and weighed almost 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:06.480 three thousand pounds. Dam yeah, damn. At this point, Hull 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:09.760 had spent twenty six hundred dollars on the hoax, and 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:12.440 that's more than fifty five thousand dollars in today's money. 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:17.840 Oh wow, on a hoax to prove the past or wrong. 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:20.800 Yeah. For Skipson giggles because he had a bad moment 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:22.680 in a church and some people shoutowed him down. He's like, 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:25.520 I got fifty five grand on that. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:26.680 And also give it a big hog. 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:29.840 I think that was the real purpose of it. In 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:33.080 November of eighteen sixty eight, Hull transported the giant in 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:36.800 an iron sealed box via train to his cousin's house. 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.240 And the cousin, William Stubb Newall. 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:42.119 Where these names kind of amazing. 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:44.879 He owned a farm in Cardiff, New York, and he 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:49.880 was sworn to secrecy. Hull buried the giant near Newell's 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:52.520 barn and wedged it under the under some roots, so 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:54.440 it looked like it had been there for like centuries 0:21:54.520 --> 0:21:59.399 nay millennia. Hull then went back to Binghamton, back to 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:02.840 his tobacco a shop, back to the grind, and he waited. 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:05.840 How are you moving this multiple ton slab of rock 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:08.840 by yourself and then easing it into the earth and 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:12.880 rebearing without having anybody else hiring cruise? Right? So now 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:14.960 other people are supposed to be mun right, I'm just 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:18.160 watching these concentric circles grow, but go on. 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:21.560 While he supplied the locals with like mouth, throat and 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:25.479 lung cancer. He patiently plotted his next move. Okay, and 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.720 a year after taking his giant to his cousin's house, 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:31.800 he was ready to act. He wrote a letter to Newell, 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:35.439 to old uh Stub and said it was time to 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:36.240 dig up the giant. 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:40.960 Oh Zarin, close you out, Oh yeah, closed. 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:44.760 I want you to picture it. It's October sixteenth, eighteen 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:48.800 sixty nine. It's a crisp autumn day in Cardiff, New York. 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:50.320 Okay, I'm in New York. Thank God. 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:53.800 Birds sing as a light breeze blows through the trees, 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:57.240 sprinkling dried leaves gently onto the earth. Your name is 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:00.119 Gideon Emmons, and you've been hired to dig away. Well, 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:01.800 you're a day laborer. 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:04.119 I prefer ditch digger. Elizabeth, you're a ditch digger. 0:23:04.960 --> 0:23:06.800 I was trying to give you some dignity. You and 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:09.480 your pal Henry Nichols. You were hired by Stub Newell. 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.479 You follow farmer Noule through a stand of trees. As 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:17.760 you head towards this barn, fall leaves crunch beneath your feet. 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:20.320 You look around his property and you think you see 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:25.160 the perfect place for a while. No, Newell says, over there, right, 0:23:25.200 --> 0:23:28.719 by the barn. You approach the barn and Newell opens 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:30.880 it up to get you some tools. An old barn 0:23:30.920 --> 0:23:33.600 cat comes screeching out and sprints by you. You're handed 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:37.040 you tools and get to work. After about three feet, 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.800 your shovel strikes something, probably just some old stone. You 0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:42.680 dig a little more and you look into the hole 0:23:43.119 --> 0:23:45.960 that's not rock. You brush some dirt away, and you 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:50.479 reveal a giant stone foot. Who what in the wild 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:54.680 world of sports is this there? You keep digging of 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:58.200 duck fet Sorry, You keep digging and clearing, and pretty 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:00.959 soon you see that you've uncovered a large man. 0:24:01.440 --> 0:24:03.600 Wow, very enormous. 0:24:04.920 --> 0:24:07.400 Does this man look in any way realistic? 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:09.040 No? 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:11.919 No, But that doesn't stop your pal Henry from yelling. 0:24:12.240 --> 0:24:15.440 I declare, some old Indian has been buried here. 0:24:16.440 --> 0:24:19.359 So he drinks the moonshine whiskey early in the morning, 0:24:20.320 --> 0:24:21.600 he starts with the sun. 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:24.400 Now, how could this man possibly have had this as 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:30.560 his first guess? Maybe prompted? No matter, You and Henry 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:33.399 and the farmer all agree that this just has to 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:35.679 be a petrified giant the only answer. 0:24:35.760 --> 0:24:38.720 And I'm not a credible witness, so from the olden times, yeah, 0:24:38.760 --> 0:24:41.120 I mean this is probably really old. 0:24:40.960 --> 0:24:44.320 Yeah, newel stub. He got to work spreading the word 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:46.800 of the wonder discovered right on his property. This is 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:49.960 what it said in the Syracuse Journal quote. Men left 0:24:50.000 --> 0:24:53.480 their work, women caught up their babies, and children in numbers, 0:24:53.560 --> 0:24:55.960 all hurried to the scene where the interest of that 0:24:56.040 --> 0:25:00.600 little community centered. So like it's just you know, magnet. Yeah, 0:25:01.359 --> 0:25:04.040 war of the worlds, but for one object, for one object. 0:25:04.440 --> 0:25:08.240 Cardiff was known for its fossil deposits. Really yeah, apparently 0:25:08.359 --> 0:25:11.879 everyone in the area, every gawker, every amateur expert, was 0:25:11.960 --> 0:25:14.480 sure it was the body of an ancient man who 0:25:14.480 --> 0:25:19.440 had been petrified by a nearby swamp, and initial examinations 0:25:19.480 --> 0:25:23.760 confirmed this theory. Some later determined that the giant wasn't 0:25:23.760 --> 0:25:26.760 a petrified man but a statue, because it doesn't look 0:25:26.800 --> 0:25:29.480 like an actual human being. But it's like, you know, 0:25:29.840 --> 0:25:31.240 it's it's. 0:25:31.040 --> 0:25:33.720 From what I understand, when a body turns to rock, 0:25:33.760 --> 0:25:36.320 when organic trail turns to rock, it shrinks a lot. 0:25:36.400 --> 0:25:38.720 So you were gonna have weird structure. Did they make 0:25:38.760 --> 0:25:39.680 it like round level? 0:25:39.760 --> 0:25:41.680 I will show you a picture. I will show you picture. 0:25:41.920 --> 0:25:42.880 Be the thing that would throw me off. 0:25:42.920 --> 0:25:45.000 It was like, well it looks like fleshy. 0:25:45.080 --> 0:25:45.320 Yeah. 0:25:45.320 --> 0:25:48.359 I'm like, come on now, So this was not a 0:25:48.400 --> 0:25:51.960 petrified man this they said, Okay, maybe it's a statue 0:25:52.119 --> 0:25:54.240 and it was not one created and buried by a 0:25:54.280 --> 0:25:55.320 disgruntled atheist. 0:25:55.400 --> 0:25:56.200 No, no, of course not. 0:25:56.359 --> 0:25:59.760 It was ancient from olden times. They started thinking, well, 0:25:59.800 --> 0:26:03.520 maybe he was carved by French Jesuits hundreds of years ago, 0:26:03.880 --> 0:26:07.920 like as a way to really wow the indigenous people 0:26:07.960 --> 0:26:09.720 of the region, give them the old razzle dazzle. 0:26:09.840 --> 0:26:12.040 Okay, not like a roadmarker or anything. It's just a 0:26:12.040 --> 0:26:13.760 little razzle dazzle from the priest. 0:26:13.880 --> 0:26:17.760 Stub Stubnoel. He was firmly in the man camp. He 0:26:17.960 --> 0:26:21.240 was positive to all outsiders that it was a petrified giant. 0:26:21.280 --> 0:26:22.880 I know it's petrified giant. Whant to see one? 0:26:23.160 --> 0:26:24.920 Right, there is a man, right, and he's like, you 0:26:25.000 --> 0:26:28.440 know what, I'm going to rebury it. No, shout the neighbors. No, 0:26:28.520 --> 0:26:31.680 don't do it. It has historical value. Well, you know, 0:26:31.800 --> 0:26:33.680 I guess you're right. I mean, I can't keep him 0:26:33.680 --> 0:26:35.000 from the world. It's too important. 0:26:35.080 --> 0:26:36.320 Yeah, I who am I to do? 0:26:36.400 --> 0:26:39.240 Not Stub says, I'm gonna do the gracious and selfless thing. 0:26:39.880 --> 0:26:42.000 And he goes out and pitches a white tent over 0:26:42.040 --> 0:26:44.520 it and starts charging twenty five cents submission. 0:26:45.359 --> 0:26:46.359 Touch a generation, and then. 0:26:46.320 --> 0:26:48.440 Two days later he raised the price to fifty cents. 0:26:48.600 --> 0:26:50.239 So many people the demand. What can you do? It's 0:26:50.280 --> 0:26:51.400 the market is you pay. 0:26:51.240 --> 0:26:54.200 That money, you get fifteen minutes worth of time to spend. 0:26:53.880 --> 0:26:59.760 With the giant alone. I'm just wondering if it's like 0:27:00.080 --> 0:27:02.000 and then child the booth had the bag on his head, 0:27:02.040 --> 0:27:03.399 you could go in and be with him in the 0:27:03.400 --> 0:27:05.600 closet or whatever for like seven, seven or however many 0:27:05.600 --> 0:27:06.359 minutes you wanted. 0:27:06.600 --> 0:27:08.760 Now I think this is like groups of fifteen. 0:27:08.560 --> 0:27:10.800 Like shuffle him in guide show style. 0:27:10.920 --> 0:27:14.000 Yeah, total sideshow stuff. So the Cardiff Giant is what 0:27:14.040 --> 0:27:18.479 it became known as, had twenty five hundred visitors in 0:27:18.520 --> 0:27:21.320 the first week. So if we figure that averages out 0:27:21.359 --> 0:27:23.919 to about three hundred and fifty eight visitors a day, okay, 0:27:24.160 --> 0:27:26.280 and the first two days were at twenty five cents, 0:27:26.320 --> 0:27:28.719 but the other five days were at fifty cents. I 0:27:28.760 --> 0:27:30.639 am back in sixth grade trying to do some math. 0:27:30.720 --> 0:27:32.240 I'm over here with the calculator. 0:27:32.200 --> 0:27:34.359 And so then that meant that over that week he 0:27:34.440 --> 0:27:38.600 made one thousand, seventy four dollars running numbers, and that's 0:27:38.600 --> 0:27:40.280 like twenty four thousand dollars today. 0:27:40.520 --> 0:27:42.600 Okay, wow in a week, that's what's good. Yeah. 0:27:42.920 --> 0:27:46.080 So hotels and restaurants they had more business over that 0:27:46.119 --> 0:27:48.800 those few days than they'd ever had since opening. 0:27:48.880 --> 0:27:50.000 Oh, it was amazing, totally. 0:27:50.040 --> 0:27:53.840 Offers were made to buy the Giant. Yeah, New ol declined. 0:27:53.480 --> 0:27:55.560 So like you got a whole little Florida economy going now. 0:27:56.920 --> 0:28:01.000 So then Hall comes to town the eighties and like 0:28:01.359 --> 0:28:03.960 the conspirators had worked out an agreement. They were going 0:28:04.040 --> 0:28:07.120 to sell the Giant, but it had to be heard well, 0:28:07.160 --> 0:28:11.080 in particular to a syndicate of businessmen that included former 0:28:11.119 --> 0:28:14.560 mayor doctor Amos Westcott and then but it was headed 0:28:14.640 --> 0:28:18.080 up by a man named David Hannam, and they offered 0:28:18.200 --> 0:28:21.159 thirty thousand dollars for a three fourth stake. 0:28:21.440 --> 0:28:23.520 I can tell that these men are not as good 0:28:23.520 --> 0:28:25.720 because their names are not as interesting. So I bet 0:28:25.720 --> 0:28:26.960 they're you know, their subpart. 0:28:27.880 --> 0:28:30.879 But that's like six hundred and seventy thousand dollars today. 0:28:31.800 --> 0:28:33.880 And the men took the deal. They're like of course, 0:28:34.240 --> 0:28:38.240 experts came to examine the piece. Geologist James Hall of 0:28:38.320 --> 0:28:43.280 New York State and professor Henry Wardoff of Rochester University 0:28:43.520 --> 0:28:47.360 were positive, it's an ancient statue. It's not a man, 0:28:47.520 --> 0:28:50.240 it's a statue. Well, of course, Hall said it was 0:28:50.320 --> 0:28:53.200 quote the most remarkable object yet brought to light in 0:28:53.240 --> 0:28:53.880 our country. 0:28:54.520 --> 0:28:57.400 Wow. So this leading academic in his field and he's 0:28:57.400 --> 0:28:59.040 coming out there and he goes, it's an each came 0:28:59.080 --> 0:29:00.920 out of the earth. Probably old, is at. 0:29:00.880 --> 0:29:05.920 Last ancient statue, the first president of Cornell University, Andrew D. 0:29:06.040 --> 0:29:10.080 White said, quote being asked my opinion, my answer was 0:29:10.120 --> 0:29:13.280 that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax. That there 0:29:13.360 --> 0:29:15.480 was no reason why the farmer should dig a well 0:29:15.560 --> 0:29:19.080 in the spot where the figure was, that it was 0:29:19.200 --> 0:29:22.240 convenient neither to the house nor the barn, that there 0:29:22.280 --> 0:29:24.320 was already a good spring and a stream of water 0:29:24.400 --> 0:29:28.160 running conveniently to both. That as to the figure itself, 0:29:28.200 --> 0:29:31.280 it certainly could not have been carved by any prehistoric race, 0:29:31.280 --> 0:29:33.880 since no part of it showed the characteristics of any 0:29:33.880 --> 0:29:37.560 such early work. That, rude as it was, is betrayed. 0:29:38.360 --> 0:29:40.960 It betrayed the qualities of a modern performance of a 0:29:40.960 --> 0:29:41.560 low order. 0:29:41.920 --> 0:29:45.120 Thank you President Colombo nailed it. 0:29:46.480 --> 0:29:49.840 At the end right. He was, however, surprised by the 0:29:49.920 --> 0:29:53.120 grooves on the bottom part of the Giant. He felt 0:29:53.160 --> 0:29:55.000 that they should have taken years to occur. 0:29:55.400 --> 0:29:56.640 With water and stuff, you're going to get it. 0:29:56.760 --> 0:29:59.920 Yeah. He later published an article for the Century called 0:30:00.080 --> 0:30:03.160 the Cardiff Giant, The True Story of a Remarkable Deception. 0:30:04.040 --> 0:30:07.480 So he was good. Locals they start remembering things. Remember 0:30:07.840 --> 0:30:10.200 when that George Hole guy came into town with that 0:30:10.360 --> 0:30:13.320 enormous box, like it weighed a few tons, if I. 0:30:13.320 --> 0:30:16.600 Remember, everybody strong in town to help us. 0:30:16.560 --> 0:30:18.400 Like about ten feet long, and then he had it 0:30:18.440 --> 0:30:20.640 haul to his cousin's place. I think that Newel farm 0:30:20.640 --> 0:30:26.040 where say, wait, it was fishy here. Journalists showed up, 0:30:26.960 --> 0:30:30.360 you know, not the puff piece variety, muckrakers. 0:30:29.840 --> 0:30:31.480 Nice muckrakers people. 0:30:31.240 --> 0:30:33.960 And they dug up some wonders of their own. They 0:30:34.080 --> 0:30:36.640 found out that a large sum of money was transferred 0:30:36.680 --> 0:30:39.520 from Newell to Hull after the Giant was sold. 0:30:39.600 --> 0:30:41.680 How did they find that? Back then you got to 0:30:41.680 --> 0:30:42.440 talk to like a banker. 0:30:42.640 --> 0:30:44.960 Yeah, they got they got a. 0:30:44.280 --> 0:30:46.920 Somebody in the bank record. Yeah, I like it. 0:30:47.080 --> 0:30:49.720 More questions arose when the Cardiff giant was put on 0:30:49.800 --> 0:30:54.160 exhibition to thousands in Albany and Syracuse. A mining engineer 0:30:54.640 --> 0:30:58.160 mentioned that gypsum would have deteriorated in the soggy environment 0:30:58.200 --> 0:31:00.520 it was found in if it had been there for 0:31:00.560 --> 0:31:03.959 such a long time. Hands in his pockets, his shoulders, shrug, 0:31:04.200 --> 0:31:07.680 just saying can I Also, I hate when people say just. 0:31:07.600 --> 0:31:11.480 Saying, well, you know, I get that, but I'm just saying. 0:31:12.440 --> 0:31:15.560 So, who else should arrive on the scene? Off Neil 0:31:15.720 --> 0:31:18.520 Charles Marsh you know him right name? 0:31:18.640 --> 0:31:18.840 Yeah? 0:31:18.920 --> 0:31:23.160 Yeah, he was the famous Yale paleontologist, and he came 0:31:23.200 --> 0:31:27.240 to check out the Cardiff Giant in a delightfully Yale 0:31:27.520 --> 0:31:30.240 ivy league tweety fashion. He gave the giant a passing 0:31:30.280 --> 0:31:33.920 glance and said, quote a very recent origin and most 0:31:34.080 --> 0:31:35.280 decided humbug. 0:31:35.920 --> 0:31:38.760 Wow, listen to old bones and stones over here. So 0:31:38.880 --> 0:31:42.040 more and more like it coming out thereat. 0:31:42.240 --> 0:31:45.120 It's wonderful. And they're just the high level, like high 0:31:45.120 --> 0:31:45.960 falutin disses. 0:31:46.040 --> 0:31:46.400 This is just. 0:31:47.880 --> 0:31:50.600 More people are bringing forth evidence that it's fake. When 0:31:50.600 --> 0:31:52.480 we come back from this break, I'll let you know 0:31:52.520 --> 0:32:15.640 who didn't care if it was fake or real? Hot 0:32:15.680 --> 0:32:18.720 Off the ads. Zarin just ripping right hot off them. 0:32:18.720 --> 0:32:21.400 Those are some deliciously steaming fresh hot ads. 0:32:21.440 --> 0:32:22.800 I feel refreshed by them. 0:32:23.160 --> 0:32:25.880 Commerce sues me, you know, reaches in there. 0:32:26.400 --> 0:32:28.200 I was saying that a lot of people were saying 0:32:28.360 --> 0:32:31.040 very good people coming with tears in their eyes, saying 0:32:31.080 --> 0:32:33.680 that the Cardiff Giant was fake. No, that bit never 0:32:33.680 --> 0:32:34.080 gets old. 0:32:34.480 --> 0:32:35.600 You love that. I love that. 0:32:39.080 --> 0:32:41.040 You know who didn't care if it was fake? P T. 0:32:41.200 --> 0:32:44.040 Barnum. I knew my man would get in a whiff 0:32:44.040 --> 0:32:44.240 of it. 0:32:44.240 --> 0:32:48.040 In the air, like he's floating around those first smell profits. 0:32:48.080 --> 0:32:51.600 All he saw were dollars signed. He he wanted in 0:32:51.640 --> 0:32:55.120 on this money maker. So he offered to purchase it himself, 0:32:55.280 --> 0:32:58.960 purchase him enunciating all of a sudden, for fifty thousand 0:32:58.960 --> 0:33:01.120 dollars on a three month lease. 0:33:01.960 --> 0:33:04.080 I get smart. He's like, this ain't gonna last long. 0:33:04.160 --> 0:33:07.960 Yeah, let's just flip. And so he made this day 0:33:08.080 --> 0:33:10.280 just one day after Marsh called it humbug. 0:33:11.160 --> 0:33:13.120 He's like, what do I care? Ye? Did the suckers 0:33:13.160 --> 0:33:13.720 read your papers? 0:33:13.800 --> 0:33:16.680 They refused his offer. So what did he do? He 0:33:16.760 --> 0:33:19.920 hired a sculptor to create a replica. I can do 0:33:19.960 --> 0:33:22.720 you one better, he secretly made a mold of the 0:33:22.760 --> 0:33:26.360 original with wax, which how how do you I snuck 0:33:26.400 --> 0:33:29.320 in at night, I suppose, and they had a copy 0:33:29.360 --> 0:33:30.360 carved from plaster. 0:33:31.200 --> 0:33:33.800 He literally made his own, like like you want mine, 0:33:33.800 --> 0:33:35.600 I got do the exact same one. Your's his fake, 0:33:35.680 --> 0:33:37.240 mine's faker deeper. 0:33:37.440 --> 0:33:40.000 So he puts it on displaying Manhattan, saying it was 0:33:40.000 --> 0:33:41.840 the original and that the one out and cart it 0:33:42.000 --> 0:33:42.400 was fake. 0:33:43.160 --> 0:33:44.600 I prove it wrong. 0:33:45.000 --> 0:33:48.520 So the story comes out. Hannam, who's now the current owner, 0:33:48.680 --> 0:33:51.840 said of the fake to newspapers quote, there's a sucker 0:33:51.840 --> 0:33:56.240 born every minute. Wait, yes, Barnum not only stole the giant, 0:33:56.280 --> 0:33:57.360 he stole that quote. 0:33:57.720 --> 0:34:01.680 So that quote is like attributed. It was a diss 0:34:01.720 --> 0:34:04.040 basically of him. And then he turned around and he's like, 0:34:04.040 --> 0:34:06.320 I'm gonna make that the most famous thing about well, 0:34:06.400 --> 0:34:06.960 it was it just. 0:34:06.920 --> 0:34:09.399 Of the people who are believing that, Like yeah, and 0:34:10.160 --> 0:34:11.360 so it was not P. T. 0:34:11.520 --> 0:34:15.400 Barnum about him. That's amazing. Seem weird that somebody like 0:34:15.400 --> 0:34:17.239 that would want to be known for that statement. You 0:34:17.280 --> 0:34:19.160 know what I mean, like you don't give up the game. 0:34:19.200 --> 0:34:21.360 That'd be like a wrestlers like these suckers don't. 0:34:21.719 --> 0:34:23.879 Against p t. Barnum in that kind of stuff. He's 0:34:24.040 --> 0:34:27.800 just gonna run right over you. Handam tried to sue Barnum. 0:34:28.600 --> 0:34:30.920 There was a problem. The judge said, in order to 0:34:30.920 --> 0:34:33.399 get a favorable injunction, he would first have to get 0:34:33.440 --> 0:34:37.320 the giant to swear on its own authenticity. He said, quote, 0:34:37.560 --> 0:34:39.480 bring your giant here, and if he swears to his 0:34:39.520 --> 0:34:42.759 own genuineness as a bona fide petrification, you shall have 0:34:42.800 --> 0:34:43.920 the injunction you ask for. 0:34:44.360 --> 0:34:46.160 I've run in the nineteenth century got so much sad. 0:34:46.200 --> 0:34:52.480 It's totally saddof ads for Barnum's exhibit Red. What is this? 0:34:52.760 --> 0:34:55.719 Is it a statue? Is it a petrification? Is it 0:34:55.760 --> 0:34:58.640 a stupendous fraud? Is it the remains of a former race? 0:35:00.520 --> 0:35:02.080 Give me a nicoll. I'll let you see it for yourself. 0:35:02.080 --> 0:35:02.560 What is it? 0:35:02.640 --> 0:35:03.319 What is I don't know? 0:35:03.800 --> 0:35:06.040 Again it starts off. What is it? I don't know? 0:35:06.080 --> 0:35:08.080 I'll go see it's an Elizabeth that if I've ever 0:35:08.160 --> 0:35:08.920 heard was it? 0:35:09.200 --> 0:35:13.760 Who knows? Who cares? Barnum's giant outsold the original Cardiff Giant. 0:35:13.840 --> 0:35:16.440 Of course, both were scheduled to be shown in New 0:35:16.560 --> 0:35:19.960 York City. Having both giants in New York caused a 0:35:19.960 --> 0:35:23.759 lot of confusion though I'm no, I'm the Cardiff. No, 0:35:23.840 --> 0:35:28.440 I'm I'm Spartacus, the Cardiff Giant itself. The original, the 0:35:28.480 --> 0:35:31.480 original fake was forced to relocate to Boston. 0:35:32.160 --> 0:35:33.960 Where we got the New York Giants as a name, 0:35:34.680 --> 0:35:37.960 had two giants. However, we had our giants. That was awesome. 0:35:38.239 --> 0:35:40.080 Do you know who went to check out the og 0:35:40.280 --> 0:35:43.000 one in Boston? Who were these hipsters looking for an 0:35:43.040 --> 0:35:44.000 authentic experience? 0:35:44.080 --> 0:35:45.560 Okay, wait, what year are we on at this point? 0:35:45.640 --> 0:35:53.480 Eighteen ninety eighteen eighties. I'm gonna go with Robert Barrett Browning. 0:35:53.680 --> 0:35:56.799 Ralph Waldo Emerson I was close, and Oliver Wendell. 0:35:56.600 --> 0:35:58.360 Hulks I was close, real close. 0:35:58.480 --> 0:36:00.359 This is back when like thinkers had. 0:36:00.239 --> 0:36:03.920 Three names, not just in killers of presidents. 0:36:04.120 --> 0:36:04.680 Fun facts. 0:36:04.719 --> 0:36:07.239 I'm full of them, yeah, full of it? There, What 0:36:07.360 --> 0:36:07.640 is it? 0:36:07.880 --> 0:36:08.439 What is it? 0:36:08.640 --> 0:36:09.040 What is it? 0:36:09.200 --> 0:36:11.640 What is it? The man Barnum hired to make the 0:36:11.680 --> 0:36:15.279 replica decided to make even more copies because like, why not, 0:36:15.520 --> 0:36:18.400 I have the mold, let's keep this going, And then 0:36:18.440 --> 0:36:22.759 he sold them all ten foot doggers. He sells them 0:36:22.800 --> 0:36:25.279 across the country, all over the place. By the end 0:36:25.360 --> 0:36:28.239 of the year, half a dozen Cardiff giants were on 0:36:28.280 --> 0:36:31.440 display across the guys. This is what they wrote in 0:36:31.440 --> 0:36:32.520 the Philadelphia Inquirer. 0:36:32.640 --> 0:36:34.920 We're so bored back then. You got a big rock, 0:36:34.960 --> 0:36:35.600 I got a nickel. 0:36:35.680 --> 0:36:39.400 Let's do this, someone wrote the Philadelphia inquire quote, it 0:36:39.520 --> 0:36:41.839 is rather rich that we should be victimized by such 0:36:41.960 --> 0:36:43.240 fraud upon a fraud. 0:36:43.440 --> 0:36:44.399 Oh yeah yeah. 0:36:44.840 --> 0:36:48.360 In eighteen seventy, the fascination had worn off and the 0:36:48.400 --> 0:36:52.160 Cardiff eighteen seventy, the Cardiff Giant became the subject of ridicule. 0:36:52.520 --> 0:36:55.920 Now it wasn't cool anymore. Some still argued that it 0:36:56.040 --> 0:36:58.560 was a piece of antiquity. But at this point, like 0:36:58.640 --> 0:37:02.320 Hull himself was publicly bragging about pulling off the hoax, 0:37:02.400 --> 0:37:05.880 like he played the long game. So everyone thinks it is. 0:37:05.880 --> 0:37:07.960 Then it's exposed as a fraud. He's like nin or niner, 0:37:08.120 --> 0:37:10.279 I told you so, there's no such thing. 0:37:10.360 --> 0:37:11.120 Where's that church? 0:37:12.000 --> 0:37:15.640 Exactly? He had his full confession printed in a newspaper 0:37:15.719 --> 0:37:16.880 on December tenth, eighteenth. 0:37:18.160 --> 0:37:18.520 What's Up? 0:37:18.840 --> 0:37:24.000 February eighteen seventy. The Chicago sculptors also had their confessions 0:37:24.040 --> 0:37:24.920 run in newspapers. 0:37:25.120 --> 0:37:27.480 Dude, everyone with the manifesto in the paper. Yes, this 0:37:27.560 --> 0:37:28.040 is nuts. 0:37:28.160 --> 0:37:30.960 And at the same time, and at the same month, 0:37:31.000 --> 0:37:34.520 excuse me, both the Cardiff Giant and Barnum's replica were 0:37:34.520 --> 0:37:37.480 exposed in court as fakes. The judge added, though, that 0:37:37.520 --> 0:37:40.120 Barnum could not be sued for terming a fake giant 0:37:40.120 --> 0:37:40.640 as fake. 0:37:41.120 --> 0:37:43.000 Yeah, so he got on that one. 0:37:43.160 --> 0:37:46.440 The number of gawkers dwindled until finally the giant was 0:37:46.440 --> 0:37:48.920 put into storage in a barn in Massachusetts. 0:37:49.320 --> 0:37:52.680 What about all the fake ones across the country. 0:37:52.760 --> 0:37:55.719 Probably the giant passed from owner to owner for a 0:37:55.760 --> 0:37:58.480 time and then did a stint touring the carnival circuit, 0:37:59.680 --> 0:38:03.480 and it was put lost years. It was put on 0:38:03.520 --> 0:38:06.160 display at the Pan American Exposition in nineteen oh one 0:38:06.280 --> 0:38:08.600 and then the Hawkeye Fair and Exhibition. 0:38:08.200 --> 0:38:09.840 In nineteen twenty three. 0:38:10.560 --> 0:38:14.320 It was then purchased by publisher Gardner, Mike Cowell's junior 0:38:14.560 --> 0:38:18.520 of Look magazine and Quality Comics fame. He placed the 0:38:18.520 --> 0:38:22.600 giant in his rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation. 0:38:22.200 --> 0:38:25.240 Piece, a tall or tall. 0:38:24.920 --> 0:38:29.320 Yeah, and then he sold it. He sold it to 0:38:29.360 --> 0:38:31.040 the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown. 0:38:31.600 --> 0:38:34.640 Farmers insurance. I don't know, but I don't know. They 0:38:34.640 --> 0:38:36.960 have a museum of farming. I don't know. 0:38:37.120 --> 0:38:38.080 I didn't look that part up. 0:38:38.600 --> 0:38:40.280 Yeah, that's just weird farmers point. 0:38:40.360 --> 0:38:44.080 I was like, whatever, I'll tell you what happened at 0:38:44.200 --> 0:38:45.120 this farmer's family. 0:38:45.120 --> 0:38:45.520 I don't know. 0:38:45.640 --> 0:38:47.719 I was just fixated on the rumpest room at this point. 0:38:48.440 --> 0:38:50.040 Anywhere I want to go back. 0:38:49.880 --> 0:38:53.440 In time, I'm there in the story. That's where I am. 0:38:53.880 --> 0:38:59.240 Barnum's replica is currently on display at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. 0:38:59.320 --> 0:39:02.160 Oh my God, what cooin up Arcade and Audity's Museum 0:39:02.239 --> 0:39:03.640 in Farmington Hills, Michigan. 0:39:03.719 --> 0:39:05.279 See this is what I should be doing in my life. 0:39:05.360 --> 0:39:07.480 This is my road to my next ROA tip. There 0:39:07.480 --> 0:39:09.960 are also replicas on display. You were asking where are they? 0:39:10.480 --> 0:39:14.640 There's one at the Fort Museum and Frontier Village. 0:39:14.640 --> 0:39:17.400 One in Texas, somewhere in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Oklahoma. 0:39:17.440 --> 0:39:19.600 Full circle, It went right back to five, came Home, 0:39:19.760 --> 0:39:25.560 Came Home, Football's Coming Home. Paul issued a proclamation a 0:39:25.800 --> 0:39:29.360 proclamation zeron, saying he wanted to make clear that he 0:39:29.400 --> 0:39:32.600 did not confess because of growing pressure to criticism. No, 0:39:33.000 --> 0:39:35.279 he just wanted to expose the truth in order to 0:39:35.280 --> 0:39:36.960 prove the gullibility of Christians. 0:39:37.640 --> 0:39:40.160 He wanted to That's all I wanted. I wanted to 0:39:40.239 --> 0:39:42.600 dance around on y'all overall. 0:39:42.800 --> 0:39:44.680 Even though he spent all that money, he made about 0:39:44.680 --> 0:39:45.719 twenty thousand. 0:39:45.400 --> 0:39:47.800 Dollars on this scheme back then money. 0:39:48.000 --> 0:39:50.000 Back, No, yeah, back then, so that's like four hundred 0:39:50.000 --> 0:39:51.200 and fifty thousand dollars today. 0:39:51.400 --> 0:39:52.600 That's not bad, real change. 0:39:52.800 --> 0:39:55.360 But it gave him the hunger, gave him the bloodless. 0:39:55.880 --> 0:39:57.879 He wanted to go all in on being a flim 0:39:57.880 --> 0:40:00.840 flan man. Oh Man couldn't help it. That's not a lifestyle, 0:40:00.920 --> 0:40:03.120 and he couldn't get out of like the genre. 0:40:03.200 --> 0:40:04.839 You can't to jump in, hop in and hop out 0:40:04.840 --> 0:40:05.080 of that. 0:40:05.200 --> 0:40:08.640 He built a seven foot giant statue in eighteen seventy 0:40:08.640 --> 0:40:11.480 seven that he named the Solid Muldoon. 0:40:11.600 --> 0:40:14.719 Wait, he's a one hit one, the one hit classics. 0:40:14.880 --> 0:40:18.480 Yes, he became his own cover band. No man, seven 0:40:18.480 --> 0:40:19.160 foot statues. 0:40:19.560 --> 0:40:21.640 You can't do this. This is P. T. Barnom's got 0:40:21.640 --> 0:40:24.160 ideas on ideas. Not like one thing that. 0:40:24.160 --> 0:40:29.440 Worked Solid, the Solid. This one had a tail, not 0:40:29.520 --> 0:40:33.120 a front tail, backtail. Yeah. He did this to be 0:40:33.200 --> 0:40:36.840 quote strongly suggestive of the truth of the Darwinian theory. 0:40:37.120 --> 0:40:39.319 Ah, this is like a whole monkey man thing. Yeah. 0:40:39.360 --> 0:40:41.840 Well yeah, he's trying to show evolution and make my 0:40:41.840 --> 0:40:42.520 own fossil. 0:40:42.600 --> 0:40:44.440 Yeah. To prove this, I added a tail to a 0:40:44.520 --> 0:40:47.319 human Missingly. He came, Yeah, like. 0:40:47.280 --> 0:40:51.960 The link between us and lizards. And you know, keep it. 0:40:52.040 --> 0:40:54.600 Keep your stuff to yourself, dude. I don't know why 0:40:54.640 --> 0:40:56.960 it's so anyway, this is great though. This one was 0:40:57.000 --> 0:41:02.960 made from mortar, rock, dust, clay, plaster, ground bones, blood 0:41:03.040 --> 0:41:07.759 and meat. 0:41:06.040 --> 0:41:08.640 And then they. 0:41:07.719 --> 0:41:10.400 Fired it in the kiln for days and then buried 0:41:10.440 --> 0:41:12.040 it in Beula, Colorado. 0:41:11.920 --> 0:41:12.719 Oh man. Yeah. 0:41:13.239 --> 0:41:17.120 It was named after the wrestler William Muldoon. He was 0:41:17.160 --> 0:41:18.319 known as the Solid Man. 0:41:19.000 --> 0:41:20.839 Oh because he was just so, he's a big dude, 0:41:21.000 --> 0:41:21.719 slab a man. 0:41:21.800 --> 0:41:23.680 Well, and they called him a solid man because it 0:41:23.719 --> 0:41:26.359 was a reference to a song by Edward Harrigan called 0:41:26.520 --> 0:41:30.600 Muldoon the Solid Man. What it's a It's a lovely tune. 0:41:30.640 --> 0:41:34.960 It's a traditional Irish melody. It's an Irish melody. The 0:41:35.080 --> 0:41:37.799 lyrics are like pretty ry and comedic. It's about an 0:41:37.840 --> 0:41:41.480 Irish politician in New York who's outlived his competition. The 0:41:41.560 --> 0:41:44.400 chieftains actually do a really good version of it. The 0:41:45.360 --> 0:41:47.799 big line in there and on the street, every friend 0:41:47.840 --> 0:41:50.600 I meet says, there goes muldoon. He's a solid man. 0:41:51.120 --> 0:41:51.520 I've heard that. 0:41:51.600 --> 0:41:53.719 Yeah, yeah, so three months. 0:41:53.960 --> 0:41:56.080 Picting before you started doing the lyrics. But thank you. 0:41:57.440 --> 0:42:00.640 Three months after burying the solid muldoon, it was quote 0:42:00.719 --> 0:42:05.360 unquote discovered by William Connitt. You can never wait, no, three months. 0:42:05.800 --> 0:42:07.800 This guy's like I was out digging for fossil and 0:42:07.880 --> 0:42:10.000 I found a lizard man. 0:42:10.320 --> 0:42:13.279 Living memory pass a little so like. 0:42:13.280 --> 0:42:15.919 The Cardiff Giant. It was dismissed that, no, this isn't 0:42:15.920 --> 0:42:18.440 a petrified man. This is actually a piece of ancient art. 0:42:19.360 --> 0:42:22.719 So the Denver Daily Times was so convinced of that 0:42:22.800 --> 0:42:25.480 authenticity as an old piece of art. Quote, there can 0:42:25.520 --> 0:42:28.960 be no question about the genuineness of this piece of statuary. 0:42:29.120 --> 0:42:31.160 Oh I love that approach. Yeah, there can be no question. 0:42:31.719 --> 0:42:34.560 I got questions. I didn't happm before, but now I do. 0:42:34.840 --> 0:42:37.600 So where did the solid muldoon go on the road? 0:42:37.840 --> 0:42:41.200 Of course, visitors all over the country got to see it. Eventually, 0:42:41.239 --> 0:42:44.279 the hoax was exposed by the New York Times. The 0:42:44.360 --> 0:42:47.240 reporter described the statue as having quote a knowing smile 0:42:47.320 --> 0:42:51.000 on his face, as if enjoying the joke. So the 0:42:51.080 --> 0:42:54.920 solid muldoon disappeared from the public eye right after that. However, 0:42:55.040 --> 0:42:57.839 nearly a century later, in nineteen seventy six, an art 0:42:57.880 --> 0:43:01.120 student recreated the piece using an iron beam plaster and 0:43:01.200 --> 0:43:06.360 molded stucco wire in celebration of Colorado's centennial Wow Wow. 0:43:07.480 --> 0:43:10.680 After a brief road tour, it was put on display 0:43:10.719 --> 0:43:14.719 at El Pueblo History Museum before being buried between Pueblo 0:43:14.800 --> 0:43:17.879 and Beulah in a marked plot near Highway seventy eight 0:43:17.960 --> 0:43:18.919 in nineteen eighty four. 0:43:19.160 --> 0:43:20.040 Like this is a hoax. 0:43:21.760 --> 0:43:24.040 That's like okay, so now there's another stop on my 0:43:24.120 --> 0:43:27.759 road trip to see the marker. Hall didn't invent the 0:43:27.800 --> 0:43:32.759 petrification hoax, though. The newspaper Alta, California ran a petrification 0:43:32.920 --> 0:43:36.120 spoof in eighteen fifty eight. It was presented as a 0:43:36.200 --> 0:43:42.080 letter from a bogus German scholar, Friedrich Lichtenberger, MD. The 0:43:42.160 --> 0:43:48.680 letter explains that a prospector named Ernest Fluckspiegel Flucktorspiegel, Yeah, 0:43:48.760 --> 0:43:52.560 Luckterspiegel drank a half pint of fluid that he found 0:43:52.600 --> 0:43:56.720 inside a geode. You crack open a geode. It's got fluid. 0:43:56.880 --> 0:44:03.120 Well you know, oh, I's good Earth, no way anyway, 0:44:03.680 --> 0:44:05.319 and he went back to camp. He said he had 0:44:05.320 --> 0:44:09.880 pains in his quote epigastric and left hypochondriac regions. 0:44:11.320 --> 0:44:13.080 I get I get that all the time. 0:44:13.440 --> 0:44:18.880 I totally do. And then soon apochondriac regions just flairing 0:44:19.000 --> 0:44:21.600 up all the time. Soon after that they said he died. 0:44:22.160 --> 0:44:25.000 That happens. Did you have that happening? 0:44:25.040 --> 0:44:26.080 Oh my god, it happens so often. 0:44:26.080 --> 0:44:27.320 I wonder if he's okay. 0:44:27.520 --> 0:44:32.160 But Fluchserspiegel wasn't just dead. He'd turned to Stone and 0:44:32.200 --> 0:44:35.319 the other miners. They gathered around and hacked away at 0:44:35.320 --> 0:44:40.440 the corpse with an axe like a field dissection. Doctor 0:44:40.480 --> 0:44:43.359 li Stenberger was there. According to the paper, he said 0:44:43.360 --> 0:44:45.920 he found the heart quote strongly resembled a piece of 0:44:45.960 --> 0:44:49.440 red jasper, and like people bought this as a real story. 0:44:49.480 --> 0:44:51.720 For well, you know that if you sip on the 0:44:51.880 --> 0:44:53.000 geo juice. 0:44:52.840 --> 0:44:54.920 Well you just wait a little while. In the way 0:44:54.960 --> 0:44:57.560 our education system is going, people will believe this again soon, 0:44:57.800 --> 0:44:59.920 So don't worry. You'll know it exactly what it's like. 0:45:00.160 --> 0:45:02.120 Oh good, Sorry, that too much for it. 0:45:04.320 --> 0:45:08.240 I suffer from realness. Hull, the father of the Solid 0:45:08.320 --> 0:45:10.560 Muldoon and the Cardiff Giant. He passed away in nineteen 0:45:10.560 --> 0:45:14.360 oh two. The Cardiff Giant inspired a Mark Twain's story 0:45:14.400 --> 0:45:17.120 and also found its way into a Nancy Drew book. 0:45:17.320 --> 0:45:20.279 Uh oh, book forty nine, The Secret of Mirror Bay. 0:45:20.800 --> 0:45:22.000 What's your ridiculous takeaway? 0:45:22.360 --> 0:45:26.840 Oh man? The fact that these people believed, the initial 0:45:26.880 --> 0:45:30.280 people believed that a rock statue underground was an actual person, 0:45:30.400 --> 0:45:33.400 and they could be petrified, like in perfect like like 0:45:33.440 --> 0:45:35.439 it was Lot's wife and you guys got turned into 0:45:35.440 --> 0:45:37.279 a pillar of salt and then fell into the earth. 0:45:37.480 --> 0:45:39.000 That's what I like, how the picture of this stuff. 0:45:39.040 --> 0:45:42.160 But I mean, like I say, once you can believe something, 0:45:42.239 --> 0:45:44.040 you can believe almost anything. And there's some things that 0:45:44.160 --> 0:45:47.080 predated their belief that that person was a real person. 0:45:47.160 --> 0:45:49.799 So yeah, I get it. I totally get it. And 0:45:49.960 --> 0:45:52.760 I'm loving P. T. Barnum for just cruising this wave 0:45:52.840 --> 0:45:55.600 of credulity and being like, I'll get him whatever what 0:45:55.680 --> 0:45:57.320 they want. I don't care. I'm not telling them what 0:45:57.400 --> 0:45:59.319 anything is. I'm just saying, you want to see it, 0:46:00.040 --> 0:46:00.319 let me. 0:46:00.360 --> 0:46:03.560 Show you a picture of the Cardiff giants while we're here. 0:46:08.719 --> 0:46:10.719 He totally looks like he's like, are you looking at 0:46:10.760 --> 0:46:14.239 my hog? I mean, yes, I'm just I'm so embarrassed, 0:46:14.280 --> 0:46:16.839 but yet look at it. I'm so embarrassed, but look 0:46:16.880 --> 0:46:18.719 at it. That's amazing. 0:46:18.920 --> 0:46:20.040 Keep pushing it into your face. 0:46:20.440 --> 0:46:23.399 It is. It's like, wow, yeah, it's not going to leave. 0:46:25.239 --> 0:46:25.680 Fleshy. 0:46:25.800 --> 0:46:28.879 I mean it's supposed to be like a hungry man 0:46:28.960 --> 0:46:32.359 with a very bottom half. 0:46:33.000 --> 0:46:35.160 Yeah, well it does almost. 0:46:36.520 --> 0:46:38.440 He has good thighs and legs too. I'm saying that 0:46:38.440 --> 0:46:40.759 that's somebody who's like, wow, he runs or whatever. You know, 0:46:41.640 --> 0:46:44.319 he doesn't exactly this. 0:46:49.920 --> 0:46:50.960 It's going on Instagram. 0:46:51.120 --> 0:46:51.319 Good. 0:46:52.120 --> 0:46:55.160 That's all I have. You can find us online at 0:46:55.200 --> 0:46:58.279 ridiculous Crime dot com. We have t shirts and other 0:46:58.280 --> 0:46:59.880 stuff if you're into that sort of thing. It's all 0:47:00.360 --> 0:47:04.279 limited time only, limited availability, so get it while it's there. 0:47:05.480 --> 0:47:09.040 We also are at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. 0:47:09.120 --> 0:47:12.200 Email us Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a 0:47:12.320 --> 0:47:15.720 talkback on the iHeart app reach out huh stay hydrated, 0:47:15.800 --> 0:47:23.840 rud dudes. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and 0:47:23.880 --> 0:47:26.960 Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Kusten, He's a 0:47:26.960 --> 0:47:29.920 solid man. Research is by Marissa I Think It's an 0:47:29.960 --> 0:47:33.680 Alien Brown and Andrea Zaren said it's a ghost song 0:47:33.760 --> 0:47:36.960 sharpened tear. The theme song is by Well Digging Outlaws 0:47:37.000 --> 0:47:40.560 Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Rumpus Room 0:47:40.600 --> 0:47:44.560 decorator Ben Bollen and Petrified Giant wholesaler Noel Brown. 0:47:49.440 --> 0:47:54.280 Dus Qui Say It One More Times. 0:47:55.920 --> 0:47:59.320 Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts. 0:47:59.400 --> 0:48:02.560 My heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 0:48:02.600 --> 0:48:04.360 wherever you listen to your favorite shows.