Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey Zaren, what's nahda? You know it's ridiculous?
Speaker 3: I do, I do? Actually yama Nashi Japan. Oh come
Speaker 3: on now, no, no, I wasn't done. In the place
Speaker 3: of Yama Nashi Japan. There is this theme park. It
Speaker 3: was only open for about four years, but in that
Speaker 3: time they were able to build this giant Gulliver statue.
Speaker 3: Enormous Gulliver statue, you know, from the book Gulliver's Travelers
Speaker 3: by Jonathan Swift. And so when he goes to like,
Speaker 3: you know, like the certain Lands, there's like, you know whatever,
Speaker 3: the yahoos and so forth, and one of the little
Speaker 3: Putians are tiny, and so he's huge, right, So it's
Speaker 3: the Lilliputian world. So it is huge Jonathan Swift lying
Speaker 3: on the ground, and so we are all relative to him, Liliputians.
Speaker 3: This statue renders all human beings into Liliputians, right. And
Speaker 3: as I said, it was only over four years. It's
Speaker 3: now out of business and it's just been sitting there
Speaker 3: basically the syntigree. So there's this disintegrating Gulliver statue that
Speaker 3: can plague a little fictional trick on you. But you
Speaker 3: got to go to Japan to see it. But I
Speaker 3: love that. They're just like, I ain't cleaning that up.
Speaker 3: Just just leave it for nature to be clean. Yeah, whatever,
Speaker 3: that ain't our history. I don't care. Leave him to
Speaker 3: the soil.
Speaker 2: I like it. That's ridiculous. That's good.
Speaker 3: If I'm going to Yamanashi, Japan.
Speaker 2: You know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Another giant?
Speaker 3: What you got? Giants? Giants?
Speaker 2: This is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 2: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 2: one ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Damn right, Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Do you like Buried Treasure?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: I like Buried Treasure.
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of the booty.
Speaker 2: Like that he talked to it.
Speaker 3: That's what pirates called it, buried treasure.
Speaker 2: Okay, we've talked about that show The detectorss on here
Speaker 2: before Metal Detective.
Speaker 3: I recommend it to everybody.
Speaker 2: I made a lot of people mad talking about the
Speaker 2: Gilgamesh dream tablet. That hobby lobby got its grubby little
Speaker 2: hands on. Oh really it didn't go over well.
Speaker 3: OK, Sorry for your email inbox.
Speaker 2: I have more archaeological treasures for you today, though, let
Speaker 2: me start off with, as you always like to say,
Speaker 2: an appetizer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mos boots. Yes.
Speaker 2: In seventeen twenty five, I'm going back, baby, I love that.
Speaker 2: Seventeen twenty five there was eighteenthentry doesn't get enough cloud, No,
Speaker 2: it really doesn't. We don't cover it enough on this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There was a professor named Johann Bartholomeus Adam Behringer.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's a name.
Speaker 2: He was poking around his poke, poke poking and looking
Speaker 2: for fossils, all right, as one does Wursburg, Germany.
Speaker 3: Right, and got anywhere near Neanderthal.
Speaker 2: Sure, right on top of it. He was into erictis. Okays, sure,
Speaker 2: that is the geological side of fossils.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: And so he hired some kids, was like, hey, kids,
Speaker 2: you guys like, come dig with me, and off they went.
Speaker 3: I got shoveled, you got time.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, there were some guys at the university where they
Speaker 2: all worked, who decided they had had an absolute enough
Speaker 2: of his snooty, arrogant ways he was. He was a
Speaker 2: real snooty guy.
Speaker 3: Only kids would hang out with paid them, right, Adults
Speaker 3: like only around him?
Speaker 2: Okay, so these people at his coworkers decided to prank him.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about eighteenth century pranks. Okay, that's not how
Speaker 2: I imagine my life would be when I crossed the stage
Speaker 2: to accept my college diploma, I would be talking about
Speaker 2: eighteenth century.
Speaker 3: Prank life of welcome surprises, beautiful, wonderful surprise awareness.
Speaker 2: One of the guys he carved figures out of limestone.
Speaker 2: They were little animals, spiders, frogs, lizards. Spiders. Just isn't
Speaker 2: aside when I always say spiders like that. A friend
Speaker 2: of mine kept getting these call, these collect calls from
Speaker 2: the county jails. No, from the county jail. It would
Speaker 2: be like, you have a collect call from whatever county
Speaker 2: jail from And the guy would always go, spider.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Laura and I laughed about that. Anyway, I can't see
Speaker 2: the word spider, the spider, So she'd always no, I
Speaker 2: do not accept the charge.
Speaker 3: Was it a wrong call? But they had the wrong number.
Speaker 3: Have they ever gotten through?
Speaker 2: No called all the time? Anyway? Spiders, frogs, and lizards
Speaker 2: they had. There were inscriptions on these little figures. It
Speaker 2: was the name of God in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew.
Speaker 2: A little bit little bit of each on each one.
Speaker 2: So they went around these two these three days, they
Speaker 2: went and they planted the figures all over where the
Speaker 2: Professor and his boy crew were looking. Fessor Barringer found them.
Speaker 2: He's so excited. He's like, these are awesome, you guys,
Speaker 2: and they all sat down in the dirt and looked
Speaker 2: at him together.
Speaker 3: Thank do's a law.
Speaker 2: First, he thought they were actual fossils signed by God.
Speaker 2: Ran them down when I tell you that these are
Speaker 2: in no way convincing a fossils. They are not realistic representations.
Speaker 2: They're kind of cartoonish. And he's like, oh, and it's
Speaker 2: got God's name on it. God's like, here, I made this.
Speaker 3: You know I always signed my works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean look at the bottom of our feet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where the signature is.
Speaker 2: Then he thought about it and he was like, maybe
Speaker 2: these aren't fossils.
Speaker 3: Because the kids.
Speaker 2: Were like rolling their eyes up. He's like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I think these were carved by prehistoric pagans.
Speaker 3: That's got to be it druids.
Speaker 2: And then he's like, but here's the problem. How did
Speaker 2: they know God's name they carved that on there? And
Speaker 2: then people were like, actually, I see so he gives
Speaker 2: up on the Pagans. He's like, they're fossils. I go
Speaker 2: back to them being fossils, got God's namon. So people
Speaker 2: are like, well, you know when you actually when you
Speaker 2: look at it, there are chisel marks on the side.
Speaker 2: That's not God's handiwork. And he's like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: speak to the man himself. I don't know, you don't know,
Speaker 2: let's ask him. So all of his theories, he collects
Speaker 2: all these series.
Speaker 3: Which is an academic, yes, a professor.
Speaker 2: He has all these theories, and he publishes them. Oh
Speaker 2: poor man, And not long after the publication of the book,
Speaker 2: the penny drops, he finally figures out, wait a second,
Speaker 2: these are fake. Now he put everything into writing this
Speaker 2: book he published, so he figures out these aren't real.
Speaker 2: And then he also figures out who made them his
Speaker 2: nemeses at work. He sued two of them and one
Speaker 2: and those guys lost their job at the college. They
Speaker 2: each lost their job, and one of them was even
Speaker 2: banished from the city. I mean, this is seventeen.
Speaker 3: Hundred like out out with you the city wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he comes back with the wig on
Speaker 2: and there's not the court transcripts. The hoaxers testified that
Speaker 2: they pulled this prank because quote, he was so arrogant
Speaker 2: and despised us.
Speaker 3: All, oh yeah, it's like the Drake's plate.
Speaker 2: Then they'll come up and see exactly like Drake's plate.
Speaker 2: So barringer. He spent lots of time and money trying
Speaker 2: to chase down all the copies of his book to
Speaker 2: get them back. He's like, we printed, I don't know
Speaker 2: three hundred of them. I gotta find these three hundred
Speaker 2: suckers who bought it. And but you know, don't worry
Speaker 2: about it. It got a second printing in seventeen thirty seven.
Speaker 3: Oh man, so it did well.
Speaker 2: It did well, and then it was translated into English
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3: Poor dude.
Speaker 2: As for the stones, some of them are currently on
Speaker 2: display at the Oxford University Museum.
Speaker 3: With a red sign pointing down joke.
Speaker 2: Do you think this is a fossil? And they're now
Speaker 2: known as lugenstein. I don't know if I'm saying it right.
Speaker 3: The lying stone with that emphasis is definitely right. Yes,
Speaker 3: maybe not, but it was rare somewhere. It's the lying stones,
Speaker 3: lying stones. I like that.
Speaker 2: That's a solid hoax.
Speaker 3: That's a great one, though.
Speaker 2: He had such a desire to find something of significance,
Speaker 2: even if he had to like stretch the boundaries of plausibility.
Speaker 3: An exploit child labor to get there. Exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, in eighteen sixty six there was another scientist doing
Speaker 2: his best to will his belief into evidence.
Speaker 3: Eighteen sixty six eighteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: Were jumping forward fifty years or so. There was a
Speaker 2: professor of geology at Harvard named Josiah Whitney from Eli. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was also the state geologist of California, and Mount Whitney,
Speaker 2: the highest peak in the lower forty eight, is named after.
Speaker 3: Okay, as he was an he have a book like
Speaker 3: a naturalist.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he totally is. But he was an expert
Speaker 2: in economic geology, so mins. Yeah, but he had his
Speaker 2: share of mishaps for all of his you know, honors
Speaker 2: and whatnot. He got into it with John Muir about
Speaker 2: the origins of Yosemite.
Speaker 3: Kind of one of those let them fight exactly.
Speaker 2: So Whitney said that the Yosemite Valley was created when
Speaker 2: there was a cataclysmic sinking of the valley floor.
Speaker 3: That was Whitney's theory, not glacious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mirrors, Like, no, my dude, that makes no sense.
Speaker 2: It was glacial action. They smacked him on the side
Speaker 2: of the head. The Whitney then called him a quote
Speaker 2: ignoramus and a quote mirror sheep heard her.
Speaker 3: Did you call him a pumpkinhead?
Speaker 2: White? Well, you know what, Whitney, you're not the one
Speaker 2: who wound up on the back of the California quarter
Speaker 2: boo roasted in eighteen sixty six.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 2: Whitney was all about proving that humans, mastodons, and mammoths
Speaker 2: all existed at the same time on this planet.
Speaker 3: Oh, they definitely partied together.
Speaker 2: Well we know now that it's sort of true twelve
Speaker 2: thousand years ago in the place of scene era. Whitney
Speaker 2: was pretty sure it was the Pliocene era, like three
Speaker 2: million years ago. Yeah, big, no on that way. So there,
Speaker 2: there he is. He's like swanning around the California Gold Country,
Speaker 2: just east coast.
Speaker 3: End it up.
Speaker 2: The grizzled Minor forty nine ers, the prospectors, they did
Speaker 2: not like him, which hold on, they're also newcomers, like
Speaker 2: who are they to whatever? Yeah, So anyway, these these miners,
Speaker 2: they wanted to play a joke on Whitney and kind
Speaker 2: of like take him down a notch. So they came
Speaker 2: into town from the Goldfield saying that they'd found a skull,
Speaker 2: a really really old one. Where'd you find it? One
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty feet down under the earth? If we
Speaker 2: found it under lava, Now I'm going to guess that's
Speaker 2: like the cold kind.
Speaker 3: I think they mean like the saltrocket.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know they said lava. They don't really know.
Speaker 2: So Whitney stoked. He's like so excited. He comes running.
Speaker 2: It's got to be ancient. He looks at it. Look,
Speaker 2: this has to be millions of years old. Of course,
Speaker 2: he tells everyone his theory has been proven. Look, I
Speaker 2: have the skull to prove it. This was a skull
Speaker 2: of a human who walked with mastadons. Three years later,
Speaker 2: a minister told the San Francisco Evening Bulletin that skull
Speaker 2: had been planted as a hoax, that a local shopkeeper
Speaker 2: had put it there on a lark. Whitney didn't budge.
Speaker 2: The guy at Harvard ran florine analysis on it. They
Speaker 2: didn't have carbon dating yet, and he said that the
Speaker 2: test revealed that the skull was recent. Whitney stayed the course.
Speaker 2: So he's got science telling him it's recent.
Speaker 3: No, and he's a scientist. He's a scientist.
Speaker 2: He convinces another Harvard geology professor, Frederick Ward Putnam, that
Speaker 2: he was right. Putnam's like, Okay, I believe you.
Speaker 3: That sounds good.
Speaker 2: Although whatever you say, you got a mountain named after you.
Speaker 2: But he wants to know more. He's hungry Zaron for information.
Speaker 3: So he had touched the skull.
Speaker 2: He sads out to California to do some investigations. He
Speaker 2: was told out there that the miners had desecrated an
Speaker 2: indigenous burial site, likely while prospecting, and planted the bones
Speaker 2: and skulls like for skips and giggles. We'll say, Okay,
Speaker 2: Putnam didn't believe that. But here's the thing. Everyone should
Speaker 2: always believe the horrible behavior of gold rush miners.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I always better.
Speaker 2: They were horrible people.
Speaker 3: They're generally in the practice of exploiting, and so you
Speaker 3: can pretty much just extend from there. They're probably going
Speaker 3: to exploit other things exactly.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't until the early nineteen hundreds that the
Speaker 2: skull was officially deemed a hoax. All that time, and
Speaker 2: I should know that there are still creationists who believe
Speaker 2: it's real, okay, and they're going to send me angry
Speaker 2: emails to but I don't want to get into it anyway.
Speaker 2: So there's my entrance into this story that I have
Speaker 2: for you today. This isn't it?
Speaker 3: That was just the a gold rush skull the foyer.
Speaker 2: Of this mansion of ridiculous excavation nice foye.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the gilded frames are a nice time.
Speaker 2: I want to tell you about George.
Speaker 3: Hull, George Hall. Do not know this one?
Speaker 2: Is that okay with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I got time.
Speaker 2: Do you feel comfortable in this space?
Speaker 3: Yeah? If you'll give me like a hug later, okay? Maybe.
Speaker 2: George Hall he was a tobacconist. He made cigars. He
Speaker 2: was a smoke slanger in the terms of the day.
Speaker 2: He lived in Binghamton, New York, and that was like
Speaker 2: almost one hundred and fifty years after old Professor Barringer
Speaker 2: was digging up phony relics all over Germany.
Speaker 3: Hull was an atheist, so an atheist leaf pusher.
Speaker 2: Yes, and he was big into science, especially the theory
Speaker 2: of evolution. In Charles Darwin Big Darwin Head in eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight, Hull was visiting his sister in Aclee, Iowa,
Speaker 2: and while he was there, the two of them went
Speaker 2: to a Methodist revival meeting. That was fun for him.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: During the sermon, Hull heard Reverend H. B. Turk quote
Speaker 2: Genesis six ' four and this is I will read
Speaker 2: it to you.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was going to do the quote, but you
Speaker 3: do it. It's fine, go ahead.
Speaker 2: The Nephilim were in the earth in those days and
Speaker 2: after that when the sons of God came in unto
Speaker 2: the daughters of men and they bore children to them,
Speaker 2: the same were the mighty men that were of old,
Speaker 2: the men of renown.
Speaker 3: What are the Nephilim like the angels?
Speaker 2: But they're the ones on earth loosely translated, their giants.
Speaker 2: They're the son of fallen angels. So in the Jerusalem Bible,
Speaker 2: what we read in Catholic School uses the word nephilim.
Speaker 2: In the King James version, which is what Hull would
Speaker 2: have heard quoted, they use the word giants. So he
Speaker 2: just straight up says giants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they're like the opposite of the chair of them. Right.
Speaker 2: Hull's sister kind of like stepped in it by bringing
Speaker 2: him to this revival because when the sermon ended, Hull
Speaker 2: went to the pastor and started to debate him about
Speaker 2: the literal accuracy of the Bible. He did not win
Speaker 2: this argument because the rest of the congregation joined in
Speaker 2: and shouted him down, like Hull, dude, let these people
Speaker 2: enjoy their faith. Who cares?
Speaker 3: Yeah, literally in their church? Who cares?
Speaker 2: But he was changed that day. He was on a mission.
Speaker 2: He had to prove these people wrong, embarrass them, and
Speaker 2: maybe and maybe make a little money on the side.
Speaker 3: Why not, It's America, he law.
Speaker 2: He was outnumbered by these meeting attendants, but he wasn't
Speaker 2: gonna let it get him down. He decided, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm making a giant.
Speaker 3: What that's his answer, I'm.
Speaker 2: Making a big petrified giant. I'm making a big old
Speaker 2: fake and I'm gonna sell tickets.
Speaker 3: I'm selling tickets to see my long daddy.
Speaker 2: That'll show them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, Barnum involved in this decision.
Speaker 2: Making hold onto your underpants? He needed help, of course, huh.
Speaker 2: So he talked to a friend of his in Marshalltown, Iowa. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is a guy named H. B.
Speaker 3: Martin.
Speaker 2: So the two of them HB. What it's like, Horace
Speaker 2: booty face.
Speaker 3: I have a family member. His nickname. His name was
Speaker 3: Aura O R A. In his middle of the name,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it was t. I don't know what
Speaker 3: the name was, but we always call him oor t Okay.
Speaker 3: I just think that's so great we have those little
Speaker 3: short names like that. Is even better because he's down
Speaker 3: to two sounds exactly.
Speaker 2: So, HB. Martin. These two guys, Hull and Martin, they
Speaker 2: get together. They go to Fort Dodge, Iowa, and they
Speaker 2: checked in at the Saint Charles Hotel. So this is
Speaker 2: what a resident wrote into the Dubuke Times. Quote. For
Speaker 2: a number of weeks after their arrival here, their movements
Speaker 2: seemed to be of a very suspicious character. They would
Speaker 2: wander about town apparently with no definite object in view. Lady,
Speaker 2: that's called tourism.
Speaker 3: So they wrote into the paper, I'm a busybody, and
Speaker 3: here's what I noticed. I saw these two men people
Speaker 3: in town.
Speaker 2: They actually did have a definite object in view. When
Speaker 2: we come back from this break, I'll tell you what
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 3: I hope it's a giant.
Speaker 2: Hello, Skippy, what up? When we left off George Hall
Speaker 2: and his pal HB. Martin with the cool name. They
Speaker 2: were cruising around Fort Dodge for actions, right kind of
Speaker 2: action you'll see. So they found out about this guy
Speaker 2: named Cebe Cummins, another gra name Ceeb Cummins. He owned
Speaker 2: a gypsum quarry Okay, and the pair tried to get
Speaker 2: a contract with Cummins to cut out a block of
Speaker 2: gypsum that would be twelve feet long by three and
Speaker 2: a half feet wide and two feet thick, all.
Speaker 3: Twelve by three by starting to put together with their building.
Speaker 2: Come and said no, yeah, because he asked them a
Speaker 2: bunch of questions about why they wanted such a big
Speaker 2: piece of gypsum, and they He never got the same
Speaker 2: story twice from them.
Speaker 3: They couldn't you just say the words, I'm a sculptor.
Speaker 3: Here's some money, Yeah, I'm a sculptor. Do you take cash? Yeah? No.
Speaker 2: So one time they told him that they were going
Speaker 2: to quote exhibit in New York as a specimen of
Speaker 2: the products of Fort Dodge and vicinity.
Speaker 3: That's wrong with these guys, Like we.
Speaker 2: Want to show Fort Dodge's finest gypsum at the museum.
Speaker 3: Liker, look here.
Speaker 2: And like they're suddenly they were like real Fort Dodge boosters.
Speaker 2: You just got here.
Speaker 3: I don't sell than Fort Dodge nerds.
Speaker 2: Then they said they wanted to quote send it to Washington.
Speaker 2: Is Iowa's contribution to the Lincoln Monument?
Speaker 3: Wait?
Speaker 2: What as if they're taking like, send us send it's
Speaker 2: a pot luck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's you know, it's a rock luck. We put
Speaker 3: this every fifties all the states. I don't know how
Speaker 3: many of the time memorial I don't know twelve.
Speaker 2: So Commons he figures, Okay, these guys are up to
Speaker 2: no good. They want this for nefarious and then he said,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do business with them at any price. Wow, principal,
Speaker 2: run of them, Yeah, Pedler, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Not like those guys you normally find slung in gyps
Speaker 3: and anybody with gyps and nickels in their pockets, just.
Speaker 2: Little bags of gyps on the side of Holland Martin.
Speaker 3: Lucy's got them rocks, got them rocks. I should stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this Okay, they try again, Holland Martin. They're
Speaker 2: not going to be deterred. This is gypsum country, after all,
Speaker 2: there's not you know, Commons isn't the only game in town. Okay,
Speaker 2: so they hooked up with Michael Foley and he got
Speaker 2: them a five ton block that they needed from old
Speaker 2: Gypsum Hollow.
Speaker 3: Nice. He himself, he just sliced it out.
Speaker 2: I mean, is he a gyps guy or I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe stole it. Who knows. Hall had the block shipped
Speaker 2: to a German stonecutter in Chicago named Edward Berghart. Nice
Speaker 2: ships it off. Berghart agreed to keep Mum on the
Speaker 2: whole scam if they cut him in on the prophet. Oh,
Speaker 2: She's like, I know you're doing something crazy with this, fine,
Speaker 2: but cut me in bek They had exactly, they had
Speaker 2: a deal. So Burghart he hired two sculptors to assist
Speaker 2: with the project, and then he Hull himself posed for
Speaker 2: the statue. Oh and he made sure that they gave
Speaker 2: him a.
Speaker 3: Big don.
Speaker 2: I'm not kidding. It's a pretty healthy sized member on
Speaker 2: this thing.
Speaker 3: Well got yeah, I'd say, oh, you know, and it's
Speaker 3: kind of would gray sweats. You're saying, this is a winter.
Speaker 2: And the figure is standing there like it has to
Speaker 2: go to the bathroom.
Speaker 3: What is that I think of kids doing.
Speaker 2: It's like kind of slightly bent over with his legs crossed,
Speaker 2: and then one hand is covering his lower torso but
Speaker 2: like with his ding ding hanging out, and on the
Speaker 2: other hand looked down here trying to hold it behind
Speaker 2: it with my hand, but there's not enough hand.
Speaker 3: I don't have enough.
Speaker 2: And then the other hands behind his back like presumably
Speaker 2: to stop the turtle head.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was thinking like a thoughtful pose like my
Speaker 3: morning constitution, triumphs.
Speaker 2: Burghart.
Speaker 3: It both ends.
Speaker 2: Apparently Burghart put stains and asses on the giant sculpture
Speaker 2: to give it like that weathered Chevvy machine. Then he
Speaker 2: and his underlings they made pores on the surface of
Speaker 2: it by beating it with steel knitting needles that had.
Speaker 3: Been embedded into a board. Cool, Isn't that's smart.
Speaker 2: When it was done, the statue of the giant, the
Speaker 2: enormous George Hull naked, stood ten tall and weighed almost
Speaker 2: three thousand pounds. Dam yeah, damn. At this point, Hull
Speaker 2: had spent twenty six hundred dollars on the hoax, and
Speaker 2: that's more than fifty five thousand dollars in today's money.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, on a hoax to prove the past or wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah. For Skipson giggles because he had a bad moment
Speaker 3: in a church and some people shoutowed him down. He's like,
Speaker 3: I got fifty five grand on that. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 3: And also give it a big hog.
Speaker 2: I think that was the real purpose of it. In
Speaker 2: November of eighteen sixty eight, Hull transported the giant in
Speaker 2: an iron sealed box via train to his cousin's house.
Speaker 2: And the cousin, William Stubb Newall.
Speaker 3: Where these names kind of amazing.
Speaker 2: He owned a farm in Cardiff, New York, and he
Speaker 2: was sworn to secrecy. Hull buried the giant near Newell's
Speaker 2: barn and wedged it under the under some roots, so
Speaker 2: it looked like it had been there for like centuries
Speaker 2: nay millennia. Hull then went back to Binghamton, back to
Speaker 2: his tobacco a shop, back to the grind, and he waited.
Speaker 3: How are you moving this multiple ton slab of rock
Speaker 3: by yourself and then easing it into the earth and
Speaker 3: rebearing without having anybody else hiring cruise? Right? So now
Speaker 3: other people are supposed to be mun right, I'm just
Speaker 3: watching these concentric circles grow, but go on.
Speaker 2: While he supplied the locals with like mouth, throat and
Speaker 2: lung cancer. He patiently plotted his next move. Okay, and
Speaker 2: a year after taking his giant to his cousin's house,
Speaker 2: he was ready to act. He wrote a letter to Newell,
Speaker 2: to old uh Stub and said it was time to
Speaker 2: dig up the giant.
Speaker 3: Oh Zarin, close you out, Oh yeah, closed.
Speaker 2: I want you to picture it. It's October sixteenth, eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine. It's a crisp autumn day in Cardiff, New York.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm in New York. Thank God.
Speaker 2: Birds sing as a light breeze blows through the trees,
Speaker 2: sprinkling dried leaves gently onto the earth. Your name is
Speaker 2: Gideon Emmons, and you've been hired to dig away. Well,
Speaker 2: you're a day laborer.
Speaker 3: I prefer ditch digger. Elizabeth, you're a ditch digger.
Speaker 2: I was trying to give you some dignity. You and
Speaker 2: your pal Henry Nichols. You were hired by Stub Newell.
Speaker 2: You follow farmer Noule through a stand of trees. As
Speaker 2: you head towards this barn, fall leaves crunch beneath your feet.
Speaker 2: You look around his property and you think you see
Speaker 2: the perfect place for a while. No, Newell says, over there, right,
Speaker 2: by the barn. You approach the barn and Newell opens
Speaker 2: it up to get you some tools. An old barn
Speaker 2: cat comes screeching out and sprints by you. You're handed
Speaker 2: you tools and get to work. After about three feet,
Speaker 2: your shovel strikes something, probably just some old stone. You
Speaker 2: dig a little more and you look into the hole
Speaker 2: that's not rock. You brush some dirt away, and you
Speaker 2: reveal a giant stone foot. Who what in the wild
Speaker 2: world of sports is this there? You keep digging of
Speaker 2: duck fet Sorry, You keep digging and clearing, and pretty
Speaker 2: soon you see that you've uncovered a large man.
Speaker 3: Wow, very enormous.
Speaker 2: Does this man look in any way realistic?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, But that doesn't stop your pal Henry from yelling.
Speaker 2: I declare, some old Indian has been buried here.
Speaker 3: So he drinks the moonshine whiskey early in the morning,
Speaker 3: he starts with the sun.
Speaker 2: Now, how could this man possibly have had this as
Speaker 2: his first guess? Maybe prompted? No matter, You and Henry
Speaker 2: and the farmer all agree that this just has to
Speaker 2: be a petrified giant the only answer.
Speaker 3: And I'm not a credible witness, so from the olden times, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean this is probably really old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, newel stub. He got to work spreading the word
Speaker 2: of the wonder discovered right on his property. This is
Speaker 2: what it said in the Syracuse Journal quote. Men left
Speaker 2: their work, women caught up their babies, and children in numbers,
Speaker 2: all hurried to the scene where the interest of that
Speaker 2: little community centered. So like it's just you know, magnet. Yeah,
Speaker 2: war of the worlds, but for one object, for one object.
Speaker 2: Cardiff was known for its fossil deposits. Really yeah, apparently
Speaker 2: everyone in the area, every gawker, every amateur expert, was
Speaker 2: sure it was the body of an ancient man who
Speaker 2: had been petrified by a nearby swamp, and initial examinations
Speaker 2: confirmed this theory. Some later determined that the giant wasn't
Speaker 2: a petrified man but a statue, because it doesn't look
Speaker 2: like an actual human being. But it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's.
Speaker 3: From what I understand, when a body turns to rock,
Speaker 3: when organic trail turns to rock, it shrinks a lot.
Speaker 3: So you were gonna have weird structure. Did they make
Speaker 3: it like round level?
Speaker 2: I will show you a picture. I will show you picture.
Speaker 3: Be the thing that would throw me off.
Speaker 2: It was like, well it looks like fleshy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm like, come on now, So this was not a
Speaker 2: petrified man this they said, Okay, maybe it's a statue
Speaker 2: and it was not one created and buried by a
Speaker 2: disgruntled atheist.
Speaker 3: No, no, of course not.
Speaker 2: It was ancient from olden times. They started thinking, well,
Speaker 2: maybe he was carved by French Jesuits hundreds of years ago,
Speaker 2: like as a way to really wow the indigenous people
Speaker 2: of the region, give them the old razzle dazzle.
Speaker 3: Okay, not like a roadmarker or anything. It's just a
Speaker 3: little razzle dazzle from the priest.
Speaker 2: Stub Stubnoel. He was firmly in the man camp. He
Speaker 2: was positive to all outsiders that it was a petrified giant.
Speaker 3: I know it's petrified giant. Whant to see one?
Speaker 2: Right, there is a man, right, and he's like, you
Speaker 2: know what, I'm going to rebury it. No, shout the neighbors. No,
Speaker 2: don't do it. It has historical value. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: I guess you're right. I mean, I can't keep him
Speaker 2: from the world. It's too important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I who am I to do?
Speaker 2: Not Stub says, I'm gonna do the gracious and selfless thing.
Speaker 2: And he goes out and pitches a white tent over
Speaker 2: it and starts charging twenty five cents submission.
Speaker 3: Touch a generation, and then.
Speaker 2: Two days later he raised the price to fifty cents.
Speaker 3: So many people the demand. What can you do? It's
Speaker 3: the market is you pay.
Speaker 2: That money, you get fifteen minutes worth of time to spend.
Speaker 3: With the giant alone. I'm just wondering if it's like
Speaker 3: and then child the booth had the bag on his head,
Speaker 3: you could go in and be with him in the
Speaker 3: closet or whatever for like seven, seven or however many
Speaker 3: minutes you wanted.
Speaker 2: Now I think this is like groups of fifteen.
Speaker 3: Like shuffle him in guide show style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, total sideshow stuff. So the Cardiff Giant is what
Speaker 2: it became known as, had twenty five hundred visitors in
Speaker 2: the first week. So if we figure that averages out
Speaker 2: to about three hundred and fifty eight visitors a day, okay,
Speaker 2: and the first two days were at twenty five cents,
Speaker 2: but the other five days were at fifty cents. I
Speaker 2: am back in sixth grade trying to do some math.
Speaker 3: I'm over here with the calculator.
Speaker 2: And so then that meant that over that week he
Speaker 2: made one thousand, seventy four dollars running numbers, and that's
Speaker 2: like twenty four thousand dollars today.
Speaker 3: Okay, wow in a week, that's what's good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So hotels and restaurants they had more business over that
Speaker 2: those few days than they'd ever had since opening.
Speaker 3: Oh, it was amazing, totally.
Speaker 2: Offers were made to buy the Giant. Yeah, New ol declined.
Speaker 3: So like you got a whole little Florida economy going now.
Speaker 2: So then Hall comes to town the eighties and like
Speaker 2: the conspirators had worked out an agreement. They were going
Speaker 2: to sell the Giant, but it had to be heard well,
Speaker 2: in particular to a syndicate of businessmen that included former
Speaker 2: mayor doctor Amos Westcott and then but it was headed
Speaker 2: up by a man named David Hannam, and they offered
Speaker 2: thirty thousand dollars for a three fourth stake.
Speaker 3: I can tell that these men are not as good
Speaker 3: because their names are not as interesting. So I bet
Speaker 3: they're you know, their subpart.
Speaker 2: But that's like six hundred and seventy thousand dollars today.
Speaker 2: And the men took the deal. They're like of course,
Speaker 2: experts came to examine the piece. Geologist James Hall of
Speaker 2: New York State and professor Henry Wardoff of Rochester University
Speaker 2: were positive, it's an ancient statue. It's not a man,
Speaker 2: it's a statue. Well, of course, Hall said it was
Speaker 2: quote the most remarkable object yet brought to light in
Speaker 2: our country.
Speaker 3: Wow. So this leading academic in his field and he's
Speaker 3: coming out there and he goes, it's an each came
Speaker 3: out of the earth. Probably old, is at.
Speaker 2: Last ancient statue, the first president of Cornell University, Andrew D.
Speaker 2: White said, quote being asked my opinion, my answer was
Speaker 2: that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax. That there
Speaker 2: was no reason why the farmer should dig a well
Speaker 2: in the spot where the figure was, that it was
Speaker 2: convenient neither to the house nor the barn, that there
Speaker 2: was already a good spring and a stream of water
Speaker 2: running conveniently to both. That as to the figure itself,
Speaker 2: it certainly could not have been carved by any prehistoric race,
Speaker 2: since no part of it showed the characteristics of any
Speaker 2: such early work. That, rude as it was, is betrayed.
Speaker 2: It betrayed the qualities of a modern performance of a
Speaker 2: low order.
Speaker 3: Thank you President Colombo nailed it.
Speaker 2: At the end right. He was, however, surprised by the
Speaker 2: grooves on the bottom part of the Giant. He felt
Speaker 2: that they should have taken years to occur.
Speaker 3: With water and stuff, you're going to get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He later published an article for the Century called
Speaker 2: the Cardiff Giant, The True Story of a Remarkable Deception.
Speaker 2: So he was good. Locals they start remembering things. Remember
Speaker 2: when that George Hole guy came into town with that
Speaker 2: enormous box, like it weighed a few tons, if I.
Speaker 3: Remember, everybody strong in town to help us.
Speaker 2: Like about ten feet long, and then he had it
Speaker 2: haul to his cousin's place. I think that Newel farm
Speaker 2: where say, wait, it was fishy here. Journalists showed up,
Speaker 2: you know, not the puff piece variety, muckrakers.
Speaker 3: Nice muckrakers people.
Speaker 2: And they dug up some wonders of their own. They
Speaker 2: found out that a large sum of money was transferred
Speaker 2: from Newell to Hull after the Giant was sold.
Speaker 3: How did they find that? Back then you got to
Speaker 3: talk to like a banker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they got they got a.
Speaker 3: Somebody in the bank record. Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 2: More questions arose when the Cardiff giant was put on
Speaker 2: exhibition to thousands in Albany and Syracuse. A mining engineer
Speaker 2: mentioned that gypsum would have deteriorated in the soggy environment
Speaker 2: it was found in if it had been there for
Speaker 2: such a long time. Hands in his pockets, his shoulders, shrug,
Speaker 2: just saying can I Also, I hate when people say just.
Speaker 3: Saying, well, you know, I get that, but I'm just saying.
Speaker 2: So, who else should arrive on the scene? Off Neil
Speaker 2: Charles Marsh you know him right name?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was the famous Yale paleontologist, and he came
Speaker 2: to check out the Cardiff Giant in a delightfully Yale
Speaker 2: ivy league tweety fashion. He gave the giant a passing
Speaker 2: glance and said, quote a very recent origin and most
Speaker 2: decided humbug.
Speaker 3: Wow, listen to old bones and stones over here. So
Speaker 3: more and more like it coming out thereat.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. And they're just the high level, like high
Speaker 2: falutin disses.
Speaker 3: This is just.
Speaker 2: More people are bringing forth evidence that it's fake. When
Speaker 2: we come back from this break, I'll let you know
Speaker 2: who didn't care if it was fake or real? Hot
Speaker 2: Off the ads. Zarin just ripping right hot off them.
Speaker 3: Those are some deliciously steaming fresh hot ads.
Speaker 2: I feel refreshed by them.
Speaker 3: Commerce sues me, you know, reaches in there.
Speaker 2: I was saying that a lot of people were saying
Speaker 2: very good people coming with tears in their eyes, saying
Speaker 2: that the Cardiff Giant was fake. No, that bit never
Speaker 2: gets old.
Speaker 3: You love that. I love that.
Speaker 2: You know who didn't care if it was fake? P T.
Speaker 3: Barnum. I knew my man would get in a whiff
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: In the air, like he's floating around those first smell profits.
Speaker 2: All he saw were dollars signed. He he wanted in
Speaker 2: on this money maker. So he offered to purchase it himself,
Speaker 2: purchase him enunciating all of a sudden, for fifty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars on a three month lease.
Speaker 3: I get smart. He's like, this ain't gonna last long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just flip. And so he made this day
Speaker 2: just one day after Marsh called it humbug.
Speaker 3: He's like, what do I care? Ye? Did the suckers
Speaker 3: read your papers?
Speaker 2: They refused his offer. So what did he do? He
Speaker 2: hired a sculptor to create a replica. I can do
Speaker 2: you one better, he secretly made a mold of the
Speaker 2: original with wax, which how how do you I snuck
Speaker 2: in at night, I suppose, and they had a copy
Speaker 2: carved from plaster.
Speaker 3: He literally made his own, like like you want mine,
Speaker 3: I got do the exact same one. Your's his fake,
Speaker 3: mine's faker deeper.
Speaker 2: So he puts it on displaying Manhattan, saying it was
Speaker 2: the original and that the one out and cart it
Speaker 2: was fake.
Speaker 3: I prove it wrong.
Speaker 2: So the story comes out. Hannam, who's now the current owner,
Speaker 2: said of the fake to newspapers quote, there's a sucker
Speaker 2: born every minute. Wait, yes, Barnum not only stole the giant,
Speaker 2: he stole that quote.
Speaker 3: So that quote is like attributed. It was a diss
Speaker 3: basically of him. And then he turned around and he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make that the most famous thing about well,
Speaker 3: it was it just.
Speaker 2: Of the people who are believing that, Like yeah, and
Speaker 2: so it was not P. T.
Speaker 3: Barnum about him. That's amazing. Seem weird that somebody like
Speaker 3: that would want to be known for that statement. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean, like you don't give up the game.
Speaker 3: That'd be like a wrestlers like these suckers don't.
Speaker 2: Against p t. Barnum in that kind of stuff. He's
Speaker 2: just gonna run right over you. Handam tried to sue Barnum.
Speaker 2: There was a problem. The judge said, in order to
Speaker 2: get a favorable injunction, he would first have to get
Speaker 2: the giant to swear on its own authenticity. He said, quote,
Speaker 2: bring your giant here, and if he swears to his
Speaker 2: own genuineness as a bona fide petrification, you shall have
Speaker 2: the injunction you ask for.
Speaker 3: I've run in the nineteenth century got so much sad.
Speaker 2: It's totally saddof ads for Barnum's exhibit Red. What is this?
Speaker 2: Is it a statue? Is it a petrification? Is it
Speaker 2: a stupendous fraud? Is it the remains of a former race?
Speaker 3: Give me a nicoll. I'll let you see it for yourself.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: What is I don't know?
Speaker 2: Again it starts off. What is it? I don't know?
Speaker 3: I'll go see it's an Elizabeth that if I've ever
Speaker 3: heard was it?
Speaker 2: Who knows? Who cares? Barnum's giant outsold the original Cardiff Giant.
Speaker 2: Of course, both were scheduled to be shown in New
Speaker 2: York City. Having both giants in New York caused a
Speaker 2: lot of confusion though I'm no, I'm the Cardiff. No,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm Spartacus, the Cardiff Giant itself. The original, the
Speaker 2: original fake was forced to relocate to Boston.
Speaker 3: Where we got the New York Giants as a name,
Speaker 3: had two giants. However, we had our giants. That was awesome.
Speaker 2: Do you know who went to check out the og
Speaker 2: one in Boston? Who were these hipsters looking for an
Speaker 2: authentic experience?
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, what year are we on at this point?
Speaker 3: Eighteen ninety eighteen eighties. I'm gonna go with Robert Barrett Browning.
Speaker 2: Ralph Waldo Emerson I was close, and Oliver Wendell.
Speaker 3: Hulks I was close, real close.
Speaker 2: This is back when like thinkers had.
Speaker 3: Three names, not just in killers of presidents.
Speaker 2: Fun facts.
Speaker 3: I'm full of them, yeah, full of it? There, What
Speaker 3: is it?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 2: What is it? The man Barnum hired to make the
Speaker 2: replica decided to make even more copies because like, why not,
Speaker 2: I have the mold, let's keep this going, And then
Speaker 2: he sold them all ten foot doggers. He sells them
Speaker 2: across the country, all over the place. By the end
Speaker 2: of the year, half a dozen Cardiff giants were on
Speaker 2: display across the guys. This is what they wrote in
Speaker 2: the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Speaker 3: We're so bored back then. You got a big rock,
Speaker 3: I got a nickel.
Speaker 2: Let's do this, someone wrote the Philadelphia inquire quote, it
Speaker 2: is rather rich that we should be victimized by such
Speaker 2: fraud upon a fraud.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy, the fascination had worn off and the
Speaker 2: Cardiff eighteen seventy, the Cardiff Giant became the subject of ridicule.
Speaker 2: Now it wasn't cool anymore. Some still argued that it
Speaker 2: was a piece of antiquity. But at this point, like
Speaker 2: Hull himself was publicly bragging about pulling off the hoax,
Speaker 2: like he played the long game. So everyone thinks it is.
Speaker 2: Then it's exposed as a fraud. He's like nin or niner,
Speaker 2: I told you so, there's no such thing.
Speaker 3: Where's that church?
Speaker 2: Exactly? He had his full confession printed in a newspaper
Speaker 2: on December tenth, eighteenth.
Speaker 3: What's Up?
Speaker 2: February eighteen seventy. The Chicago sculptors also had their confessions
Speaker 2: run in newspapers.
Speaker 3: Dude, everyone with the manifesto in the paper. Yes, this
Speaker 3: is nuts.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, and at the same month,
Speaker 2: excuse me, both the Cardiff Giant and Barnum's replica were
Speaker 2: exposed in court as fakes. The judge added, though, that
Speaker 2: Barnum could not be sued for terming a fake giant
Speaker 2: as fake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he got on that one.
Speaker 2: The number of gawkers dwindled until finally the giant was
Speaker 2: put into storage in a barn in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: What about all the fake ones across the country.
Speaker 2: Probably the giant passed from owner to owner for a
Speaker 2: time and then did a stint touring the carnival circuit,
Speaker 2: and it was put lost years. It was put on
Speaker 2: display at the Pan American Exposition in nineteen oh one
Speaker 2: and then the Hawkeye Fair and Exhibition.
Speaker 3: In nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 2: It was then purchased by publisher Gardner, Mike Cowell's junior
Speaker 2: of Look magazine and Quality Comics fame. He placed the
Speaker 2: giant in his rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation.
Speaker 3: Piece, a tall or tall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he sold it. He sold it to
Speaker 2: the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown.
Speaker 3: Farmers insurance. I don't know, but I don't know. They
Speaker 3: have a museum of farming. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't look that part up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just weird farmers point.
Speaker 2: I was like, whatever, I'll tell you what happened at
Speaker 2: this farmer's family.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was just fixated on the rumpest room at this point.
Speaker 2: Anywhere I want to go back.
Speaker 3: In time, I'm there in the story. That's where I am.
Speaker 2: Barnum's replica is currently on display at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.
Speaker 2: Oh my God, what cooin up Arcade and Audity's Museum
Speaker 2: in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
Speaker 3: See this is what I should be doing in my life.
Speaker 2: This is my road to my next ROA tip. There
Speaker 2: are also replicas on display. You were asking where are they?
Speaker 2: There's one at the Fort Museum and Frontier Village.
Speaker 3: One in Texas, somewhere in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: Full circle, It went right back to five, came Home,
Speaker 2: Came Home, Football's Coming Home. Paul issued a proclamation a
Speaker 2: proclamation zeron, saying he wanted to make clear that he
Speaker 2: did not confess because of growing pressure to criticism. No,
Speaker 2: he just wanted to expose the truth in order to
Speaker 2: prove the gullibility of Christians.
Speaker 3: He wanted to That's all I wanted. I wanted to
Speaker 3: dance around on y'all overall.
Speaker 2: Even though he spent all that money, he made about
Speaker 2: twenty thousand.
Speaker 3: Dollars on this scheme back then money.
Speaker 2: Back, No, yeah, back then, so that's like four hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand dollars today.
Speaker 3: That's not bad, real change.
Speaker 2: But it gave him the hunger, gave him the bloodless.
Speaker 2: He wanted to go all in on being a flim
Speaker 2: flan man. Oh Man couldn't help it. That's not a lifestyle,
Speaker 2: and he couldn't get out of like the genre.
Speaker 3: You can't to jump in, hop in and hop out
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: He built a seven foot giant statue in eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: seven that he named the Solid Muldoon.
Speaker 3: Wait, he's a one hit one, the one hit classics.
Speaker 2: Yes, he became his own cover band. No man, seven
Speaker 2: foot statues.
Speaker 3: You can't do this. This is P. T. Barnom's got
Speaker 3: ideas on ideas. Not like one thing that.
Speaker 2: Worked Solid, the Solid. This one had a tail, not
Speaker 2: a front tail, backtail. Yeah. He did this to be
Speaker 2: quote strongly suggestive of the truth of the Darwinian theory.
Speaker 3: Ah, this is like a whole monkey man thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, he's trying to show evolution and make my
Speaker 2: own fossil.
Speaker 3: Yeah. To prove this, I added a tail to a
Speaker 3: human Missingly. He came, Yeah, like.
Speaker 2: The link between us and lizards. And you know, keep it.
Speaker 2: Keep your stuff to yourself, dude. I don't know why
Speaker 2: it's so anyway, this is great though. This one was
Speaker 2: made from mortar, rock, dust, clay, plaster, ground bones, blood
Speaker 2: and meat.
Speaker 3: And then they.
Speaker 2: Fired it in the kiln for days and then buried
Speaker 2: it in Beula, Colorado.
Speaker 3: Oh man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was named after the wrestler William Muldoon. He was
Speaker 2: known as the Solid Man.
Speaker 3: Oh because he was just so, he's a big dude,
Speaker 3: slab a man.
Speaker 2: Well, and they called him a solid man because it
Speaker 2: was a reference to a song by Edward Harrigan called
Speaker 2: Muldoon the Solid Man. What it's a It's a lovely tune.
Speaker 2: It's a traditional Irish melody. It's an Irish melody. The
Speaker 2: lyrics are like pretty ry and comedic. It's about an
Speaker 2: Irish politician in New York who's outlived his competition. The
Speaker 2: chieftains actually do a really good version of it. The
Speaker 2: big line in there and on the street, every friend
Speaker 2: I meet says, there goes muldoon. He's a solid man.
Speaker 3: I've heard that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so three months.
Speaker 3: Picting before you started doing the lyrics. But thank you.
Speaker 2: Three months after burying the solid muldoon, it was quote
Speaker 2: unquote discovered by William Connitt. You can never wait, no, three months.
Speaker 2: This guy's like I was out digging for fossil and
Speaker 2: I found a lizard man.
Speaker 3: Living memory pass a little so like.
Speaker 2: The Cardiff Giant. It was dismissed that, no, this isn't
Speaker 2: a petrified man. This is actually a piece of ancient art.
Speaker 2: So the Denver Daily Times was so convinced of that
Speaker 2: authenticity as an old piece of art. Quote, there can
Speaker 2: be no question about the genuineness of this piece of statuary.
Speaker 3: Oh I love that approach. Yeah, there can be no question.
Speaker 3: I got questions. I didn't happm before, but now I do.
Speaker 2: So where did the solid muldoon go on the road?
Speaker 2: Of course, visitors all over the country got to see it. Eventually,
Speaker 2: the hoax was exposed by the New York Times. The
Speaker 2: reporter described the statue as having quote a knowing smile
Speaker 2: on his face, as if enjoying the joke. So the
Speaker 2: solid muldoon disappeared from the public eye right after that. However,
Speaker 2: nearly a century later, in nineteen seventy six, an art
Speaker 2: student recreated the piece using an iron beam plaster and
Speaker 2: molded stucco wire in celebration of Colorado's centennial Wow Wow.
Speaker 2: After a brief road tour, it was put on display
Speaker 2: at El Pueblo History Museum before being buried between Pueblo
Speaker 2: and Beulah in a marked plot near Highway seventy eight
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: Like this is a hoax.
Speaker 2: That's like okay, so now there's another stop on my
Speaker 2: road trip to see the marker. Hall didn't invent the
Speaker 2: petrification hoax, though. The newspaper Alta, California ran a petrification
Speaker 2: spoof in eighteen fifty eight. It was presented as a
Speaker 2: letter from a bogus German scholar, Friedrich Lichtenberger, MD. The
Speaker 2: letter explains that a prospector named Ernest Fluckspiegel Flucktorspiegel, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Luckterspiegel drank a half pint of fluid that he found
Speaker 2: inside a geode. You crack open a geode. It's got fluid.
Speaker 2: Well you know, oh, I's good Earth, no way anyway,
Speaker 2: and he went back to camp. He said he had
Speaker 2: pains in his quote epigastric and left hypochondriac regions.
Speaker 3: I get I get that all the time.
Speaker 2: I totally do. And then soon apochondriac regions just flairing
Speaker 2: up all the time. Soon after that they said he died.
Speaker 3: That happens. Did you have that happening?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it happens so often.
Speaker 3: I wonder if he's okay.
Speaker 2: But Fluchserspiegel wasn't just dead. He'd turned to Stone and
Speaker 2: the other miners. They gathered around and hacked away at
Speaker 2: the corpse with an axe like a field dissection. Doctor
Speaker 2: li Stenberger was there. According to the paper, he said
Speaker 2: he found the heart quote strongly resembled a piece of
Speaker 2: red jasper, and like people bought this as a real story.
Speaker 2: For well, you know that if you sip on the
Speaker 2: geo juice.
Speaker 3: Well you just wait a little while. In the way
Speaker 3: our education system is going, people will believe this again soon,
Speaker 3: So don't worry. You'll know it exactly what it's like.
Speaker 3: Oh good, Sorry, that too much for it.
Speaker 2: I suffer from realness. Hull, the father of the Solid
Speaker 2: Muldoon and the Cardiff Giant. He passed away in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh two. The Cardiff Giant inspired a Mark Twain's story
Speaker 2: and also found its way into a Nancy Drew book.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, book forty nine, The Secret of Mirror Bay.
Speaker 2: What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3: Oh man? The fact that these people believed, the initial
Speaker 3: people believed that a rock statue underground was an actual person,
Speaker 3: and they could be petrified, like in perfect like like
Speaker 3: it was Lot's wife and you guys got turned into
Speaker 3: a pillar of salt and then fell into the earth.
Speaker 3: That's what I like, how the picture of this stuff.
Speaker 3: But I mean, like I say, once you can believe something,
Speaker 3: you can believe almost anything. And there's some things that
Speaker 3: predated their belief that that person was a real person.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I get it. I totally get it. And
Speaker 3: I'm loving P. T. Barnum for just cruising this wave
Speaker 3: of credulity and being like, I'll get him whatever what
Speaker 3: they want. I don't care. I'm not telling them what
Speaker 3: anything is. I'm just saying, you want to see it,
Speaker 3: let me.
Speaker 2: Show you a picture of the Cardiff giants while we're here.
Speaker 3: He totally looks like he's like, are you looking at
Speaker 3: my hog? I mean, yes, I'm just I'm so embarrassed,
Speaker 3: but yet look at it. I'm so embarrassed, but look
Speaker 3: at it. That's amazing.
Speaker 2: Keep pushing it into your face.
Speaker 3: It is. It's like, wow, yeah, it's not going to leave.
Speaker 2: Fleshy.
Speaker 3: I mean it's supposed to be like a hungry man
Speaker 3: with a very bottom half.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it does almost.
Speaker 3: He has good thighs and legs too. I'm saying that
Speaker 3: that's somebody who's like, wow, he runs or whatever. You know,
Speaker 3: he doesn't exactly this.
Speaker 2: It's going on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 2: That's all I have. You can find us online at
Speaker 2: ridiculous Crime dot com. We have t shirts and other
Speaker 2: stuff if you're into that sort of thing. It's all
Speaker 2: limited time only, limited availability, so get it while it's there.
Speaker 2: We also are at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2: Email us Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a
Speaker 2: talkback on the iHeart app reach out huh stay hydrated,
Speaker 2: rud dudes. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 2: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Kusten, He's a
Speaker 2: solid man. Research is by Marissa I Think It's an
Speaker 2: Alien Brown and Andrea Zaren said it's a ghost song
Speaker 2: sharpened tear. The theme song is by Well Digging Outlaws
Speaker 2: Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Rumpus Room
Speaker 2: decorator Ben Bollen and Petrified Giant wholesaler Noel Brown.
Speaker 3: Dus Qui Say It One More Times.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
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