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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cardiff Giant | 1/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:29:50.145870+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous archaeological hoaxes in American history. It was a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), roughly 3,000 pound purported "petrified man", uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell, in Cardiff, New York. He covered the giant with a tent and it soon became an attraction site. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P. T. Barnum are still being displayed.
== Creation and discovery == The giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. He was deeply attracted to science and especially to the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin. Hull got into an argument with Reverend Turk and his supporters at a Methodist revival meeting about Genesis 6:4, which states that there were giants who once lived on Earth. Hull, a skeptic, being the minority party, lost the argument. Angered by his defeat and the credulity of people, Hull wanted to prove how easily he could fool people with a fake giant. The idea of a petrified man did not originate with Hull, however. During 1858, the newspaper Alta California had published a fake letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a geode. Other newspapers had also published stories of supposedly petrified people. In 1868, Hull, accompanied by a man named H. B. Martin, hired men to quarry out a 10-foot-4.5-inch-long (3.2 m) block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it was intended for a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York. He shipped the block to Edward Burkhardt in Chicago, a German stonecutter. Burkhardt hired two sculptors named Henry Salle and Fred Mohrmann to create the giant. While it is not clear if Burkhardt was aware of Hull's intentions, it is reported that they took steps to cover up their work during the carving, putting up quilts to lessen the sound of carving. The giant was designed to imitate the form of Hull himself. Hull consulted a geologist and learned that hairs would not be petrified, so he removed the hair and beard from the giant. The length of the giant was 10 feet 4+1⁄2 inches (3.162 m) and it weighed 2,990 pounds (1,360 kg). Various stains and acids were used to make the giant appear to be old and weathered. In order for the giant to look ancient, Hull first wiped the giant using a sponge soaked with sand and water. The giant's surface was beaten with steel knitting needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. The giant was also rubbed with sulphuric acid to create a deeper, vintage-like color. During November 1868, Hull transported the giant by railroad to the farm of his cousin, William Newell. By then, he had spent US$2,600 (equivalent to $63,000 in 2025) for the hoax. On a night in late November 1868, the giant was buried in a hole in Newell's farm. Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869, they found the giant. One of the men reportedly exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!"
== Exhibition and exposure as fraud == On the first day, visitors were able to view the giant with no fee charged. The next day, a tent was set up on the discovery site and Newell charged each visitor fifty cents for a fifteen-minute session of viewing the giant. The number of visitors went to about three to five hundred per day as the demand for wagons and carriages dramatically increased. The townspeople also gained huge profit because of the Cardiff Giant. The hotels and restaurants in Cardiff saw more customers in those four days than they had ever seen before. Some believed this giant was a petrified man, while some believed it was a statue. Those who believed it was a petrified man thought it was one of the giants mentioned in the aforementioned Genesis verse. On the other hand, John F. Boynton, the first geologist to examine the giant, declared that it could not be a fossilized man, but hypothesized that it was a statue that was carved by a French Jesuit in the 16th or 17th century in order to impress the local Native Americans. Andrew D. White, the first president of Cornell University, made a close inspection of the Cardiff Giant. He noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the exact spot the giant had been found.