They Might Be Giants

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Hey Zaren, what's nahda? You know it's ridiculous?

I do, I do? Actually yama Nashi Japan. Oh come on now, no, no, I wasn't done. In the place of Yama Nashi Japan. There is this theme park. It was only open for about four years, but in that time they were able to build this giant Gulliver statue. Enormous Gulliver statue, you know, from the book Gulliver's Travelers

I like it. That's ridiculous. That's good.

If I'm going to Yamanashi, Japan.

You know what else is ridiculous?

No?

Another giant?

What you got? Giants? Giants?

This is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one ridiculous.

Damn right, Zaren Elizabeth.

Do you like Buried Treasure?

I do.

I like Buried Treasure.

I'm a big fan of the booty.

Like that he talked to it.

That's what pirates called it, buried treasure.

Okay, we've talked about that show The detectorss on here before Metal Detective.

I recommend it to everybody.

I made a lot of people mad talking about the Gilgamesh dream tablet. That hobby lobby got its grubby little hands on. Oh really it didn't go over well.

OK, Sorry for your email inbox.

I have more archaeological treasures for you today, though, let me start off with, as you always like to say, an appetizer.

Yeah, mos boots. Yes.

In seventeen twenty five, I'm going back, baby, I love that. Seventeen twenty five there was eighteenthentry doesn't get enough cloud, No, it really doesn't. We don't cover it enough on this. Yeah. There was a professor named Johann Bartholomeus Adam Behringer.

Okay, that's a name.

He was poking around his poke, poke poking and looking for fossils, all right, as one does Wursburg, Germany.

Right, and got anywhere near Neanderthal.

Sure, right on top of it. He was into erictis. Okays, sure, that is the geological side of fossils.

Ah.

And so he hired some kids, was like, hey, kids, you guys like, come dig with me, and off they went.

I got shoveled, you got time.

Meanwhile, there were some guys at the university where they all worked, who decided they had had an absolute enough of his snooty, arrogant ways he was. He was a real snooty guy.

Only kids would hang out with paid them, right, Adults like only around him?

Okay, so these people at his coworkers decided to prank him. I'm talking about eighteenth century pranks. Okay, that's not how I imagine my life would be when I crossed the stage to accept my college diploma, I would be talking about eighteenth century.

Prank life of welcome surprises, beautiful, wonderful surprise awareness.

One of the guys he carved figures out of limestone. They were little animals, spiders, frogs, lizards. Spiders. Just isn't aside when I always say spiders like that. A friend of mine kept getting these call, these collect calls from the county jails. No, from the county jail. It would be like, you have a collect call from whatever county jail from And the guy would always go, spider.

Yeah.

Laura and I laughed about that. Anyway, I can't see the word spider, the spider, So she'd always no, I do not accept the charge.

Was it a wrong call? But they had the wrong number. Have they ever gotten through?

No called all the time? Anyway? Spiders, frogs, and lizards they had. There were inscriptions on these little figures. It was the name of God in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. A little bit little bit of each on each one. So they went around these two these three days, they went and they planted the figures all over where the Professor and his boy crew were looking. Fessor Barringer found them.

Thank do's a law.

First, he thought they were actual fossils signed by God. Ran them down when I tell you that these are in no way convincing a fossils. They are not realistic representations. They're kind of cartoonish. And he's like, oh, and it's got God's name on it. God's like, here, I made this.

You know I always signed my works.

Yeah, I mean look at the bottom of our feet.

Yeah, that's where the signature is.

Then he thought about it and he was like, maybe these aren't fossils.

Because the kids.

Were like rolling their eyes up. He's like, you know what, I think these were carved by prehistoric pagans.

That's got to be it druids.

And then he's like, but here's the problem. How did they know God's name they carved that on there? And then people were like, actually, I see so he gives up on the Pagans. He's like, they're fossils. I go back to them being fossils, got God's namon. So people are like, well, you know when you actually when you look at it, there are chisel marks on the side. That's not God's handiwork. And he's like, well, you know, speak to the man himself. I don't know, you don't know,

Which is an academic, yes, a professor.

He has all these theories, and he publishes them. Oh poor man, And not long after the publication of the book, the penny drops, he finally figures out, wait a second, these are fake. Now he put everything into writing this book he published, so he figures out these aren't real. And then he also figures out who made them his nemeses at work. He sued two of them and one and those guys lost their job at the college. They each lost their job, and one of them was even

Hundred like out out with you the city wall.

Yeah, and then he comes back with the wig on and there's not the court transcripts. The hoaxers testified that they pulled this prank because quote, he was so arrogant and despised us.

All, oh yeah, it's like the Drake's plate.

Then they'll come up and see exactly like Drake's plate. So barringer. He spent lots of time and money trying to chase down all the copies of his book to get them back. He's like, we printed, I don't know three hundred of them. I gotta find these three hundred suckers who bought it. And but you know, don't worry about it. It got a second printing in seventeen thirty seven.

Oh man, so it did well.

It did well, and then it was translated into English in nineteen sixty three.

Poor dude.

As for the stones, some of them are currently on display at the Oxford University Museum.

With a red sign pointing down joke.

Do you think this is a fossil? And they're now known as lugenstein. I don't know if I'm saying it right.

The lying stone with that emphasis is definitely right. Yes, maybe not, but it was rare somewhere. It's the lying stones, lying stones. I like that.

That's a solid hoax.

That's a great one, though.

He had such a desire to find something of significance, even if he had to like stretch the boundaries of plausibility.

An exploit child labor to get there. Exactly.

Well, in eighteen sixty six there was another scientist doing his best to will his belief into evidence.

Eighteen sixty six eighteen sixty six.

Were jumping forward fifty years or so. There was a professor of geology at Harvard named Josiah Whitney from Eli. Yeah, he was also the state geologist of California, and Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower forty eight, is named after.

Okay, as he was an he have a book like a naturalist.

Oh yeah, he totally is. But he was an expert in economic geology, so mins. Yeah, but he had his share of mishaps for all of his you know, honors and whatnot. He got into it with John Muir about the origins of Yosemite.

Kind of one of those let them fight exactly.

So Whitney said that the Yosemite Valley was created when there was a cataclysmic sinking of the valley floor.

That was Whitney's theory, not glacious.

Yeah, mirrors, Like, no, my dude, that makes no sense. It was glacial action. They smacked him on the side of the head. The Whitney then called him a quote ignoramus and a quote mirror sheep heard her.

Did you call him a pumpkinhead?

White? Well, you know what, Whitney, you're not the one who wound up on the back of the California quarter boo roasted in eighteen sixty six.

He was.

Whitney was all about proving that humans, mastodons, and mammoths all existed at the same time on this planet.

Oh, they definitely partied together.

Well we know now that it's sort of true twelve thousand years ago in the place of scene era. Whitney was pretty sure it was the Pliocene era, like three million years ago. Yeah, big, no on that way. So there, there he is. He's like swanning around the California Gold Country, just east coast.

End it up.

The grizzled Minor forty nine ers, the prospectors, they did not like him, which hold on, they're also newcomers, like who are they to whatever? Yeah, So anyway, these these miners, they wanted to play a joke on Whitney and kind of like take him down a notch. So they came into town from the Goldfield saying that they'd found a skull, a really really old one. Where'd you find it? One

I think they mean like the saltrocket.

Yeah, but you know they said lava. They don't really know. So Whitney stoked. He's like so excited. He comes running. It's got to be ancient. He looks at it. Look, this has to be millions of years old. Of course, he tells everyone his theory has been proven. Look, I have the skull to prove it. This was a skull of a human who walked with mastadons. Three years later, a minister told the San Francisco Evening Bulletin that skull had been planted as a hoax, that a local shopkeeper

No, and he's a scientist. He's a scientist.

He convinces another Harvard geology professor, Frederick Ward Putnam, that he was right. Putnam's like, Okay, I believe you.

That sounds good.

Although whatever you say, you got a mountain named after you. But he wants to know more. He's hungry Zaron for information.

So he had touched the skull.

He sads out to California to do some investigations. He was told out there that the miners had desecrated an indigenous burial site, likely while prospecting, and planted the bones and skulls like for skips and giggles. We'll say, Okay, Putnam didn't believe that. But here's the thing. Everyone should always believe the horrible behavior of gold rush miners.

Yeah, I always better.

They were horrible people.

They're generally in the practice of exploiting, and so you can pretty much just extend from there. They're probably going to exploit other things exactly.

So it wasn't until the early nineteen hundreds that the skull was officially deemed a hoax. All that time, and I should know that there are still creationists who believe it's real, okay, and they're going to send me angry emails to but I don't want to get into it anyway. So there's my entrance into this story that I have for you today. This isn't it?

That was just the a gold rush skull the foyer.

Of this mansion of ridiculous excavation nice foye.

Yeah, yeah, the gilded frames are a nice time.

I want to tell you about George.

Hull, George Hall. Do not know this one?

Is that okay with you?

Yeah? I got time.

Do you feel comfortable in this space?

Yeah? If you'll give me like a hug later, okay? Maybe.

George Hall he was a tobacconist. He made cigars. He was a smoke slanger in the terms of the day. He lived in Binghamton, New York, and that was like almost one hundred and fifty years after old Professor Barringer was digging up phony relics all over Germany.

Hull was an atheist, so an atheist leaf pusher.

Yes, and he was big into science, especially the theory of evolution. In Charles Darwin Big Darwin Head in eighteen sixty eight, Hull was visiting his sister in Aclee, Iowa, and while he was there, the two of them went to a Methodist revival meeting. That was fun for him.

That's good.

During the sermon, Hull heard Reverend H. B. Turk quote Genesis six ' four and this is I will read it to you.

Okay, I was going to do the quote, but you do it. It's fine, go ahead.

The Nephilim were in the earth in those days and after that when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and they bore children to them, the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

What are the Nephilim like the angels?

But they're the ones on earth loosely translated, their giants. They're the son of fallen angels. So in the Jerusalem Bible, what we read in Catholic School uses the word nephilim. In the King James version, which is what Hull would have heard quoted, they use the word giants. So he just straight up says giants.

Yeah, because they're like the opposite of the chair of them. Right.

Hull's sister kind of like stepped in it by bringing him to this revival because when the sermon ended, Hull went to the pastor and started to debate him about the literal accuracy of the Bible. He did not win this argument because the rest of the congregation joined in and shouted him down, like Hull, dude, let these people enjoy their faith. Who cares?

Yeah, literally in their church? Who cares?

But he was changed that day. He was on a mission. He had to prove these people wrong, embarrass them, and maybe and maybe make a little money on the side.

Why not, It's America, he law.

He was outnumbered by these meeting attendants, but he wasn't gonna let it get him down. He decided, you know what, I'm making a giant.

What that's his answer, I'm.

Making a big petrified giant. I'm making a big old fake and I'm gonna sell tickets.

I'm selling tickets to see my long daddy.

That'll show them.

Yeah, okay, Barnum involved in this decision.

Making hold onto your underpants? He needed help, of course, huh. So he talked to a friend of his in Marshalltown, Iowa. Okay, this is a guy named H. B.

Martin.

So the two of them HB. What it's like, Horace booty face.

I have a family member. His nickname. His name was Aura O R A. In his middle of the name, I don't know, it was t. I don't know what the name was, but we always call him oor t Okay. I just think that's so great we have those little short names like that. Is even better because he's down to two sounds exactly.

So, HB. Martin. These two guys, Hull and Martin, they get together. They go to Fort Dodge, Iowa, and they checked in at the Saint Charles Hotel. So this is what a resident wrote into the Dubuke Times. Quote. For a number of weeks after their arrival here, their movements seemed to be of a very suspicious character. They would wander about town apparently with no definite object in view. Lady, that's called tourism.

So they wrote into the paper, I'm a busybody, and here's what I noticed. I saw these two men people in town.

They actually did have a definite object in view. When we come back from this break, I'll tell you what it was.

I hope it's a giant.

Hello, Skippy, what up? When we left off George Hall and his pal HB. Martin with the cool name. They were cruising around Fort Dodge for actions, right kind of action you'll see. So they found out about this guy named Cebe Cummins, another gra name Ceeb Cummins. He owned a gypsum quarry Okay, and the pair tried to get a contract with Cummins to cut out a block of gypsum that would be twelve feet long by three and a half feet wide and two feet thick, all.

Twelve by three by starting to put together with their building.

Come and said no, yeah, because he asked them a bunch of questions about why they wanted such a big piece of gypsum, and they He never got the same story twice from them.

They couldn't you just say the words, I'm a sculptor. Here's some money, Yeah, I'm a sculptor. Do you take cash? Yeah? No.

So one time they told him that they were going to quote exhibit in New York as a specimen of the products of Fort Dodge and vicinity.

That's wrong with these guys, Like we.

Want to show Fort Dodge's finest gypsum at the museum.

Liker, look here.

And like they're suddenly they were like real Fort Dodge boosters. You just got here.

I don't sell than Fort Dodge nerds.

Then they said they wanted to quote send it to Washington. Is Iowa's contribution to the Lincoln Monument?

Wait?

What as if they're taking like, send us send it's a pot luck.

Yeah, it's you know, it's a rock luck. We put this every fifties all the states. I don't know how many of the time memorial I don't know twelve.

So Commons he figures, Okay, these guys are up to no good. They want this for nefarious and then he said, I'm not going to do business with them at any price. Wow, principal, run of them, Yeah, Pedler, Yeah.

Not like those guys you normally find slung in gyps and anybody with gyps and nickels in their pockets, just.

Little bags of gyps on the side of Holland Martin.

Lucy's got them rocks, got them rocks. I should stop.

Yeah. So this Okay, they try again, Holland Martin. They're not going to be deterred. This is gypsum country, after all, there's not you know, Commons isn't the only game in town. Okay, so they hooked up with Michael Foley and he got them a five ton block that they needed from old Gypsum Hollow.

Nice. He himself, he just sliced it out.

I mean, is he a gyps guy or I don't know, maybe stole it. Who knows. Hall had the block shipped to a German stonecutter in Chicago named Edward Berghart. Nice ships it off. Berghart agreed to keep Mum on the whole scam if they cut him in on the prophet. Oh, She's like, I know you're doing something crazy with this, fine, but cut me in bek They had exactly, they had a deal. So Burghart he hired two sculptors to assist with the project, and then he Hull himself posed for

Big don.

I'm not kidding. It's a pretty healthy sized member on this thing.

Well got yeah, I'd say, oh, you know, and it's kind of would gray sweats. You're saying, this is a winter.

And the figure is standing there like it has to go to the bathroom.

What is that I think of kids doing.

It's like kind of slightly bent over with his legs crossed, and then one hand is covering his lower torso but like with his ding ding hanging out, and on the other hand looked down here trying to hold it behind it with my hand, but there's not enough hand.

I don't have enough.

And then the other hands behind his back like presumably to stop the turtle head.

Oh, I was thinking like a thoughtful pose like my morning constitution, triumphs.

Burghart.

It both ends.

Apparently Burghart put stains and asses on the giant sculpture to give it like that weathered Chevvy machine. Then he and his underlings they made pores on the surface of it by beating it with steel knitting needles that had.

Been embedded into a board. Cool, Isn't that's smart.

When it was done, the statue of the giant, the enormous George Hull naked, stood ten tall and weighed almost three thousand pounds. Dam yeah, damn. At this point, Hull had spent twenty six hundred dollars on the hoax, and that's more than fifty five thousand dollars in today's money. Oh wow, on a hoax to prove the past or wrong.

Yeah. For Skipson giggles because he had a bad moment in a church and some people shoutowed him down. He's like, I got fifty five grand on that. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. And also give it a big hog.

I think that was the real purpose of it. In November of eighteen sixty eight, Hull transported the giant in an iron sealed box via train to his cousin's house. And the cousin, William Stubb Newall.

Where these names kind of amazing.

He owned a farm in Cardiff, New York, and he was sworn to secrecy. Hull buried the giant near Newell's barn and wedged it under the under some roots, so it looked like it had been there for like centuries nay millennia. Hull then went back to Binghamton, back to his tobacco a shop, back to the grind, and he waited.

How are you moving this multiple ton slab of rock by yourself and then easing it into the earth and rebearing without having anybody else hiring cruise? Right? So now other people are supposed to be mun right, I'm just watching these concentric circles grow, but go on.

While he supplied the locals with like mouth, throat and lung cancer. He patiently plotted his next move. Okay, and a year after taking his giant to his cousin's house, he was ready to act. He wrote a letter to Newell, to old uh Stub and said it was time to dig up the giant.

Oh Zarin, close you out, Oh yeah, closed.

I want you to picture it. It's October sixteenth, eighteen sixty nine. It's a crisp autumn day in Cardiff, New York.

Okay, I'm in New York. Thank God.

Birds sing as a light breeze blows through the trees, sprinkling dried leaves gently onto the earth. Your name is Gideon Emmons, and you've been hired to dig away. Well, you're a day laborer.

I prefer ditch digger. Elizabeth, you're a ditch digger.

I was trying to give you some dignity. You and your pal Henry Nichols. You were hired by Stub Newell. You follow farmer Noule through a stand of trees. As you head towards this barn, fall leaves crunch beneath your feet. You look around his property and you think you see the perfect place for a while. No, Newell says, over there, right, by the barn. You approach the barn and Newell opens it up to get you some tools. An old barn cat comes screeching out and sprints by you. You're handed

Wow, very enormous.

Does this man look in any way realistic?

No?

No, But that doesn't stop your pal Henry from yelling. I declare, some old Indian has been buried here.

So he drinks the moonshine whiskey early in the morning, he starts with the sun.

Now, how could this man possibly have had this as his first guess? Maybe prompted? No matter, You and Henry and the farmer all agree that this just has to be a petrified giant the only answer.

And I'm not a credible witness, so from the olden times, yeah, I mean this is probably really old.

Yeah, newel stub. He got to work spreading the word of the wonder discovered right on his property. This is what it said in the Syracuse Journal quote. Men left their work, women caught up their babies, and children in numbers, all hurried to the scene where the interest of that little community centered. So like it's just you know, magnet. Yeah, war of the worlds, but for one object, for one object.

From what I understand, when a body turns to rock, when organic trail turns to rock, it shrinks a lot. So you were gonna have weird structure. Did they make it like round level?

I will show you a picture. I will show you picture.

Be the thing that would throw me off.

It was like, well it looks like fleshy.

Yeah.

I'm like, come on now, So this was not a petrified man this they said, Okay, maybe it's a statue and it was not one created and buried by a disgruntled atheist.

No, no, of course not.

It was ancient from olden times. They started thinking, well, maybe he was carved by French Jesuits hundreds of years ago, like as a way to really wow the indigenous people of the region, give them the old razzle dazzle.

Okay, not like a roadmarker or anything. It's just a little razzle dazzle from the priest.

Stub Stubnoel. He was firmly in the man camp. He was positive to all outsiders that it was a petrified giant.

I know it's petrified giant. Whant to see one?

Right, there is a man, right, and he's like, you know what, I'm going to rebury it. No, shout the neighbors. No, don't do it. It has historical value. Well, you know, I guess you're right. I mean, I can't keep him from the world. It's too important.

Yeah, I who am I to do?

Not Stub says, I'm gonna do the gracious and selfless thing. And he goes out and pitches a white tent over it and starts charging twenty five cents submission.

Touch a generation, and then.

Two days later he raised the price to fifty cents.

So many people the demand. What can you do? It's the market is you pay.

That money, you get fifteen minutes worth of time to spend.

With the giant alone. I'm just wondering if it's like and then child the booth had the bag on his head, you could go in and be with him in the closet or whatever for like seven, seven or however many minutes you wanted.

Now I think this is like groups of fifteen.

Like shuffle him in guide show style.

Yeah, total sideshow stuff. So the Cardiff Giant is what it became known as, had twenty five hundred visitors in the first week. So if we figure that averages out to about three hundred and fifty eight visitors a day, okay, and the first two days were at twenty five cents, but the other five days were at fifty cents. I am back in sixth grade trying to do some math.

I'm over here with the calculator.

And so then that meant that over that week he made one thousand, seventy four dollars running numbers, and that's like twenty four thousand dollars today.

Okay, wow in a week, that's what's good. Yeah.

So hotels and restaurants they had more business over that those few days than they'd ever had since opening.

Oh, it was amazing, totally.

Offers were made to buy the Giant. Yeah, New ol declined.

So like you got a whole little Florida economy going now.

So then Hall comes to town the eighties and like the conspirators had worked out an agreement. They were going to sell the Giant, but it had to be heard well, in particular to a syndicate of businessmen that included former mayor doctor Amos Westcott and then but it was headed up by a man named David Hannam, and they offered thirty thousand dollars for a three fourth stake.

I can tell that these men are not as good because their names are not as interesting. So I bet they're you know, their subpart.

But that's like six hundred and seventy thousand dollars today. And the men took the deal. They're like of course, experts came to examine the piece. Geologist James Hall of New York State and professor Henry Wardoff of Rochester University were positive, it's an ancient statue. It's not a man, it's a statue. Well, of course, Hall said it was quote the most remarkable object yet brought to light in our country.

Wow. So this leading academic in his field and he's coming out there and he goes, it's an each came out of the earth. Probably old, is at.

Last ancient statue, the first president of Cornell University, Andrew D. White said, quote being asked my opinion, my answer was that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax. That there was no reason why the farmer should dig a well in the spot where the figure was, that it was convenient neither to the house nor the barn, that there was already a good spring and a stream of water

Thank you President Colombo nailed it.

At the end right. He was, however, surprised by the grooves on the bottom part of the Giant. He felt that they should have taken years to occur.

With water and stuff, you're going to get it.

Yeah. He later published an article for the Century called the Cardiff Giant, The True Story of a Remarkable Deception. So he was good. Locals they start remembering things. Remember when that George Hole guy came into town with that enormous box, like it weighed a few tons, if I.

Remember, everybody strong in town to help us.

Like about ten feet long, and then he had it haul to his cousin's place. I think that Newel farm where say, wait, it was fishy here. Journalists showed up, you know, not the puff piece variety, muckrakers.

Nice muckrakers people.

And they dug up some wonders of their own. They found out that a large sum of money was transferred from Newell to Hull after the Giant was sold.

How did they find that? Back then you got to talk to like a banker.

Yeah, they got they got a.

Somebody in the bank record. Yeah, I like it.

More questions arose when the Cardiff giant was put on exhibition to thousands in Albany and Syracuse. A mining engineer mentioned that gypsum would have deteriorated in the soggy environment it was found in if it had been there for such a long time. Hands in his pockets, his shoulders, shrug, just saying can I Also, I hate when people say just.

Saying, well, you know, I get that, but I'm just saying.

So, who else should arrive on the scene? Off Neil Charles Marsh you know him right name?

Yeah?

Yeah, he was the famous Yale paleontologist, and he came to check out the Cardiff Giant in a delightfully Yale ivy league tweety fashion. He gave the giant a passing glance and said, quote a very recent origin and most decided humbug.

Wow, listen to old bones and stones over here. So more and more like it coming out thereat.

It's wonderful. And they're just the high level, like high falutin disses.

This is just.

More people are bringing forth evidence that it's fake. When we come back from this break, I'll let you know who didn't care if it was fake or real? Hot Off the ads. Zarin just ripping right hot off them.

Those are some deliciously steaming fresh hot ads.

I feel refreshed by them.

Commerce sues me, you know, reaches in there.

I was saying that a lot of people were saying very good people coming with tears in their eyes, saying that the Cardiff Giant was fake. No, that bit never gets old.

You love that. I love that.

You know who didn't care if it was fake? P T.

Barnum. I knew my man would get in a whiff of it.

In the air, like he's floating around those first smell profits. All he saw were dollars signed. He he wanted in on this money maker. So he offered to purchase it himself, purchase him enunciating all of a sudden, for fifty thousand dollars on a three month lease.

I get smart. He's like, this ain't gonna last long.

Yeah, let's just flip. And so he made this day just one day after Marsh called it humbug.

He's like, what do I care? Ye? Did the suckers read your papers?

They refused his offer. So what did he do? He hired a sculptor to create a replica. I can do you one better, he secretly made a mold of the original with wax, which how how do you I snuck in at night, I suppose, and they had a copy carved from plaster.

He literally made his own, like like you want mine, I got do the exact same one. Your's his fake, mine's faker deeper.

So he puts it on displaying Manhattan, saying it was the original and that the one out and cart it was fake.

I prove it wrong.

So the story comes out. Hannam, who's now the current owner, said of the fake to newspapers quote, there's a sucker born every minute. Wait, yes, Barnum not only stole the giant, he stole that quote.

So that quote is like attributed. It was a diss basically of him. And then he turned around and he's like, I'm gonna make that the most famous thing about well, it was it just.

Of the people who are believing that, Like yeah, and so it was not P. T.

Barnum about him. That's amazing. Seem weird that somebody like that would want to be known for that statement. You know what I mean, like you don't give up the game. That'd be like a wrestlers like these suckers don't.

Against p t. Barnum in that kind of stuff. He's just gonna run right over you. Handam tried to sue Barnum. There was a problem. The judge said, in order to get a favorable injunction, he would first have to get the giant to swear on its own authenticity. He said, quote, bring your giant here, and if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrification, you shall have the injunction you ask for.

I've run in the nineteenth century got so much sad.

It's totally saddof ads for Barnum's exhibit Red. What is this? Is it a statue? Is it a petrification? Is it a stupendous fraud? Is it the remains of a former race?

Give me a nicoll. I'll let you see it for yourself.

What is it?

What is I don't know?

Again it starts off. What is it? I don't know?

I'll go see it's an Elizabeth that if I've ever heard was it?

Who knows? Who cares? Barnum's giant outsold the original Cardiff Giant. Of course, both were scheduled to be shown in New York City. Having both giants in New York caused a lot of confusion though I'm no, I'm the Cardiff. No, I'm I'm Spartacus, the Cardiff Giant itself. The original, the original fake was forced to relocate to Boston.

Where we got the New York Giants as a name, had two giants. However, we had our giants. That was awesome.

Do you know who went to check out the og one in Boston? Who were these hipsters looking for an authentic experience?

Okay, wait, what year are we on at this point? Eighteen ninety eighteen eighties. I'm gonna go with Robert Barrett Browning.

Ralph Waldo Emerson I was close, and Oliver Wendell.

Hulks I was close, real close.

This is back when like thinkers had.

Three names, not just in killers of presidents.

Fun facts.

I'm full of them, yeah, full of it? There, What is it?

What is it?

What is it?

What is it? The man Barnum hired to make the replica decided to make even more copies because like, why not, I have the mold, let's keep this going, And then he sold them all ten foot doggers. He sells them across the country, all over the place. By the end of the year, half a dozen Cardiff giants were on display across the guys. This is what they wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

We're so bored back then. You got a big rock, I got a nickel.

Let's do this, someone wrote the Philadelphia inquire quote, it is rather rich that we should be victimized by such fraud upon a fraud.

Oh yeah yeah.

In eighteen seventy, the fascination had worn off and the Cardiff eighteen seventy, the Cardiff Giant became the subject of ridicule. Now it wasn't cool anymore. Some still argued that it was a piece of antiquity. But at this point, like Hull himself was publicly bragging about pulling off the hoax, like he played the long game. So everyone thinks it is. Then it's exposed as a fraud. He's like nin or niner, I told you so, there's no such thing.

Where's that church?

Exactly? He had his full confession printed in a newspaper on December tenth, eighteenth.

What's Up?

February eighteen seventy. The Chicago sculptors also had their confessions run in newspapers.

Dude, everyone with the manifesto in the paper. Yes, this is nuts.

And at the same time, and at the same month, excuse me, both the Cardiff Giant and Barnum's replica were exposed in court as fakes. The judge added, though, that Barnum could not be sued for terming a fake giant as fake.

Yeah, so he got on that one.

The number of gawkers dwindled until finally the giant was put into storage in a barn in Massachusetts.

What about all the fake ones across the country.

Probably the giant passed from owner to owner for a time and then did a stint touring the carnival circuit, and it was put lost years. It was put on display at the Pan American Exposition in nineteen oh one and then the Hawkeye Fair and Exhibition.

In nineteen twenty three.

It was then purchased by publisher Gardner, Mike Cowell's junior of Look magazine and Quality Comics fame. He placed the giant in his rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation.

Piece, a tall or tall.

Yeah, and then he sold it. He sold it to the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown.

Farmers insurance. I don't know, but I don't know. They have a museum of farming. I don't know.

I didn't look that part up.

Yeah, that's just weird farmers point.

I was like, whatever, I'll tell you what happened at this farmer's family.

I don't know.

I was just fixated on the rumpest room at this point. Anywhere I want to go back.

In time, I'm there in the story. That's where I am.

Barnum's replica is currently on display at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. Oh my God, what cooin up Arcade and Audity's Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

See this is what I should be doing in my life.

This is my road to my next ROA tip. There are also replicas on display. You were asking where are they? There's one at the Fort Museum and Frontier Village.

One in Texas, somewhere in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Oklahoma.

Full circle, It went right back to five, came Home, Came Home, Football's Coming Home. Paul issued a proclamation a proclamation zeron, saying he wanted to make clear that he did not confess because of growing pressure to criticism. No, he just wanted to expose the truth in order to prove the gullibility of Christians.

He wanted to That's all I wanted. I wanted to dance around on y'all overall.

Even though he spent all that money, he made about twenty thousand.

Dollars on this scheme back then money.

Back, No, yeah, back then, so that's like four hundred and fifty thousand dollars today.

That's not bad, real change.

But it gave him the hunger, gave him the bloodless. He wanted to go all in on being a flim flan man. Oh Man couldn't help it. That's not a lifestyle, and he couldn't get out of like the genre.

You can't to jump in, hop in and hop out of that.

He built a seven foot giant statue in eighteen seventy seven that he named the Solid Muldoon.

Wait, he's a one hit one, the one hit classics.

Yes, he became his own cover band. No man, seven foot statues.

You can't do this. This is P. T. Barnom's got ideas on ideas. Not like one thing that.

Worked Solid, the Solid. This one had a tail, not a front tail, backtail. Yeah. He did this to be quote strongly suggestive of the truth of the Darwinian theory.

Ah, this is like a whole monkey man thing. Yeah.

Well yeah, he's trying to show evolution and make my own fossil.

Yeah. To prove this, I added a tail to a human Missingly. He came, Yeah, like.

The link between us and lizards. And you know, keep it. Keep your stuff to yourself, dude. I don't know why it's so anyway, this is great though. This one was made from mortar, rock, dust, clay, plaster, ground bones, blood and meat.

And then they.

Fired it in the kiln for days and then buried it in Beula, Colorado.

Oh man. Yeah.

It was named after the wrestler William Muldoon. He was known as the Solid Man.

Oh because he was just so, he's a big dude, slab a man.

Well, and they called him a solid man because it was a reference to a song by Edward Harrigan called Muldoon the Solid Man. What it's a It's a lovely tune. It's a traditional Irish melody. It's an Irish melody. The lyrics are like pretty ry and comedic. It's about an Irish politician in New York who's outlived his competition. The chieftains actually do a really good version of it. The big line in there and on the street, every friend I meet says, there goes muldoon. He's a solid man.

I've heard that.

Yeah, yeah, so three months.

Picting before you started doing the lyrics. But thank you.

Three months after burying the solid muldoon, it was quote unquote discovered by William Connitt. You can never wait, no, three months. This guy's like I was out digging for fossil and I found a lizard man.

Living memory pass a little so like.

The Cardiff Giant. It was dismissed that, no, this isn't a petrified man. This is actually a piece of ancient art. So the Denver Daily Times was so convinced of that authenticity as an old piece of art. Quote, there can be no question about the genuineness of this piece of statuary.

Oh I love that approach. Yeah, there can be no question. I got questions. I didn't happm before, but now I do.

So where did the solid muldoon go on the road? Of course, visitors all over the country got to see it. Eventually, the hoax was exposed by the New York Times. The reporter described the statue as having quote a knowing smile on his face, as if enjoying the joke. So the

Like this is a hoax.

That's like okay, so now there's another stop on my road trip to see the marker. Hall didn't invent the petrification hoax, though. The newspaper Alta, California ran a petrification spoof in eighteen fifty eight. It was presented as a letter from a bogus German scholar, Friedrich Lichtenberger, MD. The letter explains that a prospector named Ernest Fluckspiegel Flucktorspiegel, Yeah, Luckterspiegel drank a half pint of fluid that he found inside a geode. You crack open a geode. It's got fluid.

I get I get that all the time.

I totally do. And then soon apochondriac regions just flairing up all the time. Soon after that they said he died.

That happens. Did you have that happening?

Oh my god, it happens so often.

I wonder if he's okay.

But Fluchserspiegel wasn't just dead. He'd turned to Stone and the other miners. They gathered around and hacked away at the corpse with an axe like a field dissection. Doctor li Stenberger was there. According to the paper, he said he found the heart quote strongly resembled a piece of red jasper, and like people bought this as a real story. For well, you know that if you sip on the geo juice.

Well you just wait a little while. In the way our education system is going, people will believe this again soon, So don't worry. You'll know it exactly what it's like. Oh good, Sorry, that too much for it.

I suffer from realness. Hull, the father of the Solid Muldoon and the Cardiff Giant. He passed away in nineteen oh two. The Cardiff Giant inspired a Mark Twain's story and also found its way into a Nancy Drew book. Uh oh, book forty nine, The Secret of Mirror Bay. What's your ridiculous takeaway?

Oh man? The fact that these people believed, the initial people believed that a rock statue underground was an actual person, and they could be petrified, like in perfect like like it was Lot's wife and you guys got turned into a pillar of salt and then fell into the earth. That's what I like, how the picture of this stuff. But I mean, like I say, once you can believe something,

Show you a picture of the Cardiff giants while we're here.

He totally looks like he's like, are you looking at my hog? I mean, yes, I'm just I'm so embarrassed, but yet look at it. I'm so embarrassed, but look at it. That's amazing.

Keep pushing it into your face.

It is. It's like, wow, yeah, it's not going to leave.

Fleshy.

I mean it's supposed to be like a hungry man with a very bottom half.

Yeah, well it does almost.

He has good thighs and legs too. I'm saying that that's somebody who's like, wow, he runs or whatever. You know, he doesn't exactly this.

It's going on Instagram.

Good.

That's all I have. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We have t shirts and other stuff if you're into that sort of thing. It's all limited time only, limited availability, so get it while it's there. We also are at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a talkback on the iHeart app reach out huh stay hydrated,

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