MsGeri
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Biblical Goliath Visits New York --
The Cardiff Giant
Cigar-maker George Hull read the Bible for business ideas, not salvation. And Genesis 6:4 ("There were giants in the earth in those days") totally tickled his entrepreneurial imagination. So, in 1868, Hull hired Chicago stonecutters to create a 10-foot-tall "petrified goliath"--a giant from the biblical past--out of Iowa gypsum. He then shipped the giant to his brother-in-law, Stub Newell, a farmer in Cardiff, New York, who buried the big stone guy on his property.
The next fall, Newell hired workmen to dig a well for him on the spot, where they "discovered" the giant. Thousands paid 50 cents a head to glimpse this newfound biblical "fossil." Five local businessmen paid even more, acquiring majority rights to the giant for $30,000 and shipping him to nearby Syracuse. Later, when competing showman P.T. Barnum (who knew a good deal, and a sucker, when he saw one) couldn't buy it for $60,000, he made one for himself, and the two competing giants practically minted money in New York City.
By then, the cat was out of the bag. Virtually every scientist who examined the giant declared it a fraud. Hull even admitted his trick. Yet people still came in droves. In fact, people pay $9 even today to see the Cardiff giant on display in Cooperstown, New York.
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