Today is the anniversary of one of the saddest days in the 19th century. And to try to lighten the mood, let's also reflect on how people in the late 1860s must have craved distractions. People just loved a good humbug, and the Cardiff Giant was one of the best ever. At the end of the 1860s people were ready for something entertaining. And when a statue of a sleeping man was discovered buried on a farm in upstate New York, Americans went crazy over it.
Today we would say the Cardiff Giant "went viral."
In the language of the 1860s, the oddity found by workers digging a well was a humbug. Purported to be a "petrified giant," the stone man found in 1869 was denounced as a hoax by scientists. It did not matter. With facts, speculation, and some very crazy ideas flying around, the public became fixated on... To Read About the Cardiff Giant….
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