The Cardiff Giant

Podcast Transcript

In 1869, the world was shocked by a discovery that was made outside of the town of Cardiff, New York.

Two workers discovered what was claimed to be the remains of a 10 foot tall, petrified human being.

The claim set off a fiery debate between those who thought it was proof of the Bible and those who just thought it was a long lost statue.

It turned out, neither group was correct.

Learn more about the Cardiff Giant and one of the biggest hoaxes of the 19th century on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The Cardiff Giant was, for a very brief period of time, one of the biggest news stories of the 19th century in the United States.

It garnered an enormous amount of publicity and large crowds, which subsequently led to a lot of money.

The story starts in October 1869 in upstate New York. A man by the name of William C. “Stub” Newell had a farm outside the town of Cardiff, which is just south of the city of Syracuse.

On October 16, he hired two men to dig him a well. He gave them the exact spot where to dig and let them do their work.

Soon after they began digging, they men’s shovels hit what appeared to be someone’s foot.

A very large foot.

They continued to excavate, clearing the tree roots that were surrounding the object, and found what was a very large stone man. He would have been approximately 10 feet tall, which is over three meters.

One of the workers was reported to have said, “I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!”

Word traveled quickly in the surrounding area that something had been discovered on Stub Newell’s farm. As the Syracuse Journal reported, “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.”

At first, Newell was very perplexed by the discovery and actually proposed burying it again and forgetting about the entire affair.

However, Newell quickly realized the financial potential, erected a tent around the supposed fossil and started charging 50 cents per visitor. Within a short time, the price was raised to a dollar due to the overwhelming interest.

Thousands of people flocked to the farm to see the discovery in just the first week. People set up food stalls nearby to cater to all of the people coming to the site. Local hotels and boarding houses did more business than they had ever done before.

While Newell claimed that it was a major discovery, he never said what exactly it was or what he thought it was.

As people began flocking to the site to see the discovery, they began making their own theories as to what it was.

Each observer, depending on their background, beliefs, and expertise, formed different theories about its origin and significance.

Some people, particularly devout religious individuals, believed the giant was direct evidence supporting biblical accounts of giants in the land, as described in Genesis 6:4, which said, “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men…”

To them, the petrified figure was proof that stories from the Bible were literally true, and they saw the discovery as a miraculous confirmation of their faith.

They claimed that the giant man had been petrified, similar to the way that wood can become petrified by minerals replacing organic matter.

Others, particularly those with knowledge of Native American history, proposed that the figure was an ancient statue carved by indigenous peoples. Given the numerous burial mounds and stone structures attributed to prehistoric cultures in North America, they assumed the Cardiff Giant was a sacred effigy or religious idol left behind by an ancient civilization. Some even speculated that it might have been part of an unknown pre-Columbian artistic or religious tradition.

The first geologist on the scene was John F. Boynton. He didn’t think that it could possibly be a petrified man. He thought that it was most probably a statue carved by French Jesuits in the 16th or 17th century to impress the natives in the region.

A few more pragmatic individuals saw the whole event as a clever scam. Some local farmers and businesspeople, wary of how quickly the site was turned into a profitable attraction, suspected from the beginning that the discovery was staged for financial gain. They questioned why Newell was so eager to charge admission and why he had been so secretive about the circumstances leading up to the discovery.

One of the early visitors was Andrew D. White, the first president of Cornell University. He assessed the giant and where it was discovered and came to his own conclusion. He noted,

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 found; that it was convenient neither to the house nor to the barn; that there was already a good spring and a stream of water running conveniently to both; that, as to the figure itself, it certainly could not have been carved by any prehistoric race, since no part of it showed the characteristics of any such early work; that, rude as it was, it betrayed the qualities of a modern performance of a low order.

The Cardiff Giant’s popularity grew rapidly, attracting attention from investors. A group led by David Hannum, a Syracuse banker, purchased a three-fourths interest in the giant for $30,000 (equivalent to about $600,000 today). They moved it to Syracuse and planned a larger exhibition.

This led to a famous rivalry when P.T. Barnum, the legendary showman, attempted to buy the giant for $50,000. When Hannum refused, Barnum made his own fake Cardiff Giant and began exhibiting it in New York City, claiming it was the real one. This prompted Hannum to remark, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” a phrase often misattributed to Barnum himself.

At this point in the story, I need to shift gears.

I began the episode with the discovery of the Cardiff Giant on October 16, 1869.

However, that was not the start of the story.

The story of the Cardiff Giant actually began over a year earlier in 1868 with a man by the name of George Hull, a tobacconist from Binghamton, New York.

He was an anomaly in the 19th century in that he was an atheist….in fact, a rather fervent atheist.

During a business trip to Iowa, he got into a heated theological debate with an itinerant preacher. During their debate, he was shocked by how literally the preacher took the bible. In particular, the previously mentioned verse from Genesis about giants that roamed the Earth.

From this debate Hull got an idea. He decided to create a hoax that would challenge biblical literalism and show believers to be gullible….. while potentially making him a whole lot of money.

Hull knew that the success of the hoax depended on making the giant look as if it had been buried for centuries. He chose gypsum, a soft, easily carved sedimentary rock, because it resembled petrified flesh. He found a suitable 10.5-foot-long block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, an area known for its high-quality stone deposits.

To avoid suspicion, Hull did not purchase the stone directly. Instead, he had a local man named Henry Prast acquire it for him under the pretense of needing it for a monument. Once purchased, the massive block, weighing nearly three tons, was shipped discreetly to Chicago via railroad.

Hull hired a German stonecutter named Edward Burkhardt, along with two sculptors, to carve the block into the likeness of a human figure. The process took several weeks and was conducted in secrecy in a barn on West Twelfth Street in Chicago.

The sculptors crafted the figure to appear as lifelike as possible, with exaggerated details such as visible ribs and facial expressions that suggested suffering. Hull deliberately instructed them to add creases on the body, suggesting the appearance of aged, shriveled skin. To further mimic the natural texture of human skin, the sculptors used a needle to create tiny pores on the surface.

Once the carving was complete, Hull needed to make the figure appear ancient. To accomplish this, he used various methods to artificially “weather” the stone.

The entire surface was washed with sulfuric acid to erode its sharp edges and give it a worn, fossilized appearance.

A combination of stains and ink was rubbed into the surface to darken the stone, making it appear as though it had been buried for centuries.

The sculptors used hammers and brushes to create tiny scratches, pits, and wear marks, mimicking the natural erosion that occurs over time.

Once the treatment was complete, the Cardiff Giant looked convincingly ancient, with rough textures and discoloration that suggested years of burial and exposure to the elements.

After the carving process was finished, Hull arranged for the giant to be transported to Cardiff, New York. He hired a team to move the three-ton figure via train, taking precautions to avoid raising suspicions. Upon arrival, he took it to the farm of his cousin, “Stub” Newell.

They carefully buried the carving under tree roots to make it look as if it had been there a while.

Once it was buried…..they waited.

They waited for over a year until October 1869 when Hull finally told Newell to resurrect the giant.

By December of 1869, skepticism surrounding the Cardiff Giant was growing. Scientists, including Othniel C. Marsh, a leading paleontologist at Yale University, dismissed the giant as an obvious fake.

Finally, on December 10, less than two months after the giant was exhumed, George Hull came forward to the press and admitted that the entire affair was a hoax.

However, he didn’t sheepishly admit to being guilty of the hoax. He was proud of it. He explained why he did it and that he wanted to show those who literally believed in the bible to be gullible.

The sculptor who created the giant eventually provided testimony confirming Hull’s story.

One interesting side note to the story, when PT Barnum created his replica of the Cardiff Giant, he was sued by the owners of the actual, fake giant. In February 1870, both giants were revealed in court to be fakes and the judge in the case ruled in favor of Barnum.

In his ruling, he basically said that you can’t be guilty of copying a hoax.

Believe it or not, after the Cardiff Giant was exposed as a hoax, there was still interest in seeing it.

The giant was on display at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

It was eventually sold to the Iowa newspaper publisher Gardner Cowles, Jr., who used it as a table for his rumpus room.

In 1947, he sold it to The Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where it is still displayed today.

The museum recognizes its historical significance not just as an example of 19th-century fraud, but also as a symbol of America’s fascination with spectacle, curiosity, and belief.

Barnum’s copy of the giant is supposedly located at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum, a game arcade and museum located in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Another later copy of the giant, carved in 1972 from the same gypsum, can be found at the Fort Museum and Frontier Village in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

The Cardiff Giant inspired several other hoaxes in the 19th century, including the Solid Muldoon in Beulah, Colorado, the Taughannock Giant supposedly found in Taughannock Falls State Park, New York, and the petrified man in Fort Benton, Montana.

The Cardiff Giant remains one of the most famous hoaxes in history, illustrating the power of human gullibility, sensationalism, and the commercial exploitation of curiosity.

Since then, the Cardiff Giant has become a metaphor for elaborate hoaxes, particularly those that gain credibility through public eagerness to believe.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Today’s review comes from listener Austin02 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write.

Great Show!

I love the show! As a member of the completionist club, I am ready to annoy my sister even more by listening to it all again even though she is the one who showed it to me. Do you have any other podcasts you recommend that are like this show?

Thanks, Austin! If your sister is annoyed then there is a simple solution. Just have her join the completionist club too.

As for other podcasts, well……there aren’t any other quite like this one.

Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too, can have it read on the show.