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A Tall Tale: Photograph of the Cardiff Giant (Ca. 1869)
Perhaps greatest hoax in American natural history.
Early in the morning on Saturday, October 16, 1869, Gideon Emmons left his homestead in Cardiff, New York — a hamlet of Onondaga County — and hiked alongside Bear Mountain to Stub Newell’s farm, where he had been hired to dig a well. One cannot “drop in” anywhere—at place of public resort, at the social board, or at the fireside gathering, but that “remarkable—how natural—how grand—how distinct this vein or that muscle—fossil, petrifaction, putrifaction; Indian, Caucasian—what a monster—statue, work of art—master artist—a thousand years ago—the Jesuits—how possible to get it there—who, when, where, how,” and so on, strikes the ear, and will most assuredly resound therein for minutes or hours, as the case may be, unless forced aside by determined effort. The farmer Stub Newell was in on the con, but it’s mastermind was George Hull, a well-practiced swindler with eyes that Cardiff residents described as seeming “to pry, and gimlet, and cork-screw way clear down into the innermost recesses of our souls.” He had made a living as horse trader, then a card cheat, then a failed tobacco tycoon.
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