An 1869 'petrified giant' sold to crowds in New York was a stone carving secretly built by a hoaxer

odditiesThe Public Domain Review1869 · Cardiff, New York, USA

An 1869 'petrified giant' sold to crowds in New York was a stone carving secretly built by a hoaxer

the gist

In October 1869 workers digging a well on a farm in Cardiff, New York, unearthed a ten-foot gypsum figure that looked like a petrified giant. Newspapers across the country reported it as a sensational find, and the stone giant was displayed for a fee. It was in fact a carving made in Chicago by marble cutters, commissioned by the swindler George Hull, who wanted to prove that people could be fooled as easily as in biblical times. Hull had the statue quarried in Iowa, carved it using his own body as a model, then stained it with ink and acid to look ancient, and arranged for it to be buried on the farm.

how it works

Gypsum is soft enough to carve easily, which made the statue quick to shape. The carvers added curls of hair, then the team poured ink over the surface and applied sulfuric acid to make the stone look weathered and old. Burying the statue on a farm let the find appear natural to the diggers.

so what

The hoax exposed how readily Americans in the 1860s believed claims of giants and petrified remains, shaped by religious expectations and newspaper sensationalism. It is one of the most famous hoaxes in American natural history and still gets cited as an early case of a scam profiting from public credulity.

the bigger pattern

Fake fossil and relic hoaxes were common in the nineteenth century, from the Piltdown forgery to many smaller petrified-body scams that were sold to curious crowds.

fun fact

P. T. Barnum made his own plaster copy of the giant, claiming it was the original.

Hampi was once one of the world's largest cities, until its Vijayanagara capital was destroyed in 1565

the gist

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.

how it works

The city was built around a fortified core with temples, markets and water structures along the river, supplied by an extensive network of roads and waterworks. When the empire fell, the city was not rebuilt, so its stone monuments were left standing.

so what

Hampi shows how quickly a great city can vanish after a military defeat, and how a ruined capital can remain sacred. Its ruins give historians a view of medieval South Asia that few other sites can match.

fun fact

The name Hampi comes from Pampa, an old name for the Tungabhadra River.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · text CC BY-SA 4.0

Image: Wikimedia Commons

source: Wikipedia ↗

2 min

politicsshortCNA2:01

False allegations about Singapore’s hand in Indonesia’s markets and a made-up meeting

from CNA

CNA Verify has found close to 400 posts pushing falsehoods tying Singapore to Indonesia’s stock market rout and to a secret meeting that never took place. Together, they drew nearly 12 million views, and some were circulated by accounts that appeared to be working in concert, across multiple social media platforms.

Here’s how the disinformation campaign targeting Singapore was uncovered.

on YouTube: CNA ↗