Cardiff Giant

It was a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), roughly 3,000 pound[1] purported "petrified man", uncovered on October 16, 1869 by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell, in Cardiff, New York.

[2] Hull got into an argument with Reverend Turk and his supporters at a Methodist revival meeting about Genesis 6:4, which states that there were giants who once lived on Earth.

During 1858, the newspaper Alta California had published a fake letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a geode.

Martin, hired men to quarry out a 10-foot-4.5-inch-long (3.2 m) block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it was intended for a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York.

[2] Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869, they found the giant.

The next day, a tent was set up on the discovery site and Newell charged each visitor fifty cents for a fifteen-minute session of viewing the giant.

[1] On the other hand, John F. Boynton, the first geologist to examine the giant, declared that it could not be a fossilized man, but hypothesized that it was a statue that was carved by a French Jesuit in the 16th or 17th century in order to impress the local Native Americans.

He noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the exact spot the giant had been found.“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.”However, he was taken aback by the channels on the bottom part of the giant, stating that for such grooving to be created on local Onondaga grey limestone would require years.

[10] Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh examined the statue, pointing out that it was made of soluble gypsum, which, had it been buried in its blanket of wet earth for centuries, would not still have fresh tool marks on it (which it did), and termed it "a most decided humbug".

[13] Eventually, Hull sold his part-interest for $23,000 (equivalent to $554,000 in 2023) to a syndicate of five men headed by David Hannum.

When the syndicate refused, he hired a man to model the giant's shape covertly in wax and create a plaster copy.

[6] Iowa publisher Gardner Cowles, Jr.,[17] bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation piece.