Library of Congress (LCCN 2014693762), public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The Cardiff Giant (1869)
1869 · Cardiff, New York
A carved gypsum figure buried and 'discovered' in 1869: one of America's most famous archaeological frauds.
George Hull commissioned a ten-foot gypsum figure, aged it with acids, buried it on a farm near Cardiff, New York, and arranged its 'discovery.' Crowds paid to see the petrified giant. P.T. Barnum later made a copy when denied purchase of the original. Hull confessed; the figure survives in museum collections as a monument to credulity rather than antiquity.
Sources: Contemporary newspapers; Farmers' Museum, Cooperstown
Chain of custody
In October 1869 men digging a well on a farm at Cardiff, New York, unearthed the petrified body of a giant man over ten feet tall.
Printed matter dating from within weeks of the digging records an excavation on a farm at Cardiff in October 1869, and the men of science quoted in it describe the object taken out of the ground as worked gypsum rather than a petrified body.
See also: The Solid Muldoon (1877)