The Cardiff Giant

October 16, 1869 - On this day Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols were digging a well when they discovered a petrified 10-foot-tall man. The workers had been hired by a man named William Newell of Cardiff, New York.

Once the giant was exhumed, Newell began charging people 50 cents to see it. Thousands lined up to see the "Cardiff Giant." The sensational response inspired P.T. Barnum to offer $50,000 for the giant, but Newell wasn't interested in selling. Barnum went ahead and created his own giant, and in turn called the original giant a fake.

Eventually all the giants were revealed as huge hoaxes. The one found on Newell's farm was actually the brainchild of a tobacco farmer named George Hull. A full year before its "discovery," Hull had commissioned a sculptor in Illinois to carve it out of a block of gypsum.

Both giants are still around. Hull's version resides in the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, while the Barnum version appears amid video games in Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.