The Cardiff Giant is dug up

OCT 16 1869

On 16 October 1869 workers digging a well behind William 'Stub' Newell's barn in Cardiff, New York, uncovered a ten-foot stone man. It had been carved and buried by Newell's relative George Hull, a tobacconist who conceived it after losing an argument about the giants of Genesis 6:4 at a revival meeting. Hull confessed to the press on 10 December 1869, and on 2 February 1870 a court declared both the giant and P. T. Barnum's rival plaster copy to be fakes.