To The Mark Twain Forum: Twainers who are fans of PBS's "The Antiques Road Show" will be interested in the following two broadcasts. Check your local listings for time and date(s). Kevin B. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ from Portland, Oregon: Appraisers discover silver, historic documents, books and decorative items. The biggest find of the day is a set of autographed Mark Twain books valued at $35,000-$50,000. TV Listings -- Check Local Listings 05/17/1999 -- 8:00pm Satellite 05/17/1999 -- 8:00pm, 3:00am 05/22/1999 -- 7:00pm, 2:00am ~~~~~ from Hartford, Connecticut Experts inspect art glass, clocks, silver and musical instruments. Host Chris Jussel takes viewers on a tour of the Mark Twain House, where the author moved with his family in 1874. Back at the show, appraisers find an exquisite Tiffany vase valued at $30,000-$40,000. TV Listings -- Check Local Listings 05/31/1999 -- 8:00pm Satellite 05/31/1999 -- 8:00pm, 3:00am, 3:00am ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 11:09:09 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]> Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]> From: Russell Smith <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Cardiff Giant MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit [log in to unmask] wrote: > In Cooperstown, New York there is a museum that still displays the so-called > "Cardiff Giant," Sorry I got in on this late as my other email addresses have been bursting at the seams for the past two weeks.... Here's an excerpt from a newspaper column I wrote in 1991: ...The perpetrators of the Piltdown hoax were never discovered, but the most amazing hoax of the 19th century, the Cardiff Giant, did have a motive and an identified perpetrator. In 1866 a tobacco farmer in Iowa named George Hull decided to play a joke on the town's minister. Hull became so mad about the minister's belief in Biblical giants that he resolved to fool people with a giant hoax. In 1868 Hull bought a huge block of gypsum and had a 10 foot giant secretly carved in Chicago. The 3,000 pound statue was aged with acid and a special spike-studded hammer was used to produce pores on the giant's surface. Hull had the figure secretly shipped to a relative's farm in New York where it was buried. The relative casually instructed his workmen to dig a well and the giant was "discovered" on October 16, 1869. Hull began to charge admission for people to view what many believed to be a giant fossilized man. P.T. Barnum offered Hull $60,000 for the giant. Finally, Hull admitted the true story , but even then well-known Americans continued to insist it was an ancient fossilized man. German author Kurt Marek wrote in his excellent book, _The First American_, that the great essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes drilled a hole into the ear region and said the figure had marvelous anatomical detail. And the great writer Ralph Waldo Emerson said the giant was "very wonderful and undoubtedly ancient." The Cardiff Giant, sometimes called the American Goliath, was exhibited for many years all across America. Finally the biggest forgery in the history of American archaeology was placed in the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. All the best, Russell Smith Abilene, Texas