Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus with James Anthony Bailey.
Jumbo, also known as Jumbo the Elephant and Jumbo the Circus Elephant, was a 19th-century male African bush elephant born in Sudan. Jumbo was exported to Jardin des Plantes, a zoo in Paris, and then transferred in 1865 to London Zoo in England. Despite public protest, Jumbo was sold to P. T. Barnum, who took him to the United States for exhibition in March 1882.
The Fiji mermaid was an object composed of the torso and head of a juvenile monkey sewn to the back half of a fish. It was a common feature of sideshows where it was presented as the mummified body of a creature that was supposedly half mammal and half fish, a version of a mermaid. The original had fish scales with animal hair superimposed on its body and pendulous breasts on its chest. The mouth was wide open with its teeth bared. The right hand was against the right cheek, and the left tucked under its lower left jaw. This mermaid was supposedly caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific. Several replicas and variations have also been made and exhibited under similar names and pretexts. P. T. Barnum exhibited the original in Barnum's American Museum in New York in 1842, but it then disappeared—likely destroyed in one of the many fires that destroyed parts of Barnum's collections.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, also known as the Ringling Bros. Circus, Ringling Bros., the Barnum & Bailey Circus, Barnum & Bailey, or simply Ringling, is an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessor have run shows from 1871, with a hiatus from 2017 to 2023. They operate as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The circus started in 1919 when the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows. The Ringling brothers purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. in 1907 following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the circuses separately until they were merged in 1919.
Magic Kingdom Park is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It opened on October 1, 1971, and is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division. The official park name has changed slightly over the years, from Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom (1971–1994) and The Magic Kingdom (1994–2017). The park was initialized by Walt Disney and designed by WED Enterprises. The park layout and attractions were based on Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, and are dedicated to fairy tales and Disney characters.
Annie Jones Elliot was an American bearded woman, born in Virginia. She toured with showman P. T. Barnum as a circus attraction. Whether the cause of her condition was hirsutism or an unrelated genetic condition that affects children of both sexes and continues into adult years is unknown. Many photographers, including Mathew Brady, took her portraits during her lifetime, which were widely distributed. As an adult, Jones became the country's top "bearded lady" and acted as a spokesperson for Barnum's "Freaks", a word she tried to abolish from the business. Jones married Richard Elliot in 1881, but divorced him in 1895 for her childhood sweetheart William Donovan, who died, leaving Jones a widow. In 1902, Jones died in Brooklyn of tuberculosis.
Moses Kimball was an American politician, museum curator and owner, and showman. Kimball was a business rival and close associate of P. T. Barnum and public-spirited citizen of Boston, Massachusetts who represented the city in the Massachusetts General Court for several non-consecutive terms from 1851 and 1877 and made several runs for mayor.
John Nicholas Ringling was an American entrepreneur who is the best known of the seven Ringling brothers, five of whom merged the Barnum & Bailey Circus with their own Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows to create a virtual monopoly of traveling circuses and helped shape the modern circus. In addition to owning and managing many of the largest circuses in the United States, he was also a rancher, a real estate developer and art collector. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1987.
Adam John Forepaugh was an American horse trader and circus owner. From 1865 through 1890 his circus operated under various names including Forepaugh's Circus, Forepaugh's Gigantic Circus and Menagerie, The Forepaugh Show, 4-PAW Show, The Adam Forepaugh Circus, and Forepaugh & The Wild West.
Greg and Karen DeSanto are professional circus clowns who performed as a husband-and-wife duo for three decades. Greg DeSanto is the Executive Director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
William Cameron Coup was a Wisconsin businessman who partnered with P. T. Barnum and Dan Castello in 1870 to form the "P. T. Barnum's Museum, Menagerie and Circus". Previously Barnum had a museum at a fixed location in New York City and the traveling circus allowed him to bring his curiosities to more paying customers. Coup's innovations were the circus train to transport the materials from town to town. He also came up with the concept of adding a second ring in 1872 and a third ring to the circus in 1881 to allow more people to view the events.
Barnum's American Museum was located at the corner of Broadway, Park Row, and Ann Street in what is now the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City, from 1841 to 1865. The museum was owned by famous showman P. T. Barnum, who purchased Scudder's American Museum in 1841. The museum offered both strange and educational attractions and performances. Some were extremely reputable and historically or scientifically valuable, while others were less so.
Bello Nock, often known simply as Bello, is an American daredevil and circus performer. Nock has been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for his highwire walk over a cruise ship. He has performed several stunts in New York City, including rappelling off of Madison Square Garden and hanging from a helicopter over the Statue of Liberty. He has been included in a Time magazine list of "America's Best Artists and Entertainers".
The American Dime Museum (ADM) was co-founded in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, by artist and antique dealer Richard Horne and James Taylor, writer and publisher of the sideshow journal Shocked and Amazed! Opening November 1, 1999, the museum recreated, in spirit, the dime museums which saw their heyday in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. The museum closed officially in late 2006, but a revived incarnation, Pexcho's American Dime Museum, is open in Augusta, Georgia.
William Street Hutchings, also known as Professor Hutchings and the Lightning Calculator, was a 19th-century math prodigy and mental calculator who P. T. Barnum first billed as the "Boy Lightning Calculator". He later worked as a sideshow barker and wrote a book called The Lightning Calculator.
A freak show is an exhibition of biological rarities, referred to in popular culture as "freaks of nature". Typical features would be physically unusual humans, such as those uncommonly large or small, those with intersex variations, those with extraordinary diseases and conditions, and others with performances expected to be shocking to viewers. Heavily tattooed or pierced people have sometimes been seen in freak shows, as have attention-getting physical performers such as fire-eating and sword-swallowing acts.
The Drunkard; or, The Fallen Saved is an American temperance play first performed on February 12, 1844. A drama in five acts, it was perhaps the most popular play produced in the United States until the dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin premiered in 1853. In New York City, P.T. Barnum presented it at his American Museum in a run of over 100 performances. It was among the first of the American temperance plays, and remained the most popular of them until it was eclipsed in 1858 by T. S. Arthur's Ten Nights in a Bar-Room.
Madison Square Garden was an indoor arena in New York City, the third bearing that name. Built in 1925 and closed in 1968, it was located on the west side of Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets in Manhattan, on the site of the city's trolley-car barns. It was the first Garden that was not located near Madison Square. MSG III was the home of the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League and the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association, and also hosted numerous boxing matches, the Millrose Games, the National Invitation Tournament, concerts, and other events. In 1968 it was demolished and its role and name passed to the fourth Madison Square Garden, which stands at the site of the original Penn Station. One Worldwide Plaza was built on the arena's former 50th Street location.
Madison Square Garden (1879–1890) was an arena in New York City at the northeast corner of East 26th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. The first venue to use that name, it seated 10,000 spectators. It was replaced with a new building on the same site.
Mattie Lee Price (1869–1899) of Bartow County, Georgia, United States, was just 14 when she became the second of the Georgia Wonder girls to come out of Georgia, USA during the winter of 1883–1884. Georgia Wonder girls were pre-vaudeville acts in which the young women performed feats of strength, usually pitted against men. They used fulcrum and leverage techniques to lift heavy men in chairs, twist hickory sticks out of strong men's hands, and other feats of strength. There were variations of the act that included balance tests. "Lulu" Hurst, of Polk County, who was 15 at the time she began her act, started the phenomenon. She gave a magic demonstration at her father's farm in late December 1883. Dixie Haygood, with the stage name of Annie Abbott, was also a famous Georgia stage magician, performing an almost identical act.
