In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman, and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding with James Anthony Bailey the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was also an author, publisher, and philanthropist, although he said of himself: "I am a showman by profession ... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me." According to Barnum's critics, his personal aim was "to put money in his own coffers." The adage "there's a sucker born every minute" has frequently been attributed to him, although no evidence exists that he had coined the phrase.
William Henry Johnson, known as Zip the Pinhead, was an American freak show performer known for his tapered head.
A merman, the male counterpart of the mythical female mermaid, is a legendary creature which is human from the waist up and fish-like from the waist down, but may assume normal human shape. Sometimes mermen are described as hideous and other times as handsome.
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.
Charles Sherwood Stratton, better known by his stage name "General Tom Thumb", was an American with dwarfism who achieved great fame as a performer under circus pioneer P. T. Barnum.
Dime museums were institutions that were popular at the end of the 19th century in the United States. Designed as centers for entertainment and moral education for the working class (lowbrow), the museums were distinctly different from upper middle class cultural events (highbrow). In urban centers like New York City, where many immigrants settled, dime museums were popular and cheap entertainment. The social trend reached its peak during the Progressive Era. Although lowbrow entertainment, they were the starting places for the careers of many notable vaudeville-era entertainers, including Harry Houdini, Lew Fields, Joe Weber, the Griffin Sisters, and Maggie Cline.
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.
Mercy Lavinia Warren Stratton was an American proportionate dwarf, who was a circus performer and the wife of Charles Sherwood Stratton, known as General Tom Thumb. She was known as a performer and for her appearance in one silent film, The Lilliputians' Courtship, 1915.
In American folklore, Champ or Champy is the name of a lake monster said to live in Lake Champlain, a 125-mile (201 km)-long body of fresh water shared by New York and Vermont, with a portion extending into Quebec, Canada. The legend of the monster is considered a draw for tourism in the Burlington, Vermont and Plattsburgh, New York areas.
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, with particular focus on the ethnography and archaeology of the Americas. The museum is caretaker to over 1.2 million objects, some 900 feet (270 m) of documents, 2,000 maps and site plans, and about 500,000 photographs. The museum is located at Divinity Avenue on the Harvard University campus. The museum is one of the four Harvard Museums of Science and Culture open to the public.
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 a dime museum 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.
Isaac W. Sprague was an entertainer and sideshow performer, billed as the living human skeleton.
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.
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.
Charles Eisenmann was a famous New York photographer during the late 1880s who worked in the Bowery district.
Martin Joe Laurello, also known by the stage names Human Owl and Bobby the Boy with the Revolving Head, was a German-American sideshow performer and biological rarity who could turn his head 180 degrees to the rear. He performed with groups such as Ripley's Believe it or Not, Ringling Brothers, and Barnum & Bailey.
Eli Bowen was an American sideshow performer known as "The Legless Wonder", or "The Legless Acrobat". He was also billed as "The Handsomest Man in Showbiz" and the "Wonder of the Wide, Wide World". His peak weight was 140 pounds (64 kg); his height was 24 inches (61 cm).
