The Undisputed Historical Record
Before examining the conflicting interpretations, it is essential to establish the foundational facts of these events, which are largely undisputed by credible historians. These timelines provide the common ground upon which all subsequent analysis is built.
The Cardiff Giant (1869)
In October 1869, workers digging a well on a farm in Cardiff, New York, owned by William “Stub” Newell, discovered what appeared to be the petrified body of a 10-foot-tall man. The “Cardiff Giant” quickly became a national sensation. Newell set up a tent and began charging visitors 50 cents for a viewing. The attraction was immensely popular, drawing thousands of people from across the country.
The figure was, in reality, a fabrication conceived by George Hull, a tobacconist from Binghamton, New York, and Newell’s cousin. An atheist, Hull decided to create the giant after an argument with a Methodist revivalist about the literal interpretation of a biblical passage in Genesis stating, “There were giants in the earth in those days.” In 1868, Hull traveled to Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he purchased a large block of gypsum. He shipped it to Chicago, where a German stonecutter sculpted it into the form of a giant. Hull then used various acids and stains to make the statue appear ancient and weathered. The giant was secretly transported to Newell’s farm and buried.
While some scientists, like paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh of Yale University, quickly denounced it as a “most decided humbug,” many others were intrigued. The famous showman P.T. Barnum offered a large sum to purchase the giant. When his offer was rejected, Barnum created his own plaster replica and exhibited it as the “real” Cardiff Giant, leading to a legal battle between the two promoters. By December 1869, the truth began to emerge, and in early 1870, Hull confessed the entire story to the press. The original giant and Barnum’s copy continued to be exhibited for years afterward.
The Piltdown Man (1912-1953)
In 1912, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson contacted Arthur Smith Woodward, a prominent geologist at the British Museum, claiming to have discovered extraordinary fossil fragments in a gravel pit near Piltdown, Sussex. The fragments included parts of a thick human-like cranium and a more ape-like jawbone with two molar teeth. Dawson, Woodward, and their team presented the find as “Eoanthropus dawsoni” (Dawson’s Dawn-Man), a previously unknown early human ancestor. It was hailed as the “missing link” between apes and humans.
The Piltdown Man was significant because it seemed to confirm a prevailing theory among British scientists that the evolution of a large brain preceded other human-like adaptations. For over 40 years, the Piltdown fragments were accepted as a legitimate and crucial piece of the human evolutionary puzzle, featured in textbooks and museum displays. However, as other hominid fossils were discovered around the world, the Piltdown Man became an increasingly awkward anomaly that did not fit the emerging picture of human evolution.
In 1949, new chemical dating techniques became available. Kenneth Oakley of the British Museum applied a fluorine absorption test to the Piltdown fossils and found that the cranium and jaw were of vastly different ages. Further, more intensive investigation in 1953 by Oakley, Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, and Joseph Weiner conclusively proved the entire find was a deliberate forgery. The cranium was from a medieval human, the jaw from a modern orangutan, and the teeth had been filed down to mimic human wear patterns. The bones had been artificially stained to look ancient. The identity of the forger remains a subject of debate, with Charles Dawson being the primary suspect, though others have also been implicated.
The War of the Worlds Broadcast (1938)
On the evening of Sunday, October 30, 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds. The 60-minute program aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio network. The script, written primarily by Howard Koch, updated the story’s setting from 19th-century England to contemporary America, with the Martian invasion beginning in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.
The first two-thirds of the broadcast were presented as a simulated live news report, interrupting a program of dance music with increasingly alarming bulletins about strange explosions on Mars, a mysterious cylinder landing in New Jersey, and the emergence of hostile alien war machines. Although the program included multiple announcements clarifying its fictional nature—one at the beginning, one around the 40-minute mark, and another at the end—some listeners who tuned in late missed the disclaimers. The next day, newspapers across the country ran front-page headlines proclaiming that the broadcast had incited a “tidal wave of terror” and mass panic across the United States. These stories reported terrified citizens flooding police switchboards, fleeing their homes, and suffering from shock and hysteria.
