#FlashbackFriday ~ An old taxidermy sculpture of mine that I created in honor of P.T. Barnum who died on this day in 1891.
Barnum was arguably the greatest showman that ever lived. He was cofounder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus which was billed as “The Greatest Show on Earth”. His extraordinary sideshows were an international sensation and exhibited animal and human curiosities gathered from around the globe, some of which were real and some of which were fake. Among his most famous and popular exhibits was the Feejee Mermaid, a sea monster fabricated by splicing a monkey onto a fish. His tagline was "there's a sucker born every minute”. And he was right. People lined up in droves to see what they believed was a genuine zoological specimen collected in an exotic far away place. It was such a hit that he made additional mermaids to satiate the crowds and the exhibits went down in history as one of the biggest hoaxes of all time.
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