Letter to Alan Herbert of Charles Street Arts Foundation about the 'Cardiff Giant', Cardiff, 1986

Disgrifiad

A letter from the New York State Historical Association to Alan Herbert, Events Organiser, Charles Street Arts Foundation, regarding information about the Cardiff Giant, dated 11 December 1986.

This document is part of a collection of papers and correspondence relating to 'The Great Cardiff Giant' carnival and the history of 'The Cardiff Giant'. 'The Great Cardiff Giant' was reproduced for the Charles Street Carnival on 4 July 1987.

Charles Street Arts Foundation was a voluntary organisation active in community arts in the centre of Cardiff, established in 1984. Its aim was to bring the arts and the community closer together, to a wider public outside the established institutions.

The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous hoaxes in United States history. It was a 3-metre-tall purported "petrified man" uncovered on 16 October 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C 'Stub' Newell in Cardiff, New York. The giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument at a Methodist revival meeting about Genesis 6:4 stating that there were giants who once lived on Earth. It was revealed as fake in 1870 and is today on display at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York.


Ref: Glamorgan Archives, D20/4/1/2