The Cardiff Giant

As presented in 1869: that workers digging a well behind William Newell's barn in Cardiff, New York had uncovered the petrified body of a giant man, evidence of the race described in Genesis 6:4 — 'there were giants in the earth in those days'.

As established: that the figure was carved from gypsum to order and buried for later discovery.

George Hull, a cigar manufacturer and an atheist, had argued with a revivalist preacher in Iowa about whether the biblical giants were literal. He bought a block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, shipped it to Chicago, and had two stonecutters carve a figure to his design, sworn to secrecy. Details were added to suggest age: the surface was treated with acid, and pores were beaten into it with a mallet studded with needles. In November 1868 the figure was buried behind the barn of Hull's cousin William Newell. In October 1869 Newell hired two men to dig a well in that exact spot.

Nobody was harmed, which is why the case is useful as a control. Every structural feature of a modern hoax is present in 1869 — a claim engineered to confirm what an audience already believed, a physical artefact that could not be examined by the people paying to see it, a commercial incentive to keep it alive after refutation, and a competitor's copy that muddied the record further. The original is on display at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, labelled as what it is.