Correction: 'a sucker born every minute' was not Barnum

1869

The line most often attached to P. T. Barnum is popularly said to have been his verdict on the crowds paying to see the Cardiff Giant. In the standard account it was said instead by David Hannum, a member of the syndicate that had bought the giant, about the people queueing for Barnum's plaster copy of it. No contemporary source records Barnum saying it. The episode is a useful marker of how hoax history itself accretes invented detail.