Fantastic Ancient Cities [16:21]

YouTube ^ | December 13, 2024 | The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

[SunkenCiv]

As audiences in the East were used to science finding fantastic new things, it hardly seemed impossible to a person in the 19th century that the country had once been inhabited by giants, or that ancient, incredible civilizations could still lie undiscovered in the vast west. Some newspaper writers were more than happy to simply make great discoveries up, and readers just as happy to take them at their word.

Fantastic Ancient Cities | 16:21
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered | 1.45M subscribers | 32,375 views | December 13, 2024

[SunkenCiv]

• When the Smithsonian discovered an ancient Egyptian colony in the Grand Canyon. [12/06/2020]
• Canyonitis: Seeing evidence of ancient Egypt in the Grand Canyon [08/04/2009]
• Was An Ancient Egyptian City Found In the Grand Canyon? [11/20/2006]

[SunkenCiv]

April Fool's hoaxes like the Grand Canyon Egyptians, PT Barnum's Cardiff Giant, other hoaxes about giants who were in the Earth in those days [sic], and other amusing and bemusing hoaxes.

[Paal Gulli]

Not exactly a city but, ... I saw the Minnesota Ice Man when it was on its tour of malls and shopping centers across the fruited plain.

It was inside of a giant ice cube that was inside of giant chest deep freeze with a glass door padlocked on top. You could clearly see large areas of its skin, complete with follicles and reasonably human-looking hair, but all of the bits that would have been really difficult to get realistic-looking beyond suspicion -- face, genitals, and finger and toe nails -- were shrouded in clouds of bubbles in the ice.

Not long after I saw it it "disappeared," allegedly because authorities were after the owner for unlawfully exhibiting human remains (or some such), but what they probably really were after him for was fraud. Regardless, its disappearance only added to the mystery.

Finally it was exposed as a made-to-order latex dummy that even went up for auction on eBay in 2013.

Ice Man, sans ice

Of course when I saw it I was in the Fox Muldur "I Want To Believe" frame of mind, so I was looking for the one detail the rest of the world had overlooked that proved it was genuine. From this remove, I'm still amazed but amazed that he pulled it off. I don't know how many times he re-froze the thing but when I saw it all of the cloudy bits of ice were positioned to perfection, which gives me to wonder whether he froze it repeatedly until it came out right, or if he knew some secret to cause it to appear cloudy in just the right places, ... of if he just got lucky.

In any case, it was one of the most intriguing hoaxes I've ever seen.

[SunkenCiv]

I never saw it, but A) I remember the Argosy and/or True coverage of it, and B) I loved those mags, particularly Argosy. The classified ads as well as the regular ads were complete ape-crap crazy! :^)

Wish I’d known about the eBay sale. :^)