Hull purchased a 5-ton block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and had a Chicago stonecutter carve it in his own likeness. To make it look ancient, Hull treated the statue with sulphuric acid and used steel knitting needles to simulate skin pores. 

Newell hired unsuspecting workers to dig a well exactly where the giant had been buried a year earlier. Upon its “discovery,” news spread rapidly, and Newell began charging 50 cents for admission, drawing thousands of visitors who believed they were seeing a biblical giant.

When the syndicate of owners refused to sell the giant to showman P.T. Barnum for $50,000, Barnum simply created his own plaster replica. He then claimed his version was the “real” giant and the Cardiff one was a fake. This sparked a legal battle where a judge famously refused to intervene unless the original giant could “swear to his own genuineness” in court. 

Leading paleontologists like Othniel C. Marsh quickly identified the figure as a “decided humbug,” noting fresh chisel marks and the fact that gypsum would have deteriorated in the wet soil. Hull eventually confessed to the press in December 1869, though the giant remained a popular attraction for years.

The original Cardiff Giant is on permanent display at The Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Barnum’s replica is reportedly at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Andrée was accompanied by engineer Knut Frænkel and photographer Nils Strindberg. They took off from Svalbard on July 11, 1897. Moments after lift-off, the balloon lost its heavy steering drag-ropes, leaving it at the mercy of the wind. The balloon sailed for only 65 hours. Leaking gas and weighed down by freezing rain, it made a gentle emergency landing on the pack ice, far short of the North Pole.

The three men were unhurt but unprepared for the terrain. They attempted a grueling three-month trek south across shifting ice, eventually reaching the deserted Kvitøya (White Island) in October 1897, where they perished.

The expedition’s fate remained a mystery for 33 years until 1930, when Norwegian whalers discovered their final camp. Remarkably, the harsh Arctic cold preserved the men’s diaries and photographic film. The Grenna Museum in Sweden now houses the collection of recovered equipment and photographs. Modern analysis, such as that by author Bea Uusma, continues to investigate the exact cause of death, theories range from trichinosis from polar bear meat to carbon monoxide poisoning or exhaustion.

The photographs recovered in 1930 from Nils Strindberg’s camera provide a haunting, first-hand account of the expedition’s final months. Despite spending 33 years frozen in the Arctic ice, the film remained remarkably developable. The most famous of these images document the immediate aftermath of the balloon’s crash-landing on July 14, 1897, and the men’s subsequent struggle to survive while trekking across the pack ice.

Kennedy, a United States senator and candidate in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries, won the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4. He addressed his campaign supporters in the Ambassador Hotel’s Embassy Ballroom. After leaving the podium, and exiting through a kitchen hallway, he was mortally wounded by multiple shots fired by Sirhan. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital nearly 25 hours later. His body was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Sirhan, a Palestinian who held strong anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian beliefs, testified in 1969 that he killed Kennedy “with 20 years of malice aforethought;” he was convicted and sentenced to death. Due to People v. Anderson, his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972 with a possibility of parole. His parole request has been denied numerous times. Kennedy’s assassination prompted the Secret Service to protect presidential candidates. Additionally, it led to several conspiracy theories. It was the final of four major assassinations in the United States that occurred during the 1960s.

The photographs that Bill Eppridge made before, during and after RFK’s assassination don’t require that we forget all we’ve learned about the dank underside of American politics in order to appreciate the fear, rage and anguish sparked by Kennedy’s death. On the contrary, the pictures in this gallery suggest that despite how ambitious and even cruel he could sometimes be, Bobby Kennedy obviously inspired, in countless people, the better angels of their nature.

Would Robert Kennedy have won the Democratic nomination if Sirhan had not gunned him down in that hotel kitchen? Would he have gone on to beat Richard Nixon in the general election if he had won the nomination? The measure of the man must be taken not by what he might have done, but by what he said and did during his lifetime.

We’ll never know how much he might have grown, how much further he might have deepened, had Sirhan’s bullets not silenced him.That’s where much of the tragedy of the tale lies: in the ruined promise of the man’s potential.