The Cardiff Giant is believed to be created by the New York tobacconist George Hull. He was a confirmed atheist, and following his controversy with a fundamentalist minister called Turk, he went on to make the giant. The issue on hand was regarding the presence of giants that once inhabited the planet, from Genesis 6:4. The most popular American hoax, the Cardiff Giant is on display at the Farmer's Museum in suburban New York.

This concept of a lapidified man actually did not begin with Hull, though. A newspaper, Alta California, in the year 1858 printed a spurious letter that maintained that a prospector had been once lapidified after drinking some liquid within a geode. There were other stories circulating too, printed by different newsletters.

Hull went on to appoint workers to excavate a ten foot or three meter tall, 4.5� block of gypsum at Fort Dodge, Iowa. He publicized that the block was supposed for a carving of Abraham Lincoln in New York. The block was transported to Chicago, where a German stone sculptor was given the task of carving out a figure that likened to a man. The artist was obliged to maintain the secrecy of this project. In order to make the figure ancient and roughened different chemicals and stains were employed. With steel knitting needles, the surface was made to look like weathered, and with pores. When the giant was created, Hull had it shipped by rail to his cousin’s farm, William Newell. The entire ordeal had expended US$ 2600 by then.

The giant lay buried for almost two years and then Hull got Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, to dig out a well. Eventually the two men came across the giant and are said to have exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!"

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