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Evan Andrews<\/strong> and History.com<\/strong><\/a> present 10 Things You May Not Know About P.T. Barnum<\/strong><\/a>. Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n 1. Barnum was an entrepreneur from an early age. <\/strong> 2. He first rose to prominence by engineering a famous hoax.<\/strong> 3. Barnum didn\u2019t go into the circus business until relatively late in life.<\/strong> Evan Andrews and History.com present 10 Things You May Not Know About P.T. Barnum. Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,72,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-history","category-trivia","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13035,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13033\/revisions\/13035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nBarnum\u2019s knack for moneymaking first manifested during his youth in Bethel, Connecticut. The future showman sold snacks and homemade cherry rum during local gatherings, and by age 12, he had made enough money to purchase his own livestock. By 21, his holdings also included a general store, a small lottery and even his own newspaper called the \u201cHerald of Freedom.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIn 1835, Barnum launched his career in entertainment by purchasing Joice Heth, a blind slave touted as being the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington. After billing Heth as \u201cthe most astonishing and interesting curiosity in the world,\u201d Barnum put her on display in New York and took her on a small tour of New England. Visitors lined up to gawk at her withered body and hear her tales of \u201cdear little George,\u201d and Barnum helped fuel popular interest by spreading a rumor that she was actually an automaton controlled by a ventriloquist. The truth about Heth didn\u2019t emerge until after her death in February 1836. During a public autopsy\u2014staged by Barnum at the price of 50 cents for admission\u2014it was revealed that she was most likely no older than 80.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nBarnum is best known for his traveling three-ring circuses, but he didn\u2019t make his first forays under the big top until he was 60 years old. Before then, he was better known as the owner of the Manhattan-based American Museum, a sprawling collection of historical artifacts, aquariums, animal menageries, zoological curiosities and freak shows. Some of the museum\u2019s most notable exhibits included General Tom Thumb, a child dwarf who Barnum famously brought to audience with Queen Victoria of Britain; and the \u201cFejee Mermaid,\u201d which was actually the upper half of a monkey sewn to the bottom of a fish. Barnum only launched his traveling circus after his museum was twice destroyed by fire. He later teamed with his famed partner James Bailey in 1881, and the two went on to make a fortune running their \u201cGreatest Show on Earth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"