Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with James Anthony Bailey.
Barnum in 1851
Entertainers associated with Barnum: Charles Stratton ("General Tom Thumb") and his bride Lavinia Warren, alongside her sister Minnie and George Washington Morrison Nutt ("Commodore Nutt")
Castle Garden, New York, venue of Lind's first American concerts
A parody of Lind's first American tour for Barnum, New York City, October 1850
A hoax is a widely publicised falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into putting up the highest possible social currency in support of the hoax.
Great Moon Hoax