“Phineas Taylor Barnum, properly known as P.T. Barnum, was a showman, and probably the most famous American of the 19th century.” Discover the history of THE CIRCUS, premiering on PBS October 8 & 9 → pbs.org/circus | American Experience | PBS

Arguably, the most famous circus of all was Barnum and Bailey’s, eventually touted as the greatest show on earth. Barnum had featured diseased, deformed, and diminutive individuals in exhibits for years in different venues. In fact, Barnum had the Wild Man of the Prairies described as the deformed but talented man-monkey Harvey Leech as far back as the 1840s. Evolution has caused many humiliating and saddening events to unfold. In the 1800s and 1900s, evolutionary ideas spurred on the racist and