Word: barnumism
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...Barnum's real business was publicity. His code was: " Just mention my name." He always gave public thanks to " blackmailers " for the notoriety they afforded him. Law suits and newspaper editors were his " go-getters." If he was accused of " faking" live whales out of India rubber, or of labeling a mere man "The Bearded Lady"?that too brought people to his museum...
Second as " The big laugh and how the Woolly Horse fooled 'em," in his Autobiography. Each year Barnum added an appendix to the story of his life, that the public might keep itself up-to-date with his puns and practical jokes...
Music in the United States was advanced many years by Barnum's unique exploitation of Jenny Lind. The lovely Swedish Nightingale was the first European artist to brave "the American Jungle." Barnum said: " Her whole life was a song," and from it he made half a million...
...made the circus. Later, when a baby elephant, the first born in captivity, arrived in Bailey's rival camp, Barnum offered $100,000 for the infant, a fact which Bailey so blatantly advertised that Barnum was forced to merge with his rival in self-defense...
...Jumbo" was the greatest and most sentimentalized of circus animals. Barnum succeeded in bribing away from England this "largest known" elephant. Jumbo's first six weeks at Madison Square Garden attracted $336,000. After he was killed by a train accident, he was stuffed and given to Tufts College, which still has Jumbo's head as its emblem...