INSIDE:

The Judsons
—NOBODY would have predicted their career as missionaries.

Hey, let's try to
keep it on
the sidewalk.

Whatever happened to
Ponce de León?

Gondwanaland & other bits of speculative terra firma.

 Circuses of Old
 Greatest Shows on Earth

Ancient Romans had a circus of sorts. Built around 600 B.C., Circus Maximus was a place where as many as 200,000 people could sit and watch gladiators race chariots and kill lions—and one another—in a variety of ways. Sometimes the beasts killed them. For all its despicable faults, it undeniably was a thrilling scene.

Ironically, things decidedly calmed down in the arena during days of yore (what we call the "Dark Ages"). Traveling gleemen in olde England and jongleurs in France were not so keen into staging mortal combat. They were more apt to sing, tell stories, juggle things and perform mild acrobatics—perhaps indulge in a bit of knife throwing and sword swallowing. These stuntmen and minstrels were popular at village fairs. Horseback riding tricksters and bear trainers sometimes joined the proceedings.

The so-called "modern" circus is said to have its beginnings in 1768. In that year, a daring English cavalry fighter and horse breaker, Sgt. Maj. Philip Astley, started a riding school in London and began charging a few pennies' admission for folk to watch the equestrian skills of him, his wife and a growing team of riders. The next year he built the Amphitheater Riding Ring which, in time, he roofed. In 1782, one of his riders named Charles Hughes built his own facility and named it The Royal Circus. By 1793, "circuses" were being performed in rings in Russia and America.

The presenters began adding a bit of variety to what was primarily a horse show: rope tricks, juggling, acrobatics. The first trapeze artist, Jules Leotard, debuted in Paris in 1859. Clowns and elephants arrived—as did business tycoons. Two of the latter, P.T. Barnum and W.C. Coup, in 1871 staged "The Greatest Show on Earth" in Brooklyn. Advanced by the promotional skills of such visionaries as Barnum, who later partnered with James Bailey, circuses grew to incorporate many different acts in not one ring, but three. The Ringling brothers entered the competition in 1884, eventually attaining such success that they bought out Barnum as well as the Hanneford Circus in England.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus was the world's largest touring show by World War II. Tents were abandoned, and the organization began performing only in enclosed arenas. Other popular circuses of the latter 20th Century included the Moscow Circus, Billy Smart's Circus (Great Britain), Canada's Cirque du Soleil and Denmark's Circus Schumann.

In the eyes of many—young and old, in many countries—Barnum and Coup were forever correct: The circus is still "the greatest show on earth."

The Great Blithering Antiquity Quiz: July

1) The Effigy Mounds National Monument is a site of almost 200 ancient burial grounds in what state?
a) Iowa
b) Wisconsin
c) Kansas
d) Colorado

2) True or false: Charles Gates Dawes (1865-1951) piloted the first U.S. Navy seaplane.

3) Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was born in:
a) 1691
b) 1758
c) 1803
d) 1879

4) "Ma" Rainey (1886-1939) was one of the first famous women vocalists in what genre of music?

5) True or false: Yemen, which became an independent republic in 1962, is on the northeastern coast of Africa.

CHECK YOUR ANSWERS

"I Dream
Of a Fiend"

Robert Louis Stevenson's classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had its beginnings as a rejected short story. Unwilling to shelve it, he determined to "dream on it" and see if it could be made saleable. This was a device he claimed to have employed before in concocting plots. It worked.

The initial story, which he titled innocuously "The Traveling Companion," was turned down by an editor who claimed the plot was too weak. It was a tale of a man with a dual personality, and Stevenson, on honest reflection, admitted the editor was right. He put the manuscript away for awhile but couldn't get it out of his mind.

Finally, he decided to commit it to his sleepy time. Stevenson had told friends of a weird knack he seemed to possess: In his dreams, he sometimes found himself in a position of witnessing, as from a distance, an intricate drama unfold. This wasn't merely a reenactment of some event he'd experienced or story line he'd imagined while awake. In this type of dream, he did not foreknow the outcome.

Thus, one evening before retiring, the author reread his short story. Sure enough, the concept rose up in his dreams. The plot thickened around the man with the split personality. When Stevenson awoke, he sketched it out. The novel was published in 1886.

Stevenson, who suffered from tuberculosis, went to live on the island of Samoa three years later, hoping the climate would improve his health. He died in 1894.