P. T. Barnum's First Star

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Today marks the 180th anniversary of the launch of P. T. Barnum's first US tour. His star attraction at the time was Joice Heth- a former slave women Barnum claimed to be 161 years-old and once the property of Augustine Washington; serving as nurse maid for an infant George Washington. When Heth passed away less than a year later, Barnum continued to try and profit off of her; hiring a doctor to perform a public autopsy for a large crowd. The plan backfired, when the doctor exclaimed that he had determined Heth's true age to be 79. Barnum then claimed this was not actually Heth's corpse and that she was away on a tour of Europe. The hoax haunted Barnum's career for the rest of his life.