The Greatest (Most Racist) Show on Earth.

I learned something today!

P. T. Barnum bought an African-American slave woman named Joice Heth, fabricated a backstory for her, and exhibited her for enormous profit as an allegedly 161-year-old "freak." When she died, he sold 1500 tickets to her public dissection. Formerly a nobody shop assistant, Barnum built his reputation for putting on the "Greatest Show on Earth" on the exploitation of a black woman he owned as property, as well as other exhibits like the male slaves he claimed were "wild men from Borneo" who were actually kidnapped Africans, again, treated like possessions.

Today, we remember him as "an American showman, businessman, prankster, and entertainer," " an author, publisher, philanthropist, and a politician" -- but not as a racist. His extensively detailed Wikipedia page uses the word "racist" only once, in a passage assuring the reader that although Barnum's shoes were "replete with racist stereotypes," they ACTUALLY "satirized white racial attitudes"...by putting white men in blackface. In a Connecticut legislature debate on the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, he declared, "A human soul, ‘that God has created and Christ died for,’ is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot – it is still an immortal spirit" -- using a derogatory term for African people coined by Europeans. He later apologized only for having owned slaves, not for his unique history of human rights violations. Until his death, he continued to exhibit people of color as "living curiosities." His name is still promoted by the Ringling Brothers / Barnum & Bailey circus company.

P. T. Barnum was a piece of shit, and old-school circuses were for assholes. That's what I learned today.

My Harry Potter/Doctor Who crossover conspiracy theory.

The most exciting email I've ever gotten from my editor, after the very first one I received over a year ago accepting me for a position as a Mental_Floss intern, came in just a few hours ago with the opening line, "You're a HP nerd, right?" I've worn my Harry Potter colors proudly for years, sometimes on this very blog, so of course I jumped at the opportunity to write a piece summarizing all the information J. K. Rowling has shared about Harry Potter & friends in interviews post-Deathly Hallows, because if there is any way in which I am like Hermione, it's in the nearly obscene pleasure I take in first knowing something someone else doesn't know, then being able to teach it to them. So that article should be coming out tomorrow, and I hope I do it justice, although I don't look forward to the inevitable firestorm from fans attempting to correct my meticulously researched facts. (I have no qualms about insisting on this point: I do meticulous research. I'm not saying I don't make mistakes, but you know, I'm no slob about this kind of thing.)

While poring through the Harry Potter Wiki page on Aurors and lamenting not having the full set of seven books with me to use for reference, I found this observation about the films:

"In the films, Aurors tend to wear brown trench coats, possibly as a uniform. Kingsley Shacklebolt is the only Auror seen on-duty without one."

There's an accompanying image:

But hang on, that brown trench coat looks familiar. Have I seen it, or some similar article of clothing, before?

The Tenth Doctor was an Auror and I refuse to hear otherwise. The end.

Don't argue with me. Argue with THIS.