153 Fun Facts About Circus

What is the name for an intense, irrational fear of clowns?

Coulrophobia is a recent coinage, apparently invented in the 1990s; psychologists point to make-up that hides a clown's real feelings behind a painted smile.

Philip Astley gave his first riding displays in 1768 in what kind of London venue?

An open field at Ha'penny Hatch in Lambeth was the venue: Astley and his wife Patty rode there in the open air from Easter Monday 1768, and a year later he moved to a fenced, more permanent site nearby.

The standard circus ring, sized for a horse cantering in a circle, measures how far across?

42 feet (13 m) is the width at which a horse circling at speed leans in enough for a rider to stand on its back; Astley's first ring was larger, and the smaller size became the standard worldwide.

Where does the word 'circus' come from?

Latin for 'circle': circus meant a ring or circular line and is akin to Greek kirkos; Romans gave the name to their racing arenas, and London showmen revived it in the 1780s for shows built around a ring.

The word 'circus' was coined by a rival, so what did Philip Astley call his own London show?

An amphitheatre: Astley never used the newer word, which songwriter Charles Dibdin and rider Charles Hughes chose in 1782 for their rival Royal Circus, and their name stuck to the whole art.

What was Astley's job before he became a showman?

A cavalry sergeant major: Astley walked out of his father's cabinetmaking workshop at 17 to join the 15th Light Dragoons, learned to train horses in the Seven Years' War and was discharged in 1766.

America's first circus opened in 1793 in which city, then the nation's capital?

Philadelphia: English rider John Bill Ricketts opened his circus there on 3 April 1793, and President George Washington came to watch during that first season.

In circus slang, a cry of 'Hey, Rube!' summoned help for what?

A brawl with townspeople: 'rube', short for Reuben, was a stock name for a country local, and the shout called every circus hand within earshot to stand with the one in trouble.

Which star of London's Regency pantomimes is generally considered the first mainstream clown?

Joseph Grimaldi made Clown the star of the pantomime at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in the early 1800s, so dominating the part that clowns are still nicknamed 'Joeys' after him.

Which American clown, a household name in the 1860s, toured with his own 'one-horse show'?

Dan Rice was the best-known American clown of his day: rivals mocked him for owning a single horse, so he turned the 'one-horse show' jibe into his trademark and became a star.

Which Hollywood star, a circus acrobat in the 1930s, played a former trapeze star in the 1956 film Trapeze?

Burt Lancaster joined a circus at 19 in an acrobatic act with his friend Nick Cravat; when Hollywood made Lancaster a star, Cravat went on to appear beside him in several of his films.

Who directed Disney's 2019 live-action remake of Dumbo?

Tim Burton reunited two Batman Returns leads with their sides swapped: Danny DeVito, once the villainous Penguin, plays the kindly circus owner, while Michael Keaton, once Batman, plays the scheming tycoon.

Which tightrope walker crossed the Niagara Gorge in 1859, later blindfolded, on stilts and cooking an omelette?

Charles Blondin, born Jean François Gravelet, first crossed the gorge on a 1,100-foot rope on 30 June 1859 and later carried his manager Harry Colcord across on his back.

Which British comedy troupe's 'Flying Circus' ran on BBC television from 1969 to 1974?

Monty Python's Flying Circus had no circus acts at all: five Britons and the American Terry Gilliam, who drew its cut-out animations, made surreal sketches and sometimes ran the opening titles mid-show.

What lasting effect did Barnum's famous elephant have on the English language?

A new word for anything very large: Barnum fanned the uproar over the elephant's 1882 sale so well that 'jumbo' was in print as a word for oversized that same year, long before jumbo jets.

How did Jumbo die in 1885?

Jumbo was hit by a freight locomotive in the railway yard at St. Thomas, Ontario, on 15 September 1885; Barnum claimed he died shielding the smaller elephant Tom Thumb.

Which university's sports teams are nicknamed the Jumbos, after Barnum's elephant?

Barnum, an early Tufts trustee, gave Jumbo's stuffed hide to the university's Barnum Hall; it burned in a 1975 fire, but Tufts teams kept the Jumbos name.

What did Barnum's partner W. C. Coup add to their circus in 1872?

A second ring: Coup had lengthened the tent to seat more people, which left many too far from a single ring; a third followed in 1881, and the three-ring circus was born.

In which town did five of the seven Ringling brothers start their circus in 1884?

Baraboo, Wisconsin, was the Ringlings' home town: they opened there with a small wagon show in 1884 and kept the circus's winter quarters in the town until 1918.

Why did the Ringlings merge their circus with Barnum & Bailey in 1919?

Wartime shortages of labour and rail capacity forced the move: with the First World War limiting the trains a circus could use, the brothers folded both shows into one for the 1919 season.

In 2009 Cirque du Soleil's billionaire co-founder paid millions for a tourist trip to where?

The International Space Station: Guy Laliberté rode a Russian Soyuz there in September 2009 as Canada's first space tourist, and used the flight to draw attention to the world's water problems.

What was the billing slogan of Barnum's, and later Ringling's, circus?

The Greatest Show on Earth began as one phrase in the sprawling title of Barnum's 1870s show; the Ringlings bought Barnum & Bailey in 1907 and carried the slogan over when the two circuses became one.

After the deadly Hartford circus fire of 1944, how did Ringling pay nearly $5 million in victims' claims?

With ten years of its profits: the circus accepted full financial responsibility, a court-supervised receivership kept it on the road, and its earnings went to the claims until the last was paid in 1954.

Why did the Hartford big top burn so fast?

Paraffin-and-gasoline waterproofing was a common method then: the canvas had been coated with paraffin wax thinned with gasoline, so once the flames reached the roof they raced across the whole big top.

A photo of which Ringling clown carrying a water bucket gave the Hartford fire the name 'the day the clowns cried'?

Emmett Kelly was making up for the matinee when the fire broke out and ran toward the blaze with a bucket; the newspaper photograph of him became the lasting image of the disaster.

Which pop star released the album Circus in 2008, with the chart-topping single 'Womanizer'?

Britney Spears released Circus on her 27th birthday, in the year a court placed her under a conservatorship; 'Womanizer' became her first US number one since her debut single.

What did Irvin Feld found in 1968 to revive a neglected craft?

A Clown College: by 1968 Ringling was down to a handful of clowns, most of them over fifty, so Irvin Feld opened the school in Venice, Florida; it trained about 1,400 clowns before closing in 1997.

Which composer wrote the Circus Polka for a 1942 Ringling ballet danced by fifty elephants?

Igor Stravinsky took the commission from choreographer George Balanchine, reportedly asking how old the elephants were and agreeing because they were young; fifty of them danced with fifty ballerinas.

Which American sculptor staged a miniature wire circus for friends in the 1920s?

Alexander Calder packed his Cirque Calder into suitcases and worked its wire acrobats and animals by hand for friends, years before the mobiles that made his name.

How did Ringling return in September 2023?

As an animal-free touring circus: Ringling had shut down in 2017 after 146 years on the road, and six years later it came back built entirely around human performers.

In which small Quebec town did street performers found Cirque du Soleil in 1984?

Baie-Saint-Paul was the base of Gilles Ste-Croix's street troupe, and Guy Laliberté helped stage a festival of street performers there in 1982; its success led them to launch the circus two years later.

Which feature helps define Cirque du Soleil as 'nouveau cirque'?

It uses no performing animals: in place of ring acts with horses and big cats, its shows blend acrobatics with theatre, live music and dance, often on a stage instead of in a ring.

What happened to Cirque du Soleil in 2020?

It filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2020 after COVID-19 shut down all 44 of its shows; that November Cirque du Soleil was sold to a creditor group led by Catalyst Capital.

Which Soviet leader had Russia's circuses nationalised?

Vladimir Lenin nationalised the circuses in 1919, and within a decade the Soviet state had opened a circus school in Moscow to train a new generation of Russian performers.

Which signature stunt of the Flying Wallendas went wrong during a 1962 show, killing two of the troupe?

A seven-person pyramid on the high wire, a feat the family had performed since 1947, fell when the lead man faltered; two men died and a third was left paralysed.

Where did patriarch Karl Wallenda fall to his death in 1978?

Karl Wallenda, 73, fell from a cable strung between the towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on 22 March 1978; his great-grandson Nik completed the same walk in 2011.

What did Nik Wallenda become the first person to do in June 2012?

Walk a tightrope directly over Niagara Falls: it took a two-year legal fight on both sides of the border to win permission, and he had to wear a safety harness for the first time in his life.

Piccadilly Circus in London is a 'circus' in what sense?

A round open space at a junction: Piccadilly Circus was laid out in 1819 where Regent Street meets Piccadilly, and lost its circular shape in 1886 when Shaftesbury Avenue was cut through.

Who plays P. T. Barnum in the 2017 musical film The Greatest Showman?

Hugh Jackman, 49 when the film opened, plays Barnum as a young man building his circus; the real showman did not go into the circus business until he was 60.

Who wrote the original songs for the 2017 film The Greatest Showman?

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul were hired in 2013, before La La Land and Dear Evan Hansen made their names; their song 'This Is Me' went on to win the Golden Globe for best original song.

Which instrument gives the traditional American circus band its distinctive steam-whistle sound?

The calliope sounds steam or compressed air through tuned whistles; its piercing tone, audible for miles, announced the circus's arrival in every town.

Who is considered the first wild-animal trainer in American circus history, entering a big-cat cage in 1833?

Isaac Van Amburgh walked into a cage of lions and leopards in 1833 and made putting his head in a lion's mouth his trademark; Queen Victoria went to watch him six times in 1839 and had Landseer paint him.

Minoan art from Bronze Age Crete shows young acrobats vaulting over the backs of which animals?

Bulls: a fresco from the palace at Knossos, painted about 1450 BC, shows young people somersaulting over a charging bull, a feat that seems to have been a religious ritual more than a sport.

What is another name for the aerial hoop used by circus aerialists?

The lyra, also called the aerial ring or cerceau, is a steel hoop hung from a single point; performers pose, spin and drop inside and around it.

What do some aerial silks performers put on their hands and feet to improve grip?

Rosin, the pine resin violinists rub on their bows and baseball pitchers keep in a bag, makes skin grip the fabric; silks artists depend on that hold because they climb, wrap and drop without safety lines.

The Cirque du Soleil show Alegria takes its name from the Spanish word for what?

Joy is what 'alegría' means in Spanish; Franco Dragone's 1994 show sets it against a power struggle, as the young challenge the old order in a kingdom that has lost its king.

Which trapeze star married Lillian Leitzel in 1928?

Alfredo Codona, the flyer who made the triple somersault a regular feat, married Leitzel in 1928; she died after a fall three years later, and at his own request he was buried beside her.

Philip Astley's riding school stood from 1769 at the foot of which Thames bridge?

Westminster Bridge: Astley leased a plot at its southern end in 1769, and the wooden arena he raised there burned down in 1794 and again in 1803 and was rebuilt both times.

Who wrote the music for the Broadway musical Barnum?

Cy Coleman wrote the music to Michael Stewart's lyrics; its star, Jim Dale, sang while walking a tightrope and riding a unicycle, and won the 1980 Tony for best actor in a musical.

What did P. T. Barnum run in New York before turning to the circus?

A museum of curiosities: Barnum outmanoeuvred richer bidders for John Scudder's collection in 1841 and filled it with hoaxes, oddities and live acts until fire destroyed it in 1865.

Which condition, restricted to females, most commonly explains a 'bearded lady'?

Hirsutism, by definition male-pattern hair growth in women, is usually driven by excess androgens from polycystic ovary syndrome; hypertrichosis, by contrast, can affect either sex.

Bertram Mills Circus was famous for Christmas shows at which London venue?

Olympia is where Mills, bored by a circus he watched there after the First World War, is said to have wagered he could stage a better one within a year; his own Christmas show opened in the hall in 1920.

Which Roman satirist complained that the people cared only for 'bread and circuses'?

Juvenal wrote that Romans who once handed out commands and legions now longed for just two things, free grain and the games at the Circus; the phrase still means buying off the public.

The Big Apple Circus's Clown Care programme sent its performers where?

Into children's hospitals went the 'clown doctors': co-founder Michael Christensen began the rounds in New York in 1986, parodying medical routines to ease young patients' fear and boredom.

What special feature has Blackpool Tower Circus had since 1894?

A sinking ring that floods: the ring floor is lowered hydraulically into a pool for a finale of fountains, a trick built in from the start, when the show was billed as an aquatic circus.

Which record label used Bozo the Clown as its mascot?

Capitol Records created Bozo in 1946 for its children's record-and-readalong albums, with Pinto Colvig as the voice; the character was later licensed to local TV stations.

Who bought the Bozo the Clown rights in the 1950s and franchised him to local TV?

Larry Harmon, who had played Bozo himself, bought the rights in 1957 and licensed the character market by market, so nearly every big American city had its own Bozo; Chicago's, Bob Bell, lasted from 1960 to 1984.

Which Native American leader toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1885?

Sitting Bull was allowed off his reservation to join the 1885 tour; crowds treated him as a celebrity, and the season won him international fame.

Which wire-walker made an unauthorised crossing between the Twin Towers in 1974?

Philippe Petit spent about 45 minutes on the wire, 1,350 feet up, crossing eight times by his own count; police arrested him as he stepped off, but the charges were later dropped.

Which Federico Fellini film follows the travelling strongman Zampanò and his assistant Gelsomina?

La Strada cast Anthony Quinn as the brutish chain-breaking strongman and Giulietta Masina as the waif he buys from her mother to work his roadside act; it won the Academy Award for best foreign film.

What was the Cardiff Giant, which Barnum copied in 1869?

A fake petrified man: cigar maker George Hull had the 10-foot figure carved from gypsum and buried on a New York farm; when its owners refused to sell, Barnum showed a plaster copy and called theirs the fake.

Chang and Eng Bunker, the original 'Siamese twins', settled in which US state in 1839?

North Carolina became home after a decade on tour: the twins bought a farm, took US citizenship and the surname Bunker, and in 1843 married the sisters Adelaide and Sarah Yates.

Which future magician made his debut at nine as a trapeze act billed 'Ehrich, the Prince of the Air'?

Harry Houdini, born Erik Weisz, worked in circuses and sideshows as a boy and young man, once doubling as a circus 'Wild Man', before his handcuff escapes made him famous.

What did clown Charlie Cairoli throw into the Irish Sea when war broke out in 1939?

A watch given to him by Hitler: the dictator had presented it after a command performance early in 1939; on the news of war Cairoli walked to the end of Blackpool's North Pier and threw it into the sea.

Cirque du Soleil's Mystère opened in 1993 at which Las Vegas resort?

Treasure Island gave Mystère a theatre built for it after Caesars Palace had dropped the idea as too risky; it opened on Christmas Day 1993 as Cirque du Soleil's first show with a permanent home.

In circus pole acts, which trick has a performer hang straight out sideways from the vertical pole?

The flag is held by the arms alone, the body straight out sideways from the pole; Chinese pole artists often wear several layers of clothing because the rubber-coated poles burn and bruise the skin.

Circus Circus in Las Vegas opened in October 1968 without what?

Jay Sarno opened Circus Circus on 18 October 1968 as a casino with circus acts but no hotel rooms; the first hotel tower followed in 1972.

Which James Bond film shot key scenes on the midway inside Las Vegas's Circus Circus casino?

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) sends Sean Connery's Bond to Las Vegas, where Tiffany Case collects the smuggled diamonds at Circus Circus; the casino's founder, Jay Sarno, has a cameo.

In the 1920s, which politician repeatedly addressed his party's rallies in Munich's Circus Krone building?

Adolf Hitler spoke again and again in the 4,000-seat wooden arena, which the Nazi Party rented many times in the 1920s; Allied bombs destroyed the building in December 1944.

Between which two hills does the Circus Maximus lie?

Aventine and Palatine: the Circus Maximus filled the valley between the two hills and held some 150,000 people for chariot races; today nothing but its outline survives, as a public park.

Circus Oz was founded in which Australian city in 1978?

Circus Oz formed in Melbourne in 1978 when the Soapbox Circus, a roadshow of the Australian Performing Group, merged with the New Ensemble Circus; it was one of the first modern circuses to work without animals.

Which French painter drew a series of circus scenes from memory in 1899 to prove he was fit to leave a sanatorium?

Toulouse-Lautrec had been committed after a breakdown brought on by heavy drinking; the circus drawings he made there from memory showed that his mind was sound, and he was released that spring.

The Great Circus Parade of antique wagons, launched in 1963 with Schlitz brewery money, rolled through which city?

Milwaukee was the natural host: its Schlitz brewery paid for the first parade as a fundraiser for the Circus World Museum, whose restored wagons arrived by special circus train.

Which is the oldest of the three traditional circus clown archetypes?

The whiteface is the oldest type, its flour-white make-up going back to the Pierrot of the 17th-century stage; the auguste arrived only in the 1860s, and when clowns work together the whiteface usually leads.

The marshmallow candy called the circus peanut is traditionally made in what artificial flavor?

Banana flavour is the twist: the orange, peanut-shaped marshmallows taste of neither peanut nor orange, and cellophane wrapping turned them from a springtime penny candy into a year-round one in the 1940s.

Which cereal originally used circus peanuts in an early version of its marshmallows?

Lucky Charms grew out of an experiment by General Mills developer John Holahan, who chopped circus peanuts into a bowl of Cheerios; the cereal's marshmallow 'marbits' followed.

In 1869 Dan Castello's circus became the first to cross the continent how?

By train: weeks after the transcontinental railroad was joined at Promontory Summit in May 1869, Castello's circus rode it from Omaha to California, the first circus to cross the continent by rail.

The 450th anniversary of which event won Cirque du Soleil's founders a crucial government grant?

Jacques Cartier's voyage reached Canada in 1534, so Quebec marked the 450th anniversary in 1984; a government grant paid for a touring show for the celebrations, which became Cirque du Soleil's first season.

In which Canadian city is Cirque du Soleil's international headquarters?

Montreal: Cirque du Soleil built its headquarters in 1997 on a former quarry and dump site in Saint-Michel, picking a struggling district it hoped to help revive.

Which Shrek co-director wrote and directed 2012's Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away?

Andrew Adamson wove acts from seven Las Vegas shows, among them O and Mystère, into one 3D story of a girl chasing a vanished aerialist through their worlds.

Which Quebec circus company takes its name from an Acadian word for heat lightning?

Cirque Éloize was founded in 1993 by acrobats from the Magdalen Islands, and took the islanders' word for heat lightning as a nod to home.

Clyde Beatty's 'fighting act' had him enter the cage with a whip, a chair and what?

A pistol hung at Beatty's side because the 'fighting act' was built to show one man's courage and mastery in a cage of big cats, some forty at a time.

Lazzi, stock comic bits, belong to which Italian theatre tradition?

Commedia dell'arte actors improvised around a bare plot, so they kept rehearsed lazzi ready to wake the audience when a scene dragged or to cover a dropped line.

What is the basic three-ball juggling pattern, in which the balls trace a figure-eight, called?

The cascade crosses every ball from one hand to the other, so it only works with odd numbers; four balls go in a fountain, two juggled in each hand.

Which villain, introduced in 1940, popularized the modern 'evil clown' archetype?

The Joker was meant to be killed off in his 1940 debut in Batman #1, but an editor spared him; Stephen King's Pennywise revived the evil clown in the 1980s.

Which acrobatic apparatus is a single large ring the performer rolls inside?

The Cyr wheel is named after Quebec acrobat Daniel Cyr, who revived it as a circus act; the German wheel joins two rings with crossbars and handles.

Clown Dan Rice ran for which office in 1868?

President of the United States: Rice put himself forward in 1868, sporting the trademark beard that is said to have helped inspire the figure of Uncle Sam.

Devil sticks are believed to have originated as simple wooden juggling sticks in which country?

China is the traditional origin, yet the first provable record is European: a picture of two Indian jugglers printed in Prague around 1820.

Which juggling prop is a spool spun on a string tied between two sticks?

The diabolo got its modern name in the 1900s, when Gustave Philippart's redesign revived a toy that had been all the rage in France a century earlier.

Disney's Dumbo was produced to recoup the losses of which two films?

Pinocchio and Fantasia were expensive films that lost money, so Dumbo was made quickly and cheaply, and it brought the studio a welcome profit.

What is the name of Dumbo's mouse friend?

Timothy flips the old tale that elephants fear mice: he scares off the elephants who shun Dumbo, befriends him and ends the film as his manager.

Which surgeon befriended Joseph Merrick, the 'Elephant Man', and brought him to the London Hospital?

Frederick Treves, a surgeon at the London Hospital, first examined Merrick in 1884 and in 1886 secured him permanent rooms there; Treves later operated on Edward VII.

What was the name of the hobo clown who forever failed to sweep up a circus spotlight?

Weary Willie began as a cartoon figure on Emmett Kelly's drawing board in the early 1920s, years before Kelly stepped into the ring to chase that pool of light with a broom.

Which march, written by a Czech bandmaster in 1897, became the classic circus clown music?

Entry of the Gladiators was written by Julius Fučík as a military march; a band arrangement retitled 'Thunder and Blazes' turned it into the clowns' entrance music.

Which Sousa march was the circus band's coded alarm, known backstage as the 'disaster march'?

Stars and Stripes Forever warned the crew of danger without panicking the crowd; the Ringling band struck it up when the Hartford big top caught fire.

The Feejee mermaid is usually described as a fish's back half sewn to the torso of what?

A juvenile monkey is the usual description, though one study suggests an orangutan; Barnum himself called his star exhibit 'an ugly, dried-up, black-looking' specimen.

Irvin Feld, who went on to run the Ringling circus, first made his name with a chain of stores selling what?

Records sold so well at the Washington drugstore he opened with his brother that he built a chain of music shops, then promoted rock and roll tours, long before the circus.

Which toy company bought the Ringling circus in 1971?

Mattel paid in stock and kept the sellers on to run the show, then sold the circus back to them about a decade later.

Irvin Feld, later head of Ringling, is credited with discovering which singer?

Paul Anka is the find credited to Feld, then a rock and roll promoter; the Ottawa teenager went to New York, signed with ABC-Paramount and had a huge hit with 'Diana'.

The juggling troupe the Flying Karamazov Brothers took their name from a novel by which Russian author?

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov, the novel behind the name; on stage the jugglers call each other brothers, but none of them are related.

Where is Jules Leotard said to have first rigged a trapeze bar to practise?

Above his father's swimming pool, the story goes: the family ran a gymnasium in Toulouse, and at 18 he hung bars, ropes and rings over the water to experiment.

In flying trapeze, what is the manoeuvre called when the flyer is thrust back toward the fly bar?

An 'angel' return has the catcher hold the flyer by the feet and one arm.

The Fratellini brothers became the darlings of intellectuals in which city in the 1920s?

Paris: the Cirque Medrano hired the trio during World War I, and their success secured its finances and set off a wider revival of interest in the circus.

Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) was originally intended as a vehicle for which star?

Lon Chaney, Browning's frequent star, was the intended lead before his death in 1930; the film, based on Tod Robbins's story 'Spurs', was banned in Britain for 30 years.

What was General Tom Thumb's real name?

Charles Sherwood Stratton was four when Barnum taught him to sing, dance and impersonate figures such as Napoleon; the stage name came from an English folktale.

Swiss clown Grock, billed as the king of clowns, won his laughs as a simpleton baffled by what?

Musical instruments: Grock, born Charles Adrien Wettach, would hold his fiddle wrong side up and wonder aloud where the strings had gone.

Ringling star Gunther Gebel-Williams took the name 'Williams' from what?

An employer: Gebel joined Germany's Circus Williams as a boy, when his mother took a job there, and grew so close to the owning family that he added their name to his own.

Which instrument did Guy Laliberte play while busking around Europe at 18?

Accordion playing paid Guy Laliberté's way around Europe at 18; he came home a fire-breather too, and took both skills into the street troupe that became Cirque du Soleil.

Which comic servant of Italian street theatre is known for a costume of diamond-shaped patches?

Harlequin, or Arlecchino, began as a poor servant from Bergamo whose suit was a mass of odd-shaped coloured patches; later costumes tidied them into the neat diamond pattern.

Circus Knie, family-run since 1803, is which country's national circus?

Switzerland: the Knies performed in open-air arenas for more than a century, and only bought their first big top, on credit, just after the First World War.

Who patented the human cannonball launching device in 1871?

The Great Farini, the stage name of showman William Hunt, threw his human projectile with springs, which limited how far the performer could fly.

Under what stage name did Rossa Matilda Richter become the first billed 'human cannonball' in 1877?

Zazel, a London teenager, was shot from a spring-loaded cannon at the Royal Aquarium in 1877, and later crossed the Atlantic to tour with Barnum's circus.

Which catchphrase did Joseph Grimaldi originate?

'Here we are again!' outlived him: pantomime Clowns went on opening their scenes with Grimaldi's cry for generations after he made Clown the star of the show.

The words juggling and juggler derive from a Middle English word meaning what?

To entertain by performing tricks: Middle English jogelen goes back to Latin ioculari, 'to jest', so a juggler was a jester and conjurer before he was a tosser of balls.

Which Nabisco snack was sold for over a century in a box drawn as a circus boxcar?

Animal crackers took the name Barnum's Animals in 1902 and kept their beasts behind bars until 2018, when the box was redrawn, a year after the Ringling circus closed, with the animals roaming free.

Which profession was Jules Leotard destined for before he turned to the trapeze?

Law lost out to gymnastics: helped by his father and friends from the family gymnasium, he worked out the swings that made him the first flying trapeze star.

In which country was Jumbo the elephant born?

Sudan: poachers killed his mother, and the orphaned calf was sold to an Italian animal dealer who shipped him across the Mediterranean to a life in European zoos.

Jumbo the elephant's skeleton went to a natural history museum in which city?

New York's American Museum of Natural History received the bones, while the showman had the hide stuffed and sent the mounted giant back on tour with his circus.

Which monster-truck tour belongs to the same company as the Ringling Bros. circus?

Monster Jam joined the circus's parent company in 2008, when it bought the motor sports division of concert giant Live Nation; the same firm stages Disney On Ice.

Cirque du Soleil's KÀ opened in 2005 at which Las Vegas resort?

MGM Grand built the theatre around a 50-ton stage deck that a crane lifts, spins and tilts upright, until the cast are climbing and fighting on a vertical wall.

Cirque du Soleil's KÀ takes its title from an ancient belief of which civilisation?

Egyptian belief gave each person a ka, a spiritual double that stays through this life and into the next; the show follows imperial twins who are separated in their youth.

Ringling star Lillian Leitzel specialized in performing on what apparatus?

Roman rings made the tiny aerialist Ringling's biggest star; in February 1931 the swivel holding her rope snapped in mid-act in Copenhagen, and the fall killed her.

Ringling's Lou Jacobs is credited with popularizing which staple of big-top comedy?

The clown car was his own build: Jacobs, a six-foot-one former contortionist, folded himself into a motorised car about two feet wide and drove it into the Ringling ring in the 1940s.

Mabel Stark was renowned in the 1920s as one of the world's first women trainers of what?

Tigers made her name: she raised them from cubs, took them home and walked them on the beach, and wrestled one in the ring in a famous act.

Australian star May Wirth was famous for doing what on a running horse?

Somersaults forwards and backwards on a cantering horse took the Queensland-born rider from her adoptive family's circus to star billing with Barnum & Bailey in America.

Which Australian first landed a forward somersault on the tightwire?

Con Colleano needed about five years to master the trick, long thought impossible because in turning forwards the walker loses sight of the wire and must find it by feel.

Nik Wallenda's televised March 2020 wire walk crossed which active volcano?

Masaya in Nicaragua is an active crater: Wallenda crossed it on a steel cable on 4 March 2020, in a gas mask and goggles against the volcanic fumes.

Which Beatles song was written from an 1843 poster for Pablo Fanque's circus?

John Lennon lifted 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!' almost line by line from an 1843 Rochdale playbill for Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal that he bought in an antique shop in 1967.

Cirque du Soleil's water show O opened in 1998 at which Las Vegas resort?

Bellagio has housed O since October 1998 in a theatre styled after a European opera house; the title is a pun, since it sounds like 'eau', French for water.

How much water fills the pool in Cirque du Soleil's O?

1.5 million US gallons fill a pool 25 feet deep, and a crew of scuba divers works behind the scenes at every performance while the acrobats dive in from above.

Soviet clown Oleg Popov left school as a boy to work as an apprentice at which newspaper's printing plant?

Pravda's printing plant stood close to Moscow's circus school; the young apprentice took up acrobatics at a club after work and was soon enrolled there.

Which soprano did Barnum pay $1,000 a night to tour America?

Jenny Lind, the 'Swedish Nightingale', had never sung a note in Barnum's hearing when he staked that fee on a tour of up to 150 American concerts.

Which adage is often credited to Barnum without any evidence he coined it?

There's a sucker born every minute was never traced to Barnum by his own biographer; one account gives it to a rival, David Hannum, who is said to have meant Barnum's customers.

In circus slang, what is a 'First of May'?

A 'First of May' is a performer in their first season; tented circuses traditionally opened their tours around 1 May, so that was when new hands joined.

Which Cirque du Soleil show is built around the music of the Beatles?

LOVE opened at The Mirage in Las Vegas in 2006, with George Martin and his son Giles remixing the Beatles' master tapes into a 90-minute score.

Which stock character of pantomime does the sad clown Pierrot pine for?

Columbine, the clever servant girl, is the object of Pierrot's hopeless devotion; in the classic pantomime plot she usually leaves him for Harlequin.

In Disney's Dumbo, the 'Pink Elephants on Parade' sequence begins after the little elephant accidentally drinks what?

Champagne from the clowns' party spills into a water vat; Dumbo drinks it to cure his hiccups, sees pink elephants and wakes up in a tree, the first sign that he can fly.

What was the Ringling family's original German surname?

Rüngeling: the brothers' father, August Rüngeling, a harness-maker from Hanover, anglicised the name to Ringling after emigrating; four of the boys were born in McGregor, Iowa.

The ringmaster's red tailcoat, breeches and boots are modelled on what kind of outfit?

A riding habit of the 18th and early 19th centuries is the model: the first ringmasters directed the horse acts, which is also why the costume still comes with a whip.

Sara Gruen wrote Water for Elephants as part of what?

National Novel Writing Month produced her draft; Gruen's own publisher then turned the circus novel down, and it became a New York Times bestseller for another house.

What is the sideshow stunt called in which a performer hammers a nail into their nasal cavity?

The human blockhead works because the nasal cavity runs straight back, not up; Melvin Burkhart is said to have devised it after watching doctors treat his broken nose.

What is the motorcycle sideshow act performed inside a spherical cage called?

The Globe of Death lets riders loop upside down inside a steel-mesh ball, held to it by their own speed; the Wall of Death does the same trick inside a wooden cylinder.

Charlie Chaplin's The Circus entered the US public domain in 2024, the same day as which cartoon star's first films?

Mickey Mouse's Steamboat Willie and The Circus both came out in 1928, so their 95-year American copyrights ran out together on 1 January 2024.

Why did the Great Wallendas work without a net at their 1928 Madison Square Garden debut?

It had been lost in transit, so the troupe simply went on without one; the crowd answered with a standing ovation, and the netless act became the family trademark.

Where did The Greatest Showman premiere in December 2017?

Aboard the RMS Queen Mary 2 in New York, on 8 December 2017: the musical about Barnum's circus arrived in the same year that the real Ringling show folded.

Which Australian commercials director made his feature debut with The Greatest Showman?

Michael Gracey had built his name on visual effects and Christmas adverts; his first feature went on to gross more than five times its $84 million budget.

What is the technical name for tightrope walking?

Funambulism covers all rope and wire walking, with a wire above about 20 feet counted as highwire; walkers wear thin leather-soled slippers so the foot can curve around the wire.

Circus Roncalli, which replaced its animals with holograms in 2018, is based in which country?

Germany is its home, though two Austrians, Bernhard Paul and André Heller, founded it; since 2018 projectors placed around the ring have shown its animal acts as 3D images.

What is a tall unicycle nicknamed?

A giraffe unicycle gets its height from a chain, which lets the saddle sit far above the wheel; at the other extreme, the 'ultimate wheel' has pedals but no frame or seat.

The UniverSoul Circus, founded in 1994 by Cedric Walker, is headquartered in which city?

Atlanta saw the first show in 1994, staged in a stadium parking lot; within six years Cedric Walker's circus was touring 31 cities.

Which actress plays Marlena in the 2011 film Water for Elephants?

Reese Witherspoon plays Marlena, whose elephant partner Rosie will not perform until the pair discover that she only understands commands in Polish.

At which university is Jacob a veterinary student in Water for Elephants?

Jacob Jankowski is about to sit his final exams at Cornell's veterinary school when his parents are killed, and he walks out and jumps a Benzini Brothers train.

Zip the Pinhead was billed by Barnum as what?

A missing link caught in Africa was the story sold to the crowds; William Henry Johnson was in fact born in New Jersey, the son of former slaves, and performed for over 60 years.