For generations, circuses have given the American public the chance to forget their troubles and be entertained by physical comedy, fantastic feats of derring do, and pure magic. And for more than a century, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has been synonymous with all three.

During a span of 50 years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the circus had only existed as the Ringling Bros. World’s Greatest Shows. But in 1919, the Ringling Bros. circus merged with that of Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth. Created by the legendary showman Phineas Taylor Barnum and James Bailey, the merger occurred more than a decade after Barnum’s death. Much of today’s modern audiences were introduced to Barnum in the 2017 musical “The Greatest Showman, the title character famously portrayed by Hugh Jackman.

Earlier in his career, Barnum achieved notoriety as the creator of an immeasurable number of hoaxes to get people in his seats and their money in his pockets. Among his ludicrous claims – that one of his shows included an interview with George Washington’s 161-year-old former nurse. In reality, the 80-year-old woman was a blind and nearly completely paralyzed slave woman named Joyce Heth. When Heth died, Barnum charged onlookers a 50-cent admission to view her live autopsy.

Also part of Barnum’s circus was his “freak show,” a menagerie of human curiosities that included albinos, giants, exotic women, and little people, the most famous of whom, a young man with dwarfism named Charles Sherwood Stratton, was billed as “General Tom Thumb,” whom Barnum coached on performing in front of live audiences. Barnum took Stratton on a tour of Europe, where he met Britain’s Queen Victoria, and a tour of the U.S., where Stratton and his wife, a young lady named Lavinia who also had dwarfism, met President Abraham Lincoln at the White House.

From its beginning, Barnum and Bailey’s circus mesmerized audiences with a team of variety performers, acrobats, clowns, tigers, lions, and, at its center, “Jumbo,” who Barnum marketed as the world’s largest elephant. The circus traveled the world, surviving the Great Depression and by this time known for setting up its very own big tent at every tour site. The fun under the big top was affordable, too, a place of escapism to a Depression- and war-weary public.

After World War II ended and the 1940s gave way to the ‘50s, the circus came up against its greatest challenge so far – the advent of television. To keep the show’s expenses down as their audience numbers dwindled, circus executives abandoned the big-top tent that had become one of the show’s primary features, now moving their performances to indoor venues instead.