Phineas Taylor Barnum (born in Bethel, Connecticut, USA, on July 5, 1810) was a businessman most active in the sector of entertainment. He was also author, publisher, philanthropist and politician. On top of that, he was one of the founders of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, which, in 1919, merged with the Ringling Brothers Circus, creating the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a company that market itself as The Greatest Show on Earth . At the age of 19, Barnum married Charity Hallett. In his early twenties, he was busy with a general store, a book auctioning trade, real estate speculation, and a statewide lottery network. He also became active in local politics and positioned himself against laws that sought to restrict gambling and travel. Barnum started a weekly paper in 1829, The Herald of Freedom, in Danbury, Connecticut. In 1834, the state banned lotteries, cutting off his main income, and then Barnum moved to New York City. There he entered on the Show Business with a variety troupe called “Barnum’s Grand Scientific and Musical Theater”. One of his exhibitions consisted of a blind and paralyzed slave woman, Joice Heth, who he claimed to have been George Washington’s nurse and to be over 160 years old. Later on, he purchased the Scudder’s American Museum, located at Ann Street with Broadway, and renamed it as Barnum’s American Museum, where the presented the public with attractions such as the Feejee mermaid (a creature with the head of a monkey and the tail of a fish). Other attraction was the dwarf General Tom Thumb (The Smallest Person that ever Walked Alone”), which was actually Charles Stratton, a four-year old boy that was stated to be 11 and could be taught to make impressions, drinking wine and smoking cigars. As a Republican politician, he served for two legislatures in Connecticut. He unsuccessfully ran for the United States Congress in 1867. In 1875, he was elected as Mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Barnum wrote several books, including Life of P.T. Barnum (1854), The Humbugs of the World (1865), Struggles and Triumphs (1869) and The Art of Money-Getting (1880). He probably believed that the mass publication of his autobiography was a great method of self-promotion, something in which he was a master.