New Year’s Eve Iguanodon Party

In 1853, a high-profile London dinner party was held inside a life-sized mold of an iguanodon.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 2:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. This episode is coming out on New Year's Eve, and so we're taking a look at a fun New Year's Eve from the past. It's a dinner party that took place on New Year's Eve in 1853 inside a life-size sculpture of an aegonodon, or to be more accurate, a life-size mold of an aegonodon, which was one step in the process of making the final sculpture. They were still in an aegonodon, though. That's the important part.

• 3:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  This aegonodon sculpture was being made for London's Crystal Palace Park. And we have an episode on the Crystal Palace that was re-released as a Saturday classic on January 30th, 2021. The Crystal Palace was designed by Joseph Paxton for the Great Exhibition that was held in Hyde Park in London in 1851. The Crystal Palace was made from cast iron and glass, like an enormous greenhouse, and it served as an exhibit hall. The Great Exhibition ran for six months, from May to October of 1851, and Parliament had ordered that the Crystal Palace had to be removed from Hyde Park after it was over. Paxton established the Crystal Palace Company under a royal charter and found donors to help pay

• 3:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  to deconstruct, move, and rebuild the palace, and buy a location for it to be moved to. That location was on Sidonham Hill in southeast London, on the grounds of a former mansion called Penj Place. That mansion had only been about 20 years old, and it was demolished for the relocation of the Crystal Palace. Crews started reassembling the Crystal Palace in this new location in August of 1852.

• 4:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  And the resulting Crystal Palace Park has been described as the world's first amusement park. It was a 200 acre site that would ultimately have extensive gardens, fountains, sculptures, and the like. The Crystal Palace itself would also have wings of artwork and artifacts and an assortment of exhibits on industry. Its position on a hilltop would give it a commanding view of the area around it while also making it visible from miles away. And this whole thing was meant to be emblematic of Victorian cultural and industrial progress. Work on all of this was going on when the dinner happened and a train station and other infrastructure were also being built to accommodate the park's visitors.

• 4:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Crystal Palace Company also commissioned a collection of sculptures of prehistoric animals, sometimes called Antediluvian monsters, meaning monsters from before the biblical flood in the Book of Genesis. These animals were to be arranged on and around islands in a manmade lake in the park. The lake exhibit was supposed to be both fun and educational. In the words of paleontologist and comparative anatomist Richard Owen in the work Geology and Inhabitants of the Extinct Animals and Plants of Each Stratum, which was a guide to this outdoor exhibit, quote, "The object of the islands and the geological lake is

• 5:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  to demonstrate the order of succession or superposition of these layers or strata, and to exhibit restored in form and bulk as when they lived, the most remarkable and characteristic of the extinct animals and plants of each stratum." In other words, if you walked the path along these islands, it would be like walking through a geological timeline illustrated with life-sized, three-dimensional examples. The artist who was commissioned to create these sculptures was Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, who usually went by the name Waterhouse Hawkins or B. Waterhouse Hawkins. He was

• 6:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  born in London on February 8, 1807, to Thomas and Louisa Anna Waterhouse Hawkins. And he may get his own episode at some point because some of his life story is wild. Case in point, he had two wives, Mary, who he married in 1826, and Louisa, who he married 10 years later. While he was still married to Mary. And years after today's story takes place, there was also a whole situation involving New York's Tammany Hall political machine and the destruction of all of the models that Waterhouse had made for dinosaur dioramas that were supposed to go in Central Park. As for what's actually relevant to today's episode, Hawkins was an artist and his specialty

• 7:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  was natural history. His paintings of animals had been displayed in places like the Royal Academy and the British Institution, and he had access to a lot of collections and resources that he could use to research his art. He also illustrated multiple other people's scientific works, including Charles Darwin's The Zoology of the Voyage of the HMS Beagle. Hawkins was a fellow in the Linnaean Society and the Geological Society and a member of the Society of Arts. So this man had a lot of credentials, and he had also been an exhibitor and assistant superintendent of the great exhibition.

• 7:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  These sculptures are known as the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs today, but for the most part, they're not dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were reptiles that lived on land. Yes, we absolutely know that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but we are talking about the ones that are extinct today. These statues include marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and a plesiosaur, a flying pterosaur, amphibians, and several mammals like megatherium or giant ground sloth, zyphodon, which looks something like a camel, and megalosaurus, or the Irish elk, which at the time was known as cervus hybernicus. The sculptures of these and other extinct animals significantly outnumber the ones

• 8:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  of true dinosaurs, of which there are only three: megalosaurus, highly

• 8:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  And two different versions of Iguanodon. Let me tell you, when I wrote that paragraph, I spent a very long time staring at the names Megalosaurus and Megalosaurus.

• 8:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, they just felt like the same word to me. They're not spelled exactly the same. They're very similar. Those three dinosaurs, while there are only three of them, they are important. People who live near fossils have been aware of their existence for millennia, but these are the only three dinosaurs that had been scientifically described when Hawkins started working on these sculptures. They are also the three animals that prompted Richard Owen to coin the word dinosaur in the first place. People had found and studied the fossilized remains of a lot of large extinct animals by the 19th century,

• 9:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  and Owen saw these three in particular as having some traits in common, including their sacral anatomy. He published an article titled "Report on British Fossil Reptiles" that grouped them together in a new clade called Dinosauria in 1842. At the same time, there was some disagreement about the specifics of these animals' anatomy and physiology. That's understandable, considering that this was a brand-new scientific category, and a lot of the fossils that had been unearthed were far from complete. What's most relevant to today's episode is that there were two competing versions of what an Iguanodon looked like.

• 10:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Today, the basic definition of a dinosaur includes that they had an erect posture with their legs under their bodies. But in the mid-19th century, some interpretation of the Iguanodon had its legs out to the side, more like a crocodile. The two Iguanodon sculptures that Hawkins created for the Crystal Palace Gardens reflect these two different interpretations. One of them is standing upright on four straight, stocky legs, and the other looks like a giant lizard with a more sprawled-out posture. Both of them have a small horn on their nose, which later fossil discoveries revealed was really part of the animal's thumb. Beyond these two competing versions of the Iguanodon,

• 10:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  there were more personal disagreements among some of the scientists who discovered and wrote about these specimens, although really disagreement is putting it generously.

• 11:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Gideon Mantel is credited with two of the first three dinosaur discoveries, Iguanodon in 1822 and Hylosaurus in 1832. Gideon's wife Mary Ann was a huge part of his work, including creating hundreds of lithographs to illustrate his books, and she is generally recognized as being the person who found the fossilized teeth that Gideon later named Iguanodon for their resemblance to giant iguana teeth. Gideon Mantel discovered a whole array of vertebrate and invertebrate fossils. He wrote 12 different books, most of which were about geology and fossils, and he was

• 11:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  a member of the Royal Society and the Geological Society of London. He also won a whole series of UK and international awards for his work. But Richard Owen, who had a reputation for being a hateful petty person, tried to dismiss Mantel's work and take credit for some of his discoveries. For example, Owen tried to give himself and zoologist George Couvier the credit for the Iguanodon discovery. Couvier was one of the people Mantel had talked to about the Iguanodon teeth when he was trying to figure out what they were. Owen's writings often implied that Mantel did not know what he was talking about, and there's speculation that Owen worked behind the scenes to keep Mantel's papers from being published.

• 12:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Mantel once said of Owen that it was a pity that, quote, "A man so talented should be so dastardly and envious." By the time Hawkins started working on these sculptures, Mantel had died, possibly due to an overdose of the opium he was taking to try to manage a very painful spinal condition. Owen's name, though, had become synonymous with dinosaurs, and he was the one who provided a lot of the scientific feedback on Hawkins' sculpture designs. We will get to more on that after a sponsor break.

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  This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. ¿Qué tal, mi gente? Honey German checking in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. ¿How's your corazón feeling today? If it's a little tired, a little uff, you're not alone. Have you eaten algo rico? Taken a deep breath? Maybe even turned off your phone for cinco minutitos? I promise, the memes will still be there. Sometimes self-care isn't candles and meditation. It's just saying no. It's drinking a little bit of agua. It's letting yourself rest sin pena. You don't have to prove anything today. Just be. Breathe. Estás haciendo lo mejor que puedes. And yes, that's enough.

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  Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 14:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 15:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  My small experience with the discrepancy in the business of music made me angry in the best way, and I wanted to, I wanted to finish. So I started really like leaning into my therapy, trying to get down to like what matters now. Somewhere Miguelito felt like he didn't have a place to say how he felt, and music was the place that I went to, to say how I felt.

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• 16:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Waterhouse Hawkins had a workshop in a shed on the grounds of the Crystal Palace Gardens, and that's where he worked on the enormous sculptures that he had been commissioned to create for the park. In the words of Rutledge's Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park at Sedna with descriptions of the principal works of science and art and of the terraces, fountains, geological formations, and restoration of extinct animals therein exhibited, this workshop was, quote, "at the lower end of the park in a rude and temporary wooden building, almost inaccessible for deep ruts and acres of swamp and mud, a miniature Serbonian bog."

• 16:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hawkins' starting point was research, learning everything that he could about the anatomy of each extinct animal. Then, in his words, quote, "I made my sketch models to scale, either a sixth or twelfth of the natural size, designing such attitudes as my long acquaintance with the recent and living forms of the animal kingdom enabled me to adapt to the extinct species I was endeavoring to restore. These sketch models I submitted in all instances to the criticism of Professor Owen, who with his great knowledge and profound learning most liberally aided me in every difficulty."

• 17:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  Once Owen had approved this model, Hawkins had to figure out how to translate that into a life-sized mold and a finished statue that could each withstand their own weight. Again, in his words, quote, "Some of these models contained thirty tons of clay, which had to be supported on four legs, as their natural history characteristics would not allow of my having recourse to any of the expedients for support allowed to sculptors in an ordinary case. I could have no trees, nor rooks, no foliage to support these great bodies, which to be natural must be fairly built on their four legs.

• 18:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  And the instance of the Iguanodon is not less than building a house upon four columns, as the quantities of material which the standing Iguanodon is composed consist of four iron columns, nine feet long by seven inches diameter, six hundred bricks, six hundred fifty five-inch half-round drain tiles, nine hundred plain tiles, thirty-eight casks of cement, ninety casks of broken stone, making a total of six hundred forty bushels of artificial stone. These with one hundred feet of iron hooping and twenty feet of cubic inch bar constitute the bones, sinews, and muscles of this large model, the largest of which there is any

• 19:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  record of a casting being made." So, once he'd figured out how to make and build the clay model, he made a plaster cast of it, working in sections. And he used the plaster casts to make the pieces of the final sculpture out of concrete, and he would transport those pieces to their location in the park to be assembled. Smaller animals, or smaller pieces of big animals, were often made of solid concrete, but things like the large central body of the Iguanodon were usually Actually hollow and then filled with brickwork. Hawkins had a team of laborers and assistants to actually do all this work, but we really don't know anything about those workers. Yeah, that's, he gets cited continually, but there has to have been just an army of people

• 19:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  doing the physical work on all of this. This was the first time anybody had tried to make life-sized sculptures of these extinct animals, and the process was time-consuming and difficult and labor-intensive. Soon Hawkins was behind schedule. The park had also faced an assortment of other difficulties, so when the Crystal Palace was moved from Hyde Park, the goal had been to get the site open for public visitors as fast as possible. But the project was plagued by bad weather, including ongoing rain and high winds. As one writer put it, quote, "Thus far, the whole fairy creation, like the monsters

• 20:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  said to be engendered by the sun on the banks of the Nile, is struggling to extricate its limbs from elemental mud. Everywhere it is mud, mud, excepting where the mountain of granite has already been reared, a graceful slope already turfed, or a long train of planks bends under processions of wheelbarrows." Do you think there was mud? There was so much mud, apparently. This affected construction at the park and the railroad and roadways that were being built to support it, and the planting of the gardens, the plumbing of the fountains, basically everything about the infrastructure of this park plan. It was all behind schedule and it was all over budget, including the dinosaurs.

• 21:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  And to add to all the pressure, the Queen was very interested in the park and its progress. Victoria and Albert toured the park site on November 18th, including a tour of Hawkins' dinosaur workshop. All of this ultimately fed into a plan to host a New Year's Eve dinner and to serve that dinner in the mold for the more elephant-like Iguanodon statue. This dinner would be part public relations, part investor relations, something that could be written about in the newspapers and stoke public interest in the dinosaur sculptures in the park and could help appease the investors who were very anxious about the state of

• 21:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  the project and how much longer it was going to take for everything to actually be open. In the words of the Illustrated London Daily News, quote, "In the mold of this colossal work of art, for as such it must deservedly rank very high, Mr. Hawkins conceived the idea of bringing together those great names whose high position in the science of paleontology and geology would form the best guarantee for the severe truthfulness of his works, and at the same time, show to the public the high tone of criticism and knowledge which the directors of this truly national undertaking require those officers to sustain, to whom they confide the carrying out of any important part of their plan, which so particularly

• 22:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  bears on the education of the people." Hawkins created hand-drawn invitations for this dinner, apparently drawing them all one by one, rather than like making the design for one card and having copies of that printed. There are a few different versions of this that have survived until today, and they all feature an illustration of people having dinner in the body of a dinosaur statue that is so tall that somebody is having to climb up a ladder to get into it. There's also a pterodactyl with an outstretched wing in the foreground, and the inside of that wing is where the actual text of the invitation is written. So, all these designs differed

• 23:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  from each other, but they had in common that there was a dinosaur with people eating in it and a pterodactyl wing. Uh, for example, the invitation sent to geologist Joseph Presswich said, quote, "Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins requests the honor of Mr. Joseph Presswich's company at dinner in the mold of the Iguanodon at the Crystal Palace on Saturday evening, December the 31st at 5 o'clock, 1853. An answer will oblige." There's some fuzziness in terms of exactly how many people were invited to this dinner and how many actually showed up. Those invitations went out just a few days before the event,

• 24:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  so some of the invitees probably had other plans lined up. Most sources say that 21 guests attended, in addition to Hawkins, who was the host. We will get to the dinner itself after a sponsor break.

• 24:21Speaker 05

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  This stress check, aka friendly reminder that your hobbies matter, is brought to you by State Farm, because you deserve to lose yourself in the stuff that brings you joy. Here's mine: painting my tabletop battle miniatures. Yeah, seriously. After a long day, I grab a brush, pop in some music, and just get into it. And there's no wrong way to do it. It helps me clear my head, slow down, and just breathe. But it works. Big stress, mini warriors, total reset. No pressure, just paint, creativity, and a little reminder of what makes me happy. Some people bake, some people garden. Me, I paint warriors with interesting tech, and guess what? It works. You don't have to be good at your hobby,

• 25:33Speaker 02

  you just have to enjoy it. So carve out that time, tune out the noise, and do something that's just for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 25:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 26:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by rising star Sienna Spire. What is so fascinating to you about impermanence?

• 27:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Everything about us, everything we do, is temporary. And I just got terrified of that. You know, what we do with our time and how I feel like the way the world is today and how fast paced it is and how much we don't even acknowledge anything around us. How I felt temporary to the people around me and how that made me scared and how much I wanted to last and make an impact on people. And I guess to change the way I looked at things and to change myself and to change how I guess I approached everything in my life. It's important that things are impermanent because nothing would feel special. And enjoying, you know, learning to love with knowing it's not going to last.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Most of the descriptions of the New Year's Eve 1853 dinner in the Iguanodon mold at Crystal Palace Park are in things like newspapers and journals. Most of them contradict each other on at least some points. One of the go-to sources is an illustration that appeared in the Illustrated London Daily News, but that was an illustration that Waterhouse Hawkins had drawn himself. He probably drew it before the dinner took place to help promote the event in the park. It's not clear where the Iguanodon mold was when the dinner was held in it, but it might have still been in Hawkins's workshop in spite of all the

• 28:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  ruts in the mud involved getting to the workshop. Most sources say that a tent or an awning had been placed over the Iguanodon for the dinner. If that dinner was held in the shed, that probably would have helped the guests stay warm and dry since the roof was very leaky. According to one source, the tent was left over from a birthday party that Hawkins had hosted for one of his daughters. In the words of Routledge's Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park, quote, "An awning of pink and white drapery was raised above the novel banqueting hall, and small banners bearing the names of Coney Bear, Buckland, Forbes, Owen, Mantell, and other well-known

• 29:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  geologists gave character and interest to the scene." Owen and Mantell's names should be recognizable at this point in the episode. The others were geologist William Coney Bear, minister and paleontologist William Buckland, and naturalist Edward Forbes. The illustration that ran in the Illustrated London Daily News showed only four names: Buckland, Owen, Mantell, and Cuvier. Richard Owen was treated as the guest of honor, and he was seated at the head of the table, which also put him in the head of the Iguanodon. Other guests mentioned in various sources included Edward Forbes, Joseph Presswich, ornithologist John Gould,

• 29:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  and Francis Fuller, who was managing director of the Crystal Palace Park Company, along with various company directors.

• 30:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's likely that at least some of the guests ate at a table that was set up next to the Iguanodon, since even though it was life-sized, it probably would not have comfortably seated everyone around a table for dinner. The bill of fare printed for the dinner lists an eight-course meal. Soups, Mock Turtle, Julian, and Hair. Fish, cod in oyster sauce, filet of Whiting, and turbo à l'orlandaise. Removes, which were just a course served in place of one that is removed, roast turkey, ham, raised pigeon pie, and boiled chicken and celery sauce. Entrees, côte de lait de moutonneaux, tomates, curry de la pâture au riz, so curry with

• 30:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  rice, salme de perdrix, and mayonnaise. Game, pheasants, woodcocks, and snipes. Sweets, macedouin jelly, orange jelly, beverroise, charlotte russe, French pastry, nougat à la chantilly. And dessert, grapes, apples, pears, almonds, and raisins, French plums, pines, filberts, walnuts, et cetera, et cetera. Accompanying all of this were wine options, sherry, Madeira, port, Moselle, claret. According to one account, most of this meal was prepared by Hawkins's cook after making arrangements to have everything reheated in the kitchen of a nearby tavern.

• 31:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  The bill of fare credits Charles Higginbottom of the Annerly Tavern as well as European on Mansion House Street. After dinner, Owen offered a toast to the late Gideon Mantell, who had died the previous November, simply saying, quote, "To the memory of Mantell, discoverer of the Iguanodon." And he also gave a speech on the sculptures and the discoveries that had led to their being made. In the words of Routledge's Guide, quote, "The professor paid an eloquent tribute to the value of the labors in the wide field of geology and paleontology of such men as Courier, Hunter, and Coney Bear." He told the company how the researchers of Cuvier in comparative anatomy had provided the means of recon-

• 32:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  constructing an extinct animal almost from a single fossil bone. For so perfect was the individuality of each species of animals, and so peculiarly adapted with the construction of their parts to the purpose for which they were destined, that a skillful observer could tell with the most perfect accuracy to what species of animal any particular bone belonged. The researches of Hunter had confirmed the theories of Cuvier, and from a single bone or a single tooth, Coney Bear, Buckland, and others had succeeded in building up an entire animal. Apparently, when Owen got up to offer a toast and mentioned Mantell's name, there were people who were like, uh-oh.

• 32:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  And then when he just toasted in his memory, there was a sigh of relief.

• 33:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  After this address on the making of these statues and the paleontology that had gone into them, the entire assembly also sang a song. The song was called "The Jolly Old Beast," and it had been written by Professor Forbes. It started, quote, "A thousand ages underground, his skeleton had lain, but now his body's big and round, and he's himself again. His bones like atoms wrapped in clay, his ribs of iron stout. Where is the root alive today that dares with him turn out? Beneath his hide he's got inside the souls of living men, who dare are sorry and now deride with life in him again."

• 33:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Then a chorus came that went, "The jolly old beast is not deceased, there's life in him again." And then there were more verses and refrain after that. This party went on past midnight, and after everyone rang in the New Year, many of them traveled back to Central London by train. Although the Crystal Palace station was not complete yet, so they would have had to travel to the nearest train station. Yeah, I'm a little curious about exactly what happened, whether they had made special arrangements for the train to like, come out to where the station would be, or whether people were transported elsewhere. It's a little vague, but as planned.

• 34:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Write-ups of the evening did appear in several publications, including the Illustrated London Daily News on January 7th, 1854, and then later in Punch and other publications. Uh, stuff progressed with the building of the park and by February, the Crystal Palace Company had announced that it would be opening in May. It finally opened just a little bit later than that on June 10th, 1854, with Queen Victoria conducting the opening ceremony. Hawkins had not finished all the sculptures yet, though, and before long, he ran into a problem which he probably did not expect, which is that new scientific discoveries rendered his sculptures obsolete. My heart breaks for him over this.

• 35:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, but with the stuff that was read about entire dinosaurs being built up from one bone or two, that's not fully surprising from the modern perspective. Yeah, I just think about all the work he had put in and then to be like, uh, that's, that's not actually what it looked like. Yeah. Uh, we had already mentioned that he had given his Iguanodon sculptures a horn that really should have been essentially a thumb, but that is minor compared to a lot of it, and many of his sculptures looked really dated and inaccurate within just a few years of their completion. They reflected cutting-edge thought in the fields of paleontology and zoology when he made them, but today they look almost comically wrong. The Iguanodon are a good example.

• 35:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  One of them, as we said earlier, just looks like a humongous lizard. It's sprawled out, it's got its legs all off to the side. Even the more correct Iguanodon that the dinner was served in does not look anything like Iguanodon are represented today. Among other things, in 1878, mine workers in Belgium found a whole collection of fossilized Iguanodon statues, which dramatically changed people's conception of what they looked like. We've compared this sculpture to an elephant, and it had very straight, elephant-like legs. But today, an Iguanodon is usually drawn or sculpted with much thinner, more sculpted, less tree trunk-like legs,

• 36:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  as well as a posture that would let it move around on either two legs or four. Research that has been carried out in recent years also suggests that Hawkins originally completed 37 of these statues, but he didn't get to finish all of the ones that he had planned for the park. The Crystal Palace Company cut his funding in 1855. The sculptures that were still in the works but not finished yet at that point were scrapped. And at that point, the ones he had yet to complete included a mastodon and other extinct mammals. This was probably just about money. The sculptures were the most expensive thing in the park, and 13,000 pounds had already been spent on the ones that were complete.

• 37:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  It does seem like the creation of these statues helped fuel the British public's fascination with dinosaurs and other extinct animals in the 19th century. Dinosaurs were really a big deal as they were first described scientifically and people became interested in them. Hawkins also became really in demand as an artist of natural history, and he was commissioned to make dinosaur art in the United States and elsewhere. The small-scale models he had designed as part of his planning process for these sculptures were also reproduced, and they were available for sale to places like schools and museums. The Crystal Palace had a major fire in 1866, but it was repaired.

• 38:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  It continued to be used, and it went through various expansions and milestones before being destroyed in another fire in 1936. There is some speculation that if this later fire had not happened, it still probably would have been destroyed during the Blitz in World War II. It does seem like it would have been a likely target. Yeah. Over the years, the Crystal Palace dinosaurs gradually fell into disrepair, and some of them were lost entirely. A restoration project started in the 1950s, although that process involved some of the statues being moved, and they wound up in parts of the park where they experienced even more wear and tear than they had in their earlier locations.

• 38:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Another big restoration and renovation project started in 2002. At that point, there were 29 sculptures remaining. There's current restoration work still going on. It is expected to be completed in the spring of 2026. Today, the remaining statues have Grade One Listed Status, which is given to buildings and structures of exceptional interest in the UK. Crystal Palace Park is still a public park, and it has Grade Two Listed Status on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. It is supported by the Crystal Palace Park Trust and operated by Bromley Council.

• 39:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Trust and the Council are currently carrying out a huge regeneration project at the park. Yeah, that's a project that includes not just restoring of the park, but also the plants at the park and regeneration of those plants.

• 39:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  I honestly love these statues in spite of and because of the goofy aspects they have by today's standards. Listen, it makes them great. Do you have some listener mail? I do. This is from Anna, and Anna wrote to say, "Hi, Holly and Tracy. I've written a few times before. Not sure if they make it your way or not. I just saw this article in my local news, Yay Buffalo, and got very excited and audibly exclaimed in front of my family while scrolling my phone when I saw it. It's about Elias Parker being posthumously admitted to the New York bar, although it is many years overdue to him.

• 40:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's always fun for me anytime Western New York and familiar places are mentioned in your episodes. I'm sure everyone feels their hometown is overflowing with history, and Buffalo is no different. Although I write this, it is currently eight degrees out. I won't deny we have some real trash weather here. I would be beyond delighted if you made a stop here for a show, perhaps in the warmer months." I'm sure many listeners have emailed you about Parker's belated recognition, but just in case, here's a link. It is a link to an article that is about Eli Parker being admitted to the bar in New York.

• 41:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  I now want to listen to your episode on Parker all over again and likely will with my husband and children on our two hour drive to Seneca Falls tomorrow. I've attached photos of our house panther shadow for your amusement. She's a bit of a dud and not the brightest, but we love her dearly, especially our 14 year old son, who's never too cool to admit he has an inner cat lady. In the event he needs me to hold on or wait a minute for him, he will tell me to pause for a brief sponsor break. Is there such a thing as too much stuff you missed in history class? Our whole family loves listening to you and thank you so much for everything you do to create this show. It is truly a gift. Sincerely, Anna. So, uh, thank you so much for sending this. I don't actually remember whether I had seen

• 41:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  this news before. I do have a whole assortment of things that I'm always looking at for preparing unearthed episodes, which is actually what I'm working on right now, the next installment of Unearthed. Um, but yes, this is, uh, something that came out in November, um, and posthumously admitting E. Lee Parker to the bar in New York. Um, So cool. Which is really cool. Yeah. A belated recognition for sure. So thank you so much, Anna, for this, uh, email. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're at [email protected] and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.

• 42:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories

• 43:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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