How it all began...

Medieval Era
Groups of roving performers traveled from village to village with news, songs and storytelling for the townspeople. In England, these traveling performers were called "gleemen" and eventually became known as "minstrels."

1500s
Laws were passed forbidding minstrels from traveling from village to village because they were seen as a threat. The performers started holding their shows in fixed locations—buildings that were designed for the events.

1600s
Country fairs began to gain popularity throughout England. Acrobats, jugglers, rope dancers, bear trainers and riding exhibitions became permanent fixtures at the country fair.

1768
Philip Astley is credited with inventing the modern circus. He opened an equestrian riding-school in London, England, where he taught riding instruction in the morning and dazzled audiences with his daredevil riding performances in the afternoon. His school featured a circular area that was called circle or circus, which eventually became known as the ring.

Why is the central performance area "ring" shaped?
The central performance area was made into a ring shape for several reasons. Its shape permitted audience members to see the performer at all times. Through centrifugal force, the performers were able to maintain better balance while standing on the back of a horse. After some trial and error testing, Astley decided on a ring diameter of 42 feet, which has become the international standard for circus ring size.

1770
Astley became so well known as a performer instead of a teacher, that he brought acrobats, tightrope dancers and jugglers and had them perform in between the equestrian acts. He borrowed the idea of a clown from Elizabethan theater to perform between all the various acts during the show.

1782
Astley opened Paris’ first circus, called Amphitheatre Anglois.

Charles Hughs, a former pupil of Astley, partnered with Charles Dibdin and opened his own performance show in London. Dibdin named it the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic.

1793
Charles Hughs brought the circus to the Court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, Russia.

April 3—Charles Hugh’s pupil, John Bill Ricketts, opened the first circus in the United States in Philadelphia.

1797
Ricketts established the first Canadian circus in Montreal.

1802
Philip Lailson introduced the circus to Mexico.

1825
Since America was still in the process of being settled, a permanent circus would not last. Instead, Joshuah Purdy Brown (J. Purdy Brown) took his show to the audience. He replaced the traditional wooden circus building with a canvas tent. The canvas tent soon became a common feature for circuses.

1835
Hachaliah Bailey exhibited his African elephant and other exotic animals all over the country, thus inspiring the menagerie portion of the circus. Following his entrepreneurial lead, 135 farmers from Somers, NY, formed the Zoological Institute, featuring 13 menageries and three affiliated circuses—cornering the market on circuses and traveling menagerie shows.

1859
On November 25, at Paris’ Cirque Napoleon (today known as Cirque d’Hiver), Jules Leotard invented the flying trapeze act in which he jumped from one trapeze to the next. Also, he started the tradition of performers wearing spandex.

1871
P.T. Barnum joined forces with William Cameron Coup and started P.T. Barnum’s Museum, Menagerie & Circus in Brooklyn, NY. The museum featured an exhibition of human and animal oddities—later to become known as the Side Show. Barnum advertised the show as "The Greatest Show on Earth."

P.T. Barnum
Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in 1810 in Bethel, Conn. At the age of 25, Barnum purchased Joice Heth who claimed to be 160 years old and the nurse of George Washington. He exhibited her in New York and New England averaging approximately $1,500 a week.

Other members of his Sideshow included General Tom Thumb and "The Feejee Mermaid." Even today, the Barnum name is synonymous with great entertainment and the circus industry. Life magazine named him one of the 100 most important people of the millennium and dubbed him "the patron saint of promoters."

1872
William Cameron Coup designed a system to transport the show on rails and added a second ring to the production.

1881
A third ring was added to the circus show.

P.T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey formed a partnership and called it Barnum & Bailey Circus. It was promoted as "The Greatest Show on Earth."

1884
The Ringling Brothers—Al, Otto, Alf T., Charles and John—start their first circus.

The Ringling Brothers
Hailing from Baraboo, Wis., the Ringling brothers started their circus show that would eventually be one of the best-known shows around. The Ringling Brothers were known as the "Kings of the Circus." They toured primarily in Wisconsin and Illinois. The Ringling Show became the major competitor to the Barnum & Bailey Show.

1898
The Barnum & Bailey "Greatest Show on Earth" traveled extensively throughout Europe, setting up and breaking down every day, until 1902.

1902
In the United States, Barnum’s monopoly over the circus was ended by the Ringling Brothers Circus. After Bailey’s death in 1906, the Ringling Brothers acquired the Barnum & Bailey "Greatest Show on Earth."

1919
The Ringling Brothers joined the two shows to create the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH®. The combined shows required 100 double-length railroad cars and employed 1,200 individuals.

1922
German wire-walker, Karl Wallenda began his own high-wire act with his brother, Herman, Josef Geiger and Helen Kreis, who would later become Karl’s wife.

1927
After the Russian circuses were nationalized by Lenin in 1919, many performers originally from Western Europe fled Russia. To develop a core of true Russian performers, the State University of Circus and Variety Arts was established in 1927.

1944
July 6—In Hartford, Conn., during a performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Show, the circus tent caught on fire. The tent was waterproofed with a mixture of gasoline and paraffin. The fire killed 167 people; majority of them under the age of 15.

1947
Karl Wallenda develops the seven-person pyramid. At the top of the pyramid was a woman standing on a chair. Safety nets and harnesses were not used. The seven-person pyramid was performed continuously through 1962.

1956
The Big Show does its last tented show on July 16th. The show is performed exclusively in arenas after this date. In 1967, Irvin Feld purchased the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show.

1962
At the State Fair Coliseum in Detroit, while performing the famous seven-person pyramid, one of the members of the team faltered and lost his balance. Three men fell to the ground—two dying of injuires and the third, Karl Wallenda’s son, paralyzed from the waist down. The seven-person pyramid was only performed two additional times after the accident—in 1963 and 1977; to prove that life does go on after the accident and for the movie The Great Wallendas.

1968
Feld creates the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.

1975
Prince Rainier III of Monaco created the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo, which awards Golden and Silver Clown Awards recognizing circus performers talent. The awards, in the circus industry, are equivalent in stature to the Oscars.

1977
Paris’ Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain (World Festival of the Circus of Tomorrow) was created to showcase new performers—mostly talent that was trained in circus schools.

Paul Binder and Michael Christensen created the New York School for Circus Arts. Their performing branch is the Big Apple Circus.

1982
The first quadruple somersault is performed by trapeze artist Miguel Vazquez.

1984
As part of the celebration for the 450th anniversary of Jacques Cartier’s arrival in Canada, Cirque du Soleil was started with the assistance of the Quebec government. Using no animals in the performance, Cirque uses a dramatic mix of the circus arts and street entertainment, featuring outrageous costumes, staged under magical lighting and set to original music.

1985
The French government created the Centre National des Arts du Cirque, a professional circus college based on the Russian model.

1998
The Wallenda family performs the seven-person pyramid, 36 years after the accident that claimed two of the performer’s lives. It was performed for the Hamid Circus Royale during the 1998 Moslem Temple Shrine Circus in Detroit. Today, the seven-person pyramid and the three-level, four-person pyramid are only performed upon special requests.