Today's On This Day commemorates the beginnings of the American Circus. Legendary huckster and showman Phineas Taylor Barnum opened his first exhibit in Manhattan in 1835.

Thanks to the stamps of Spellman Postal Museum, we have philatelic documentation of this historical event.
Museums also exist to share the history of the Circus. We discovered this one in 2010 in the town of Baraboo, WI.
The world's view of circuses has certainly evolved over the last 185 years but any child, who has ever ventured under the Big Top, remembers it forever.