The Ringling Brothers

The full name of the self-proclaimed "Greatest Show on Earth" is the "Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus." As circus goers for generations have guessed, a history of mergers lies behind that awkward sounding name.

The most easily recogizable bit of it is "Barnum," which of course stands for P.T. Barnum. In the early 1880s, Barnum, impresario of what was then known as "P.T. Barnum's Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome," wanted to buy an elephant owned by a competing operation, Cooper & Bailey. Bailey turned him down (Cooper appears to have been a passive investor in Bailey's operation.) But Bailey did agree to combine operations -- elephant and all. Barnum & Bailey was born.

At the peak of the popularity of Barnum & Bailey, in 1884, the Ringling Brothers got their own operation underway. The most driven and entrepreneurial of these brothers, the one key to the success of the operation, was John Nicholas Ringling.

It was in 1907 that the Ringlings actually bought the Barnum & Bailey operation, both of the named founders thereof now having passed on. Yet for a few years the Ringling family operated the two historic circuses as distinct operations -- Barnum & Bailey survived as a separate brand name until 1919, when the R. brothers, getting on in years, realized that two operations had become more than they could handle and merged them, creating the paradigmatic Show.

One more bit of circus/corporate history, and you'll see why all of this comes to mind today. The Ringling family also included a sister, Ida Ringling, who married Harry Whitestone North. They had a child they named John Ringling North, born on this day, August 14, in 1903. It was he who took over the Greatest Show on Earth in 1937, after the last of his famous uncles -- his namesake John -- had died.

It was John Ringling North who modernized operations over the next thirty years, moving the circus out of literal tents and into air-conditioned arenas. He passed away in 1985, twenty years after giving up control, and he was eulogized in Time magazine as a "flamboyant, fast-talking showman."

So were they all.