Bailey Circus

One chilly day in November 1949, a cargo plane from Miami landed at Baltimore Municipal Airport and was flagged routinely into the freight depot. Inside the cockpit, the pilots were nervous. During their flight a coffee container hanging from the control room ceiling had suddenly dropped loudly to the floor. The sharp crack it made had scared the plane's crew."He may have been dead when we left Miami but we were jittery all the way after that can dropped," said one of the pilots. The "he" was their cargo, Gargantua the Great, the ape of the age -- the great audience attraction said to have lifted the Ringling Bros.