|Recreation of Bigfoot escaping a train wreck|
Today in 1905 The Washington Post published an article regarding the sighting of a "wildman".
The "wildman" was described with all the Bigfoot characteristics we have become familiar with.
The story continues to speculate that the wild man may have escaped from a traveling circus during a train wreck. You would be surprised how often "a wild animal escaped from the circus" is used to explain a Bigfoot sighting. In the book Historical Bigfoot by Chad Arment there are at least 24 counts in as many papers suggesting circus train wrecks as the origin of the escaped "wildman". Here is a quote from the Jan 8th 1905 event.
Several persons give it as their opinion that this creature is a wild animal of some kind that made its escape from the Robinson & Franklin circus that was touring this peninsula a number of years ago. The circus train met with a railroad wreck, and several wild animals were freed from their cages, many of these beasts were captured, and others were shot, and while others were never seen by the circus people again.
The source of all of this can be read online at Google books. The Historical Bigfoot, by Chad Arment, which covers sightings of Wild Men, Gorillas, Yahoos, and What-Is-It's, from the early 1800s to the 1940s. Before the term "Bigfoot" was coined to signify an unknown species of North American primate, sightings of towering bipedal apes were reported throughout the continent, and were called by a variety of names. This book compiles and sorts the most significant sightings, but also provides a look at hoaxes, mis-identifications, and the influential perspective of newspaper editors as they dealt with reports of a strange hairy manlike ape.