Louis-Auguste Cyparis survived the 1902 Mount Pelée eruption because he was locked in the prison dungeon at the time. What did he do afterwards?
James Bailey's recruiting telegram reached the French colonial authorities at Fort-de-France in February 1903. The French had already pardoned Cyparis (the original 1902 manslaughter case was substantially dead — Saint-Pierre destroyed, prosecutor and judge dead, witnesses gone). He sailed from Fort-de-France in March 1903 and toured with Barnum & Bailey through approximately 1911, sitting in a replica of his dungeon cell. After the tour he worked on the Panama Canal construction and died in Colón in 1929.
Read the full story →Louis-Auguste Cyparis was the most famous of the two survivors of the 1902 Mount Pelée eruption. He was recruited by Barnum & Bailey's Circus in 1903, toured the United States as "the man who lived through doomsday" for the next eight years, and died in obscurity in Panama in 1929.
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