Futility Closet

“The Day the Clowns Cried”

Posted in Oddities by Greg Ross on October 31st, 2007

On July 6, 1944, the Ringling Brothers big top caught fire during a performance in Hartford, Conn., and more than 160 people were killed in the ensuing blaze.

Among the victims was a young blond girl in a brown dress, whose body was assigned number 1565 by the morgue. A photograph was circulated locally and then throughout the United States, but no one came forward to claim her.

To this day no one knows who "Little Miss 1565″ was or how she came to be at the circus that day.