After 146 years, the famed Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus took its final bow in New York on Sunday, shuttering the show after a combination of financial issues and pressure from animal rights activists.
One of the nation's great traveling tourist attractions-the show was often referred to as a town without a zip code-and certainly a predecessor for the theme parks of today, the circus' final performance drew a sold-out 19,000 fans to the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale on Long Island.
"The Greatest Show On Earth" had been losing money on the circus in recent years and had been under heavy criticism for even longer from animal rights groups, particularly PETA, for its alleged treatment of its elephants.
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The final night drew a mixed reaction and a somber farewell from Ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson. "Keep the circus alive inside you!" he said at show's end.
"Let's go home and show everyone we are forever more the Greatest Show on Earth!"
But others were pleased for a different reason.
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Feld Entertainment, which purchased the circus from the Ringling family in 1967, paid a $270,000 fine to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture for violating the Animal Welfare Act, although it admitted no wrongdoing. In 2015, it announced it would completely phase out the elephants from the show by 2018.
Kenneth Feld, owner of Feld Entertainment, acknowledged that the loss of the elephants played a major role in his decision.
"Ringling Bros. ticket sales have been declining, but following the transition of the elephants off the road, we saw an even more dramatic drop," he said back in January. "This, coupled with high operating costs, made the circus an unsustainable business for the company."
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