- See Jumbo (musical) for the musical by this name
Jumbo (1861 - September 15, 1885) was arguably the most famous elephant ever, and is the root of the adjective 'jumbo' (e.g. the jumbo jet).
Jumbo was an African elephant, born in 1861 in the French Sudan from where he was imported to France and kept in the old Zoo Jardin des Plantes close to the South railway station Gare de Sud in Paris . In 1865 he was transferred to the London Zoo, where he became famous through the riding operations. It was the London zoo-keepers that gave Jumbo its name. It is a slightly garbled version of the word jambo, which is Swahili for "hello".
He was sold in 1882 to P. T. Barnum, owner of "The Greatest Show on Earth", the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum's publicity made the name Jumbo synonymous with "huge". Estimated to be 3.25 metres high in the London Zoo, it was claimed that Jumbo was approximately 4 metres tall by the time of his death. Jumbo died at a train station in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, where he was crushed by a locomotive. A statue now at the site commemorates the tragedy.[1]
Jumbo's skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Jumbo's hide was stuffed and traveled with Barnum's circus for a number of years. In 1889, Barnum donated the stuffed Jumbo to Tufts University, where it was displayed until destroyed by a fire in 1975. In honor of Barnum's donation, Jumbo became the Tufts mascot.
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