February 3, 1882 –
P.T. Barnum purchased the elephant Jumbo on this date. He kept him for three years until the animal’s skull was crushed by a train.
After his death, Jumbo’s skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The elephant’s heart was sold to Cornell University. Jumbo’s hide was stuffed by William J. Critchley and Carl Akeley, both of Ward’s Natural Science, and the mounted specimen 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, coincidentally a fate that befell many of Barnum’s exhibits during his own lifetime. The great elephant’s ashes are kept in a 14-ounce Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter jar in the office of the Tufts athletic director.
I could not make this up if I wanted to do so.
And so it goes
The Haus of Dcaligari 