Morbid Curiosity by Alan W. Petrucelli

Author:Alan W. Petrucelli [Petrucelli, Alan W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Nonfiction, Death & Dying, Murder
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2009-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

Animal Planet

CREATURE DISCOMFORTS

Are You Sure This Is Crunchy Peanut Butter?

JUMBO (1861-1885) the thirteen-foot tall elephant had quite the circus career thanks to all of P. T. Barnum’s ballyhooing. But even the big and mighty meet the Grim Reaper—and sometimes not in the most glamorous of ways. In 1885, Jumbo was crushed by a locomotive at a Canadian train yard. A necropsy was done, and many metallic objects were found in Jumbo’s stomach, including pennies, nickels, dimes, keys, and rivets. His skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City; his heart was sold to Cornell University. Jumbo’s hide was stuffed and the mounted specimen traveled with Barnum’s circus for many years. In 1889, Barnum donated the stuffed Jumbo to Boston’s Tufts University, where it was displayed until destroyed by a 1975 fire. The remaining ashes are kept in a fourteen-ounce Peter Pan crunchy peanut butter jar in the office of the Tufts athletic director (since 1975, teammates have rubbed the jar for good luck); his taxidermied tail also resides at Tufts, in an acid-free cardboard box.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.