Jumbo - This Is Your Life! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sudan

Born in 1861 in the Sudan, the baby Jumbo was captured by hunters after they killed his mother. He was then sold to an Italian animal dealer who transported him to Italy. From there he was sold to Germany, and then France, before ending up for a time in the London Zoo.

Answer: Barnum and Bailey Circus

The American-owned Barnum and Bailey Circus offered a staggering ten thousand dollars to buy Jumbo. That's worth over $245,000 in today's money - a jumbo-sized offer you could even say. Poor old Jumbo though had to spent a week in a large crate on that long sea journey to reach his American destination. How frightened and bewildered he must have felt.

Answer: School children

That's so cute, and really rather sad. Jumbo was a very popular attraction at the London Zoo, where part of his work there was giving rides to customers, particularly the little ankle biter kind. Alas, poor old Queen Victoria couldn't do much about the sale though. Jumbo was owned by the Zoological Society of London, not by Buckingham Palace.

Answer: Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden was originally a passenger depot before P.J. Barnum rented it in 1871. Following suitable renovations, he used it to house his circuses and other shows. It could seat 10,000 spectators by then, and altogether it has had a rather interesting history. After P.J. Barnum had moved on, Madison Square Garden hosted beauty contests, flower shows, music productions, revival and temperance meetings, dog shows, boxing matches - these were not allowed to be called matches at that time and had to be referred to as exhibitions - tennis games, a riding school, velodrome, and an ice carnival and skating rink. That was between 1871 and 1890 alone.

During P.J. Barnum's time there, however, Jumbo took in enough money in the first two WEEKS from curious spectators to pay for his price tag and upkeep. He was a jumbo attraction indeed, the poor old fellow.

Answer: Led a parade of 21 elephants across it

Amazing, isn't it? P.J. Barnum, in spite of his dedication to more or less fleecing the public whenever and wherever he could, had another civic minded side to his nature. Six days after the bridge opened, a rumour went around that it was unsafe. Travelling like wildfire, a large crowd on the bridge heard it at the time and a stampede ensued, in which twelve people were killed. Still considered unsafe twelve months later, P.J. Barnum intervened.

In order to settle the concerns of the public (and earn himself a bit of free publicity along the way) he organised for the giant four metres tall Jumbo to lead a parade of twenty-one pachyderms across the mighty structure to prove that it was indeed as safe as possible.

It worked. Today the Brooklyn Bridge still stands, long after other bridges of its same era have come and gone.

Answer: He was hit by a train

The story goes that Tom Thumb, a younger smaller elephant, was standing on the railway tracks when a locomotive was heard approaching. Jumbo saw him there and began walking towards his young colleague, intending, it is thought, to lead him to safety. However, he didn't make it in time, and the train did indeed hit Tom Thumb, killing him instantly.

The force of that blow derailed the train and it flipped towards our darling old Jumbo, also killing him instantly. That was P.J. Barnum's version. The media however reported that as Jumbo headed towards Tom Thumb, the train hit him instead, killing him instantly, and breaking Tom Thumb's leg. Either way, it's a sad ending for a gentle creature that never harmed a soul in its life.

Answer: A police whistle

There is no truth to the rumour that this caused Jumbo to whistle instead of trumpeting. Among the contents found in his stomach, following his tragic death, were pennies (mementos of his life in England), rivets (mementos of his heroic charge across the Brooklyn Bridge) and a police whistle. How Jumbo came to consume that is anybody's guess - there is no history of a jail break or a traffic offence - but altogether those little objects are all rather sad.

It's as though Jumbo had no other way to hold onto his memories, except to swallow them. Thank goodness he never took a shine to the Statue of Liberty.

Answer: Barnum sold it to Cornell University

Jumbo was a larger than normal elephant, and was billed on advertising posters accordingly wherever he toured, so perhaps his heart matched his size. Either way, and at the request of Burt Green Wilder, who was a professor of anatomy, neurology, and zoology at the Cornell university, Jumbo's heart was sold to that organisation for forty dollars - one thousand dollars in 2016 value.

His skeleton was given, free of charge, to the American Museum of Natural History, and other parts went elsewhere.

Answer: Taken on tour with the circus for two years

Lord bless us, P.J. Barnum certainly got his money's worth out of Jumbo. He loved him though, so let's not be too harsh on him. In either case, one suspects Jumbo would have enjoyed keeping on touring. He was, after all, not just a pretty face, but a bona fide working pachyderm.

After those two years had passed though, P.J. Barnum donated our stuffed and mounted Jumbo to Tufts University, and it was displayed there until April 1975. Today that university still has Jumbo as its mascot, with many representations of this larger than life hero displayed around its grounds and buildings.

Answer: In a peanut butter jar

Isn't that disgraceful? That mighty and gallant giant of the entertainment world is going to spend the rest of the foreseeable future in the office of the Tufts Sports director - in a Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter jar. It could have been Vegemite at the very least.