Jumbo was a huge African bull elephant. When captured in Abyssinia (Ethiopia), he was a small thin baby only 3 ½ feet tall. Jumbo was shipped to Paris where he remained in the Zoological Gardens for three years He was then transferred to the London Zoological Gardens. He spent the next 17 years of his life in England’s London Zoo giving rides to thousands of children. His trainer and keeper, Matthew Scott, loved the elephant and fed, trained and groomed him. Jumbo became very large and the London Zoological Society became worried that he may hurt someone. He was the largest elephant in the world and measured 11 and ½ feet tall, weighed approximately 6 ½ tons, and had a trunk 27 ½ inches in circumference P.T. Barnum of the United States offered $10,000 dollars to purchase Jumbo for his circus and the offer was accepted by the Zoological Society. The English populace, right up to Queen Victoria protested, Barnum waited, and used this as free advertising. Tensions grew but Barnum wouldn’t budge. In 1882, Jumbo and his trainer Matthew Scott, sailed from England on the freighter Assyrian Monarch on a 15 day voyage to America. He arrived in New York City on Easter Sunday 1882 where he was greeted by thousands of spectators. At first he was shown at Barnums’ Hippodrome and then traveled around by train in a special palace car made for Jumbo. Jumbo became the prize attraction of the Barnum and Bailey Circus and was viewed by an estimated 20 million people as he traveled around the country. On September 15th 1885, while crossing the railroad tracks in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, Jumbo was hit by a train and died. Some say Jumbo just wouldn’t budge off the tracks, others say he intentionally pushed a smaller elephant off the tracks, saving the elephant but was himself hit. Another version has Jumbo simply stuck between the circus railroad cars when struck by the speeding on coming train. Barnum had Jumbo's skin preserved and stretched over a wooden modal. It was displayed with the circus for several years. Jumbo's skeleton of more than 2,000 bones was reconstructed to form a complete skeleton and was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the mounted hide to Tufts University, where it remained until it was destroyed by fire in 1975. St. Thomas, Canada erected a concrete monument with reinforcing rods in honor of Jumbo 100 years after his death. The Jumbo Foundation unveiled a monument on June 29, 1985 during a 5 day celebration called "Jumbo Days". The cost was paid for entirely by corporate, civic organizations, and private contributions. Matthew Scott, Jumbo's longtime friend and trainer, was devastated by Jumbo's death. He continued to care for small animals at Barnum and Bailey Circus' winter headquarters in Bridgeport Connecticut. He died in the city's almshouse in 1914. Jumbo was loved by so many people that, after his death, people began referring to anything larger than normal as being "jumbo-sized." Even today, 118 years later, the term has stayed a part of the English language. The following sites can give you more information about Jumbo: