Jumbo was captured in Africa as a baby and grew up in the London zoo. In 1882, master showman P.T. Barnum bought him for $10,000 and brought him and his life long trainer Matthew Scott to America. Barnum advertised him as being the biggest elephant in captivity. He died at about age 25 in 1885 when he was crossing railroad tracks in Ontario and was hit by a train. . He had been advertised as being 11 1/2 feet tall, but the taxidermists who mounted his skin measured him at 10' 9", Barnum was after all a master showman and just because Jumbo was dead didn't mean he was no longer an attraction. As early as 1823 jumbo was a slang word for "clumsy, unwieldy fellow," "jumbo" itself is possibly from "nzamba" a word for "elephant" in a W.African language or from the Swahili work "Jumbe," which means chief . Thanks to his fame in London, Jumbo had come to symbolize the name for all elephants, in America, thanks in part to Barnum's showmanship and ballyhoo, "Jumbo" became synonymous with "Big". I was gonna make some wise cracks and puns here but the facts are strange enuff. Barnum paid $10,000 for Jumbo but in his American debut he brought in over 30,000. He probably earned over a million for Barnum, some of it after he was dead! Jumbo's dying act was to offer the distraught Matthew Scott a final embrace with his trunk. It took at least 150 men to drag his body off the tracks. Barnum used his death for more publicity, saying a train was the "only thing that could have taken down an elephant of his size." The train that killed him was derailed, causing several thousand dollars of damage. The railroad, the Canadian govt. and Barnum were in court for years suing and blaming each other. Barnum no doubt extended all the legal wrangling as it was free publicity. Jumbo's skeleton was given to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. After touring the world for 4 years Jumbo's stuffed hide wound up at Tuft's University, Tuft's teams are still called the Jumbos. Now for stuff that would have made Barnum envious. In 1949,the University of Bridgeport( Bridgeport had been home to Barnum and his circus) made a legal claim for Jumbo, based on the grounds that Barnum owned only half of Jumbo with Bailey owing the other half. Tuft's agreed, but, since they had been good stewards of Jumbo, they had the right to choose which half they wanted to keep and chose the front. Bridgeport declined to take Jumbo's rump. Barnum Hall and Jumbo were consumed by fire in 1975, Jumbo's ashes are now ( get ready for this) in a peanut butter jar in the Tuft's athletic directors office.

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] (http://www.city.st-thomas.on.ca/photo_jumbo.shtml) 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.