English owes the word 'jumbo' to an elephant.
Jumbo was the star of London Zoo until P. T. Barnum bought him in 1882, and his name gave us jumbo jets and jumbo shrimp.
More amazing facts
- 1879 Saccharin was discovered by not washing up before dinner.
- 1881 Painters of the 18th and 19th centuries used paint made from mummies. 'Mummy brown' was ground from Egyptian mummies; on learning this in 1881, the Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones gave his tube a solemn burial.
- 1882 · 1889 · 2012 Work on the Sagrada Família began before the Eiffel Tower.
- 1883 The last quagga died at Amsterdam Zoo on 12 August 1883 — two weeks before Krakatoa's catastrophic eruption.
- 1883 · 1884 The Brooklyn Bridge was proven safe with elephants: in May 1884 P. T. Barnum marched 21 of them across, led by the famous Jumbo, easing public doubts and advertising his circus at once.
- 1883 · 1892 A German hygienist drank a cholera culture to prove Koch wrong.