Speaker 1: When Tom Thumb showed up on the scene in eighteen thirty,
Speaker 1: there weren't too many places to go. Back then, there
Speaker 1: were only twenty three miles of railroad track in the
Speaker 1: whole country, so as you can imagine, getting anywhere was
Speaker 1: pretty tough. This Tom Thumb, though, wasn't P. T. Barnum's
Speaker 1: famous pint size protege that we've already discussed in an
Speaker 1: earlier episode. This Tom was a tiny steam engine, one
Speaker 1: of the first ever to be built in America. It
Speaker 1: weighed less than one ton and made its inventor, the
Speaker 1: industrialist Peter Cooper, very proud and very excited. The Tom
Speaker 1: Thumb steam engine was under the ownership of the Baltimore
Speaker 1: and Ohio Railroad, or the B and O for short.
Speaker 1: On July four, eight Charles Carroll broke the first ground
Speaker 1: at the lines official commissioning. At years old, he was
Speaker 1: the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. One
Speaker 1: day in eighteen thirty, Peter Cooper decided he would take
Speaker 1: Tom Thumb out for a spin on the tracks near Baltimore.
Speaker 1: He was out in a rail yard when a horse
Speaker 1: drawn train pulled up alongside him and challenged him to
Speaker 1: a gentlemanly drag race. Peter's engine had been known to
Speaker 1: clock speeds as high as fourteen miles per hour, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to test its metal. The two men lined
Speaker 1: up with each other, sitting in parallel on their respectful steeds.
Speaker 1: Paused for a moment, and then we're off to the races.
Speaker 1: Down the tracks, they surged at what must have felt
Speaker 1: like breakneck speed, although it's more likely they barely broke
Speaker 1: into the double digits. Peter and his tom Thumb effortlessly
Speaker 1: took the lead, but it wouldn't last. One of the
Speaker 1: trains belts had broken loose, and it slowly came to
Speaker 1: a halt. But it wasn't over yet. You see. Peter
Speaker 1: may have lost this battle, but he would end up
Speaker 1: winning the war because he had impressed some important people
Speaker 1: that day, people who would be making the big decisions
Speaker 1: for the future of the train line. The tom Thumb
Speaker 1: demonstrated promise through its raw power, and the executives decided
Speaker 1: that they would convert their entire railroad to steam. Horse
Speaker 1: drawn cars were out. Less than a century later, those
Speaker 1: twenty three miles of train lines would multiply exponentially by
Speaker 1: over one thousand times. In fact, at the railroad's peak
Speaker 1: in nineteen eleven, enough track had been laid throughout the country.
Speaker 1: That's hypothetically speaking, it equaled the distance from the Earth
Speaker 1: to the Moon, with miles to spare. To say that
Speaker 1: the train was one of the important technological innovations to
Speaker 1: ever hit American shores would be an understatement. Railroads would
Speaker 1: go on to upend almost everything about life at the time.
Speaker 1: They changed the way we worked, traveled, and played, and
Speaker 1: those who got to be up close to them, whether
Speaker 1: to ride or just look, couldn't help but marvel at
Speaker 1: what the future seemed to promise. The country would never
Speaker 1: be the same. Trains were becoming a spectacle, celebrities in
Speaker 1: their own right, and sometimes so were the people who
Speaker 1: wrote them. I'm Aaron Manky and welcome to the side show.
Speaker 1: It was only a matter of time before their wishes
Speaker 1: would outgrow their hawthorn tree. Jenny and Eddie Ward were
Speaker 1: young enough to remember, but also old enough to know
Speaker 1: that life wasn't going to be easy. Their home life
Speaker 1: was unstable and money was always tight. Plus there was
Speaker 1: a rotating cast of father figures, with their mother always
Speaker 1: searching for a reliable man that could afford them a
Speaker 1: better existence. When Eddie was in third grade, he dropped
Speaker 1: out of school and got a job. He had to
Speaker 1: take care of his family after all. Jenny, a few
Speaker 1: years younger, loved her brother mightily. He was her caretaker
Speaker 1: and her best friend, and they were inseparable. Together they
Speaker 1: could be unafraid of whatever life through at them. On
Speaker 1: just about any day of the year, they could be
Speaker 1: found climbing the limbs of their hawthorn tree. They were
Speaker 1: happiest there. At one point, Jenny and Eddie strung up
Speaker 1: a crude trap he's made of rope and a bar.
Speaker 1: As a parent, I am terrified just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: They played for hours at a time, swinging and jumping
Speaker 1: through the air, always earth bound, yes, but attempting to
Speaker 1: defy gravity, to test physics and fate. They loved it,
Speaker 1: and you know what, they were good at it too.
Speaker 1: It's true that we're all products of our environment, but
Speaker 1: one can't help but think that Jenny and Eddie had
Speaker 1: appeared in the exact right place at the exact right time.
Speaker 1: They were born in the last decade of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century in Bloomington, Illinois, a city whose legacy would become
Speaker 1: inextricably linked with the world of the circus. Bloomingtons had
Speaker 1: become aerial It's ground zero, just two decades after the
Speaker 1: flying trapeeze first appeared in Europe. Jenny and Eddie's flying
Speaker 1: trapeeze birthright was not one of heritage, but of proximity.
Speaker 1: The history books tell us that a few years before
Speaker 1: they were born, some local brothers had set up a
Speaker 1: trapeeze in their barn, replicating the aerial acts that they
Speaker 1: had seen when the circus wagons had passed through town.
Speaker 1: They practiced their flips and tricks, much to the dismay
Speaker 1: of their father, who sooner wished they joined the family's
Speaker 1: confection or business than tempt death. But before long those
Speaker 1: brothers had paying customers. People came to watch and eventually
Speaker 1: to train. Want to be acrobats arrived from not just
Speaker 1: all over the country, but all over the world. According
Speaker 1: to one newspaper, the city became the capital of the
Speaker 1: aerial Kingdom, making it impossible to visit a circus anywhere
Speaker 1: without running into performers who hadn't done time there. By
Speaker 1: nineteen oh three, Eddie and Jenny had graduated from their
Speaker 1: tree and landed their first paying gig at a local fair.
Speaker 1: It was a twenty mile train ride out of town,
Speaker 1: but it felt a world away here under the big top.
Speaker 1: They were reborn as the flying Wards. Their week long
Speaker 1: contract was worth fifteen dollars, but they brought home so
Speaker 1: much more. By passing around a hat to the enthusiastic audience,
Speaker 1: they managed to collect the equivalent of over ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in modern currency. The crowd had spoken, they were
Speaker 1: a smash hit, and the siblings couldn't believe it. With that,
Speaker 1: their professional career had begun. What Jenny and Eddie didn't
Speaker 1: know at that moment was that they were on their
Speaker 1: way not only to stardom, but to creating a circus
Speaker 1: family dynasty. The world didn't know, it hungered for. It
Speaker 1: was the golden age of the circus, and they were
Speaker 1: right on time. The Trapeeze was going to be Jenny
Speaker 1: and Eddie's ticket out of town. Countless shows were now
Speaker 1: moving through the country by rail, including P. T. Barnum
Speaker 1: and his entourage. The rail held their future. The following year,
Speaker 1: the flying Wards appeared at the Atlanta Fair. In nineteen
Speaker 1: o five, they were hired by a small amusement company.
Speaker 1: The year After that, the Ringling Brothers circus got hold
Speaker 1: of them before they jumped ship to join up with
Speaker 1: the Van Amberg circus. By nineteen twelve, their ranks had
Speaker 1: grown to include a rotating cast of friends and two
Speaker 1: aerial artist spouses. Jenny married Alec Todd and Eddie married
Speaker 1: Mamie Faye. Together they opened a training barn in Iowa,
Speaker 1: and then another back home in Bloomington in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: But lest you think this was any old barn, think again.
Speaker 1: That label doesn't quite do it justice. There's was a
Speaker 1: structure built to mimic a circus tent, thirty eight feet
Speaker 1: high with twenty two large windows that made the place
Speaker 1: glow with light. In one of their most famous acts,
Speaker 1: Jenny would hop on a trappies bar above Eddie's own bar,
Speaker 1: who sat with his legs dangling forty ft above the ground.
Speaker 1: From there, she would drop head first, deadweight like a corpse,
Speaker 1: earthbound like a bomb, and he would catch her, of course,
Speaker 1: but with his feet, all of this with no safety nets.
Speaker 1: In nine Hampton magazine wrote up a profile about the Wards.
Speaker 1: The reporter had teased Jenny she was as fearless as
Speaker 1: a gladiator, but all wrapped up in more sinewy demure packaging.
Speaker 1: Jenny told the reporter that she didn't see why she
Speaker 1: would have anything to fear when performing, because she knew
Speaker 1: that her brother would catch her because he had to.
Speaker 1: But she admitted, without batting an eye, there was something
Speaker 1: else that rattled her more than hurtling toward the ground. Ever,
Speaker 1: could railroad tracks? Railroad tracks? Asked the reporter incredulously. It
Speaker 1: seemed all things considered to be a very silly thing
Speaker 1: to worry about. Jenny shot back. Who wouldn't be afraid
Speaker 1: of a great, big engine? She always worried about the
Speaker 1: chance that she wouldn't make it across, Perhaps her foot
Speaker 1: would get stuck, or she would trip and fall with
Speaker 1: no one there to catch her. It was as if
Speaker 1: Jenny knew something, something that told her that, for all
Speaker 1: her high flying and death defying acts, trains were the
Speaker 1: thing she had to be afraid of. But for someone
Speaker 1: who would go on to make her living being ferried
Speaker 1: from one city to another aboard the iron horse, she
Speaker 1: had to get used to it. But that nagging sense
Speaker 1: of worry she felt it was almost as if she
Speaker 1: knew this wouldn't end well. One of America's greatest technological
Speaker 1: inventions had revolutionized mass entertainment. No, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: the television or even the radio. I'm still talking about
Speaker 1: the railroad. Rail had made the country accessible in a
Speaker 1: way it never had before, traversing prairies and mountain passes,
Speaker 1: cutting through cities and into small towns alike. For decades,
Speaker 1: showman and their entourages had been traveling by wagon. It
Speaker 1: was slow and hard. Barnum himself had acquired a hundred
Speaker 1: or so wagons to transport his show, plus a few
Speaker 1: hundred horses to pull them. It was a grinding, hardly
Speaker 1: profitable way to try to squeeze out a living. Just
Speaker 1: weeks after the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in eighteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: a Wisconsin man took his two elephants and two camels
Speaker 1: on tour from Nebraska to California. And these companies got
Speaker 1: the process down to a science. Weeks ahead of a
Speaker 1: circus performance, advertisements promoting the stars of the show would
Speaker 1: appear in local newspapers and advertisements. No place in a
Speaker 1: thirty mile radius of their next show was safe from big,
Speaker 1: colorful postering. A glittering three mile parade was promised to
Speaker 1: spectators who showed up, and that promise was usually kept.
Speaker 1: For rural farming communities especially, the anticipation was palpable. They
Speaker 1: knew that the biggest event of the whole year was
Speaker 1: about to roll into town, and when the circus appeared,
Speaker 1: everything else in their life just sort of stopped. In
Speaker 1: the magazine, McClure's called the modern circus a kingdom on wheels,
Speaker 1: a city that folds itself up like an umbrella. The
Speaker 1: writer also wrote that quickly and swiftly, every night it
Speaker 1: does the work of a Laddin's lamp, picking up in
Speaker 1: its magical arms, theater, hotel, schoolroom, barracks, home, whisking them
Speaker 1: all miles away, and setting them down before sunrise in
Speaker 1: a new place, as if by magic. A parade of
Speaker 1: exotic animals would appear at dawn and march down main street.
Speaker 1: Townsfolk watched as canvas tents spring up like mushroom caps.
Speaker 1: They could rub shoulders with tattooed ladies and dwarfs, the
Speaker 1: painted likenesses of which stood twenty feet tall on wood
Speaker 1: and canvas to announce their arrival. To say that the
Speaker 1: circus was a spectacle was an understatement. They was here
Speaker 1: that Americans were utterly transported to a world that at
Speaker 1: that time existed only in stories and their imaginations. The
Speaker 1: circus train made it real. It was a rolling fantasy,
Speaker 1: a hulking dream machine that rolled into town under the
Speaker 1: cover of night. That's how everyone would get around for
Speaker 1: a good time too. It became standard business practice, so
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighteen, the Flying Wards climbed onto the Haggenback
Speaker 1: Wallace circus Train ready for their next tour. It was
Speaker 1: an old school set of cars, all made of wood.
Speaker 1: For Jenny and Eddie and their troop, it was familiar
Speaker 1: and cozy. Their personal quarters of bare bones sleeper car
Speaker 1: was full of bunks stacked two and three high. Overhead
Speaker 1: oil lamps kept the cars glowing throughout the night. It
Speaker 1: was a swaltering existence with the bodies of hundreds of
Speaker 1: performers all stacked together in the summer air. But this
Speaker 1: was what the Wards had worked so hard for. To them,
Speaker 1: this circus train was home. Their show that season was
Speaker 1: going to be a good one. They boasted and I
Speaker 1: quote twenty five different acts advertising the presence of sixty aerialists,
Speaker 1: sixty acrobats, sixty writers, fifty clowns and one hundred count them,
Speaker 1: one hundred dancing girls. They also brought along seventy elephants,
Speaker 1: eighty horse drawn wagons, twenty trick ponies, and a home
Speaker 1: and nagerie of other exotic creatures. That's a lot of numbers,
Speaker 1: but you get the picture. The Wards and Company arrived
Speaker 1: in Michigan City, Indiana, on June one, nineteen eighteen, to
Speaker 1: give a charity performance at the Indiana State Penitentiary. All
Speaker 1: things considered, this was going to be a light and
Speaker 1: leisurely performance, and it was an afternoon show, one that
Speaker 1: would give them enough time to wrap up with daylight
Speaker 1: left to burn. As the cars finished loading, they would
Speaker 1: head off in stages. The first section of the train
Speaker 1: to leave the station at one am, was full of animals,
Speaker 1: their handlers, and six sleeper cars. The second, comprised mostly
Speaker 1: of performers, was slated to leave at two thirty am.
Speaker 1: After a long day, the performers all settled in for
Speaker 1: the night. Eddie and Mamie together, Jenny and Alec nearby,
Speaker 1: the family and single women carriages were towards the front.
Speaker 1: The married acts were sandwiched in the middle, the single
Speaker 1: men roustabouts and trainers all pulled up the rear of
Speaker 1: the train. The engine rumbled to life. The passengers felt
Speaker 1: the jolt as their cars began to roll, and turned
Speaker 1: their heads to the windows. The town sailed by like
Speaker 1: a silent movie screen. It wouldn't be long now until
Speaker 1: their next stop, which would be early enough to see
Speaker 1: the first light of dawn. The train rattled and shook
Speaker 1: across the night. It was creaky at its joints, but
Speaker 1: did its passengers a surface. It rocked them to sleep.
Speaker 1: Little did they know that this night would be the
Speaker 1: last for many on board. Some, in fact, would never
Speaker 1: wake up again. Alonso, Sergeant, was on a collision horse,
Speaker 1: and he had no idea. Often one never does. We
Speaker 1: spend our lives hurtling toward the future. Are minutes ticking
Speaker 1: on at our seconds winding down, And sometimes it's only
Speaker 1: when we're forced to come to an abrupt stopped do
Speaker 1: we realize that we might be out of time. Alonso,
Speaker 1: the train engineer at the throttle of engine of the
Speaker 1: Michigan Central Line, hadn't gotten much rest in the past day.
Speaker 1: He was tired. He closed his cab window to save
Speaker 1: himself from the night's chill. He knew these tracks, and
Speaker 1: he knew his job, and he closed his eyes just
Speaker 1: for a few moments. Of course, Alonso knew that he
Speaker 1: didn't have long to go now, but what he missed
Speaker 1: were the two caution signals, and instead of slowing down,
Speaker 1: he sped up. Up ahead was the Hagenbach Wallace circus
Speaker 1: train with the mechanical issue brakeman Oscar tim was walking
Speaker 1: the rail, taking stock of the situation. They were just
Speaker 1: five miles from their destination of Hammond, Indie Enna. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: Oscar heard something he shouldn't have, the smooth rumble of
Speaker 1: the tracks, and then saw something that shocked him, a
Speaker 1: huge plume of smoke and the headlights of an oncoming train,
Speaker 1: one that seemed to have no intention of slowing down.
Speaker 1: Part of the circus car was on the transition rail,
Speaker 1: but the rest of it was still on the main line,
Speaker 1: directly in the path of this billowing beast. Oscar grabbed
Speaker 1: an emergency flare and took off toward Alonso Sergeant's train.
Speaker 1: Oscar screamed he waved frantically, but Alonso couldn't hear him.
Speaker 1: His window was closed, after all, and so he never
Speaker 1: noticed when Oscar threw his burning flare at him. It
Speaker 1: bounced off engine as the train sped onward. The few
Speaker 1: who also saw this train coming watched Oscar's efforts in vain.
Speaker 1: In a moment of sheer terror that we can only imagine,
Speaker 1: they could do nothing but jump out of the way
Speaker 1: as one fifty tons of steel hurtled straight towards them.
Speaker 1: For the witnesses, we can imagine that time slowed down
Speaker 1: in the seconds before impact, stretching and warping to fit
Speaker 1: the full shape of the situation's horror. All the trainmen
Speaker 1: could do now was wait and pray that the folks
Speaker 1: inside the train cars were asleep and dreaming. And with that,
Speaker 1: Alonso's steam engine made contact with the circus train. It
Speaker 1: plowed into the caboose's steel frame, the air exploding with
Speaker 1: gnashing roars and the tearing of steel. The engine's cow
Speaker 1: catcher created a plowing, rolling effect, effectively mashing the circus
Speaker 1: train into a snowball of twisted metal and sparks. The
Speaker 1: next car beyond the caboose was one of the sleeper cars.
Speaker 1: In an instant, a tidal wave of metal smashed through
Speaker 1: the old wooden car. It shattered like glass, timber, splinters everywhere,
Speaker 1: the walls coming down while smashed kerosene lamps pitched riders
Speaker 1: into darkness. Those sleeping were sucked up in the undertow
Speaker 1: of debris, living breathing bodies being dragged forwards as the
Speaker 1: engine tore through the next passenger car, and then the next,
Speaker 1: and then finally one last one before slowing down. It
Speaker 1: was suddenly quiet for a moment, and then came the screams.
Speaker 1: A moment later, the train began to burn. When Mamie
Speaker 1: Ward came to she was upside down and folded into
Speaker 1: a pocket in the wreckage. With the sound of Eddie
Speaker 1: yelling for her from outside, she freed herself and climbed
Speaker 1: to the top of the mountain of carnage. It was,
Speaker 1: according to her, as tall as a telephone pole. Eddie,
Speaker 1: who had been thrown from the wreck went back to help.
Speaker 1: There were hundreds of people on that train. Survivors started digging,
Speaker 1: pulling friends and family from the wreckage. They got to
Speaker 1: work excavating frantically, following sounds of wailing and the smell
Speaker 1: of burning flesh. But the smolder grew and the fire
Speaker 1: turned into an inferno. The local fire departments were even
Speaker 1: called in, but with few water sources nearby, there wasn't
Speaker 1: much they could do. One newspaper later reported that the
Speaker 1: task of identifying the dead and seriously injured was almost hopeless.
Speaker 1: Not only were many of the bodies burned so badly
Speaker 1: that recognition was impossible, but practically everyone on the train
Speaker 1: was killed or hurt. The injured and dying were laid
Speaker 1: on the ground next to the tracks. Morticians with their
Speaker 1: horse drawn wagons stood by, making quick work of loading
Speaker 1: the unidentifiable corpses and taking them away. Altogether, eight six
Speaker 1: people died and over one hundred and twenty were injured.
Speaker 1: The sun rose that day on a new world for
Speaker 1: many of the Circus trains passengers, the ones who were
Speaker 1: left behind to pick up the pieces of that fateful
Speaker 1: summer night. Eddie was hailed as a hero by the
Speaker 1: local papers. He had gone back into the wreckage time
Speaker 1: and again, helping who he could, while clearly looking for
Speaker 1: someone in particular. Just before he collapsed from exhaustion, he
Speaker 1: succeeded and stepped out of the wreckage carrying something. It
Speaker 1: was the lifeless body of his beloved sister Jenny. He
Speaker 1: hadn't been there to catch her and now she was gone.
Speaker 1: Jenny's final train ride took her home to Bloomington's, and
Speaker 1: there where it all started. She was late to rest.
Speaker 1: Eddie would never recover. On June, just a few days
Speaker 1: after the accident, the caskets of fifty six train wreck
Speaker 1: victims were buried in a common grave at Showman's Rest
Speaker 1: Cemetery in Forest Hills, Illinois. Only thirteen of them had
Speaker 1: been identified. The rest were charred beyond recognition. If you
Speaker 1: were to visit there today, you'd find that many of
Speaker 1: the headstones in that plot are inscribed with unknown male
Speaker 1: and unknown female, But if you look closely enough, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to find more affectionate names, such as Baldy
Speaker 1: Smiley and four horse Driver. Ever since, Showman's Rest has
Speaker 1: become the final resting place for hundreds of circus folk,
Speaker 1: from roustabouts to owners and everyone in between. Some neighbors
Speaker 1: claim that they can hear the sounds of phantom elephants
Speaker 1: at night, but as the records show, no elephants were
Speaker 1: actually buried there. I suppose we'll just have to chalk
Speaker 1: it up to the zoo nearby. Oh and almost unbelievably,
Speaker 1: the Hagenbach Wallace Circus only canceled to performances. Assistance came
Speaker 1: from the Ringleing Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in
Speaker 1: the form of equipment, animals, and performers. Survivors of the
Speaker 1: wreck were able to perform once again, because even in
Speaker 1: the face of extraordinary tragedy, it seems the show must
Speaker 1: go on. In a world where many of us spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time at home during the pandemic, it's
Speaker 1: amazing to imagine the ways will travel and the things
Speaker 1: will see in the years ahead. The way we move,
Speaker 1: the where, the how, and with whom. All of it
Speaker 1: gives shape to our lives in truly meaningful ways. But
Speaker 1: we're not done just yet. Stick around through this brief
Speaker 1: sponsor break to hear one more tale about the side
Speaker 1: show and maybe find some inspiration for your next road trip.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say if he ever knew it, but
Speaker 1: one of the quite literally biggest celebrities in the world
Speaker 1: was so unanimously loved. His beginnings were quiet and his
Speaker 1: life was good, but that all changed when his mother
Speaker 1: was shot and killed. He was kidnapped from Sudan and
Speaker 1: forced to walk hundreds of miles before being taken by
Speaker 1: boat to Paris, where he was brought to the Jordan Duplont.
Speaker 1: It was France's botanical garden, a jewel in the eyes
Speaker 1: of biologists working to understand the secrets of the natural world.
Speaker 1: His life there, well, it was pretty bleak. His transfer
Speaker 1: was eventually negotiated in the form of a trade. He
Speaker 1: would go to the London Zoo in exchange for a rhino,
Speaker 1: a jackal, two eagles, a pair of dingos, a possum
Speaker 1: and a kangaroo. There, Jumbo the elephant would become a star.
Speaker 1: Even though he was a smaller African elephant. The calf
Speaker 1: would grow to a hearty twelve feet tall, and they're
Speaker 1: under the watchful eye of his caretaker, Matthew Scott, Jumbo flourished.
Speaker 1: He was sweet, and he was gentle, and within a
Speaker 1: few years he was giving writhes to children, including those
Speaker 1: of Queen Victoria, a boy named Winston Churchill, and if
Speaker 1: the legends are true, even a young f dr. The
Speaker 1: public loved him and they came to visit him by
Speaker 1: the tens of thousands. But this situation wasn't built to last.
Speaker 1: At around age twenty, the beginning of the teenage years
Speaker 1: of an elephant if you will, he began acting moody
Speaker 1: p t. Barnum caught wind of this and offered to
Speaker 1: take Jumbo to America. After much protest from tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of Londoners and from Queen Victoria herself, Jumbo once
Speaker 1: again boarded a ship and set sail west towards his
Speaker 1: new home. Barnum, ever, the opportunist, was able to conjure
Speaker 1: a crowd for Jumbo's arrival. According to some sources, it
Speaker 1: was the largest crowd New York City had ever seen.
Speaker 1: Before long, Barnum had made Jumbo an even bigger star.
Speaker 1: He became the face of many products and a household name.
Speaker 1: At that the term Jumbo became synonymous with giants. Together,
Speaker 1: they logged tens of thousands of miles on the circus train,
Speaker 1: breaking a ten records everywhere they went. But all good
Speaker 1: things must come to an end, it seems. In September,
Speaker 1: as Jumbo and his entourage were loading into a circus
Speaker 1: train after a show, an unscheduled train came barreling down
Speaker 1: the tracks and t boned the friendly giant. Jumbo perished
Speaker 1: within minutes. But if you think that would be the
Speaker 1: end of his story, you're dead wrong. As you've seen
Speaker 1: by now, Barnam and his cronies never let an untimely
Speaker 1: death get in the way of good business. Nope, quite
Speaker 1: the opposite. They saw death as yet another money making opportunity,
Speaker 1: one that certainly wasn't going to slow them down. Barnum,
Speaker 1: you see, had a taxidermist on call. The taxidermist made
Speaker 1: quick work of Jumbo, disarticulating his keleton and rebuilding it,
Speaker 1: as well as stuffing his hide. Just shy of a miracle,
Speaker 1: the modern day version of multiplying bread and fishes for
Speaker 1: the masses, if you will. Barnum now had two Jumbos
Speaker 1: for his audience. Stuffed Jumbo traveled by train to Tufts University,
Speaker 1: a Barnum beneficiary. He was large, cumbersome, and totally immobile.
Speaker 1: It said. It took many horses and over fifty people
Speaker 1: to get him up the hill, and once they got there,
Speaker 1: it was easier to get the good natured volunteers to
Speaker 1: disassemble the university stone doorway than to get him inside
Speaker 1: by any other alternative. And it's here Jumbo, to point oh,
Speaker 1: would stay for decades, once again becoming a beloved mascot
Speaker 1: to an adoring crowd, but it seems one last tragedy
Speaker 1: would befall him. In the spring of n an electrical
Speaker 1: fire broke out, burning Jumbo's building to the ground. Barely
Speaker 1: anything was left of his stuffed mortal remains. A quick
Speaker 1: thinking employee was able to save some of his remains, though,
Speaker 1: and if you're up for it, you can still go
Speaker 1: see them. Today. He sits on a shelf there Tufts
Speaker 1: University in the athletic director's office. Rumor has it it's
Speaker 1: considered good luck to say hello to him before a game,
Speaker 1: but he's certainly easy to miss because all that's left
Speaker 1: of Jumbo. Today's ash collected in a small glass jar
Speaker 1: that was once used for Crunchy Peanut Butter. Side show
Speaker 1: was written by Robin Miniter with narration by me Aaron Manky.
Speaker 1: Research for the series was by Robin Minater, Taylor Haggard Dorn,
Speaker 1: and Sam Alberty, with production assistance from Josh Thay, Jesse Funk,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. Grim and Mile Presents was
Speaker 1: created in partnership with I Heart Radio. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about this show and everything else from Grim and
Speaker 1: mild Over at Grim and mild Dot com and as
Speaker 1: always thanks for listening. M